{"id":46734,"date":"2016-04-27T02:21:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T02:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46734"},"modified":"2016-04-27T02:21:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T02:21:30","slug":"navigating-racial-liminality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46734","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Racial Liminality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/tuftsobserver.org\/navigating-racial-liminality\/\" target=\"_blank\">Navigating Racial Liminality<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tuftsobserver.org\/tag\/issue-4-spring-2016\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Tufts Observer<\/a><br \/>\nMedford, Massachusetts<br \/>\nIssue 4 Spring 2016<br \/>\n2016-03-28<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conrad Young<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kindergarten was the first time my racial identity was called into question. My mom came into my class to do a show-and-tell about my family\u2019s time in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Republic_of_Macedonia\" target=\"_blank\">Republic of Macedonia<\/a>, where I lived from ages one to four while my mom worked for a non-governmental organization (NGO) that aided refugees fleeing from neighboring, war-torn <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kosovo\" target=\"_blank\">Kosovo<\/a>. During the presentation, a classmate raised his hand and asked my mom, \u201cIs that why you\u2019re so dark?\u201d Another classmate asked, \u201cIs Conrad half-Chinese?\u201d While I was unaware of any greater pattern at the time, this story was the beginning of many social interactions throughout my childhood that would ultimately lead me to have a warped perspective of my outward appearance and racial identity.<\/p>\n<p>Accordingly, I began to hate my nose when I was twelve. Looking at pictures of myself from a long-forgotten party, I realized that my nose was large and ugly in comparison to my White friends\u2019 noses. I stopped smiling fully in order to make my nose appear smaller, and later in my teens I would daydream about getting plastic surgery. My physical appearance\u2014my dark olive skin, my thick black hair, and my big ugly nose\u2014became something that I was more and more aware of throughout my childhood, and through comparing myself with others, I began to think less highly of how I looked. My family rarely talked about their racial identities, as neither of my parents identify as mixed race or as people of color (POC). Unlike many POC, I was afforded the privilege of going through most of my childhood unaware of structures of racism I maintained and was affected by&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/tuftsobserver.org\/navigating-racial-liminality\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Navigating Racial Liminality The Tufts Observer Medford, Massachusetts Issue 4 Spring 2016 2016-03-28 Conrad Young Kindergarten was the first time my racial identity was called into question. My mom came into my class to do a show-and-tell about my family\u2019s time in the Republic of Macedonia, where I lived from ages one to four while [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,20],"tags":[23662,23663,23664],"class_list":["post-46734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-conrad-young","tag-the-tufts-observer","tag-tufts-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46735,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46734\/revisions\/46735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}