{"id":53852,"date":"2017-05-10T18:36:17","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T18:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53852"},"modified":"2017-05-10T18:36:17","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T18:36:17","slug":"the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=53852","title":{"rendered":"The Unbearable Whiteness Of Being"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Unbearable Whiteness Of Being<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

WBUR 90.9 FM<\/a>
\nBoston, Massachusetts
\n2017-05-02<\/p>\n

John Vercher<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nI’m raising my sons to be proud of their blackness, writes John Vercher<\/a>. But they’ll benefit from their lighter skin. (Ayo Ogunseinde\/Unsplash)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I used to make fun of my Pop\u2019s Afro<\/a>. Then, as now, he took meticulous care of it. I remember with such clarity the way he used to trim it in the mirror of our basement bathroom. The way he leaned over the sink to wash it, neck craned under the faucet to keep the shampoo from running in his eyes. The way he styled and shaped it to geometric perfection. That Afro was the epitome of cool.<\/p>\n

Except to me. His natural, his turtlenecks under his leather jackets, his ankle-high leather boots, made him a walking anachronism. An outdated Richard Roundtree<\/a>; Shaft<\/a> in the wrong time.<\/p>\n

I envied that hair, though I didn\u2019t know it at the time. I still do. Not only for myself but also for my sons. I am a biracial black man, but I was not blessed with my father\u2019s good hair. His loose curls plus my mother\u2019s arrow-straight locks left me with a shock more\u00a0Prince<\/a> than Angela Davis<\/a>; skin more Dwayne Johnson<\/a> than Wesley Snipes<\/a>. A child of the 70s, my parents let my hair grow long and wavy\u00a0and so I heard that\u00a0<\/em>question, as early as grade school; the question that dogged me through high school, followed me to college, nipped at my heels through adulthood, until I shaved my thinning hair:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you, exactly?\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m raising my sons to be proud of their blackness, writes John Vercher. But they’ll benefit from their lighter skin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,125,8,20],"tags":[26961,10928,25780],"class_list":["post-53852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-john-vercher","tag-wbur","tag-wbur-90-9-fm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53852","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=53852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53853,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53852\/revisions\/53853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}