{"id":54836,"date":"2017-08-24T01:22:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T01:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54836"},"modified":"2017-08-24T01:22:37","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T01:22:37","slug":"a-moment-that-changed-me-realising-i-was-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54836","title":{"rendered":"A moment that changed me: realising I was black"},"content":{"rendered":"

A moment that changed me: realising I was black<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2017-08-18<\/p>\n

Micha Frazer-Carroll<\/strong><\/a>, Founder and editor-in-chief
\nBlueprint<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\n\u2018Mixedness feels rich, full, and multifaceted.\u2019 Photograph: Micha Frazer-Carroll<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I always thought I was mixed race until someone at school called me black. That started me thinking about racial identity<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA \u2018black girl\u2019. How weird is that?\u201d I laughed. I\u2019m met with silence from my mum\u2019s side of the dinner table.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not weird. It\u2019s what you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like one million other people in the UK<\/a>, I\u2019m mixed race. Up until I was a teenager, I\u2019d never considered I could be anything else.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s year 8 \u2013 I\u2019m probably about 12 or 13. The day hasn\u2019t been hugely out of the ordinary, but something had happened earlier that made me feel a bit odd. For the first time in my life, I\u2019ve been referred to as \u201cblack\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sitting down to dinner that night, as a unit, my family look like a sort of Pantone<\/a> colour chart of milky beige to deep brown; my mum\u2019s black, my dad\u2019s white, and me and my siblings are various shades of in-between \u2013 who\u2019s darkest generally depends on who had been playing in the sun the longest. We exemplify the sort of image of modern Britain<\/a> that was particularly prevalent during the run-up to the London Olympics<\/a>. Despite the day\u2019s confusion, early-adolescent me knows one thing for sure: while I am proud of my ethnicity, and being half black, I am not black, I am mixed race. Both parts are equally important to my identity. Mum is visibly getting a bit agitated now. \u201cMost people don\u2019t see that. Above all, you\u2019re black.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

I always thought I was mixed race until someone at school called me black. That started me thinking about racial identity<\/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],"tags":[27472,2103],"class_list":["post-54836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","tag-micha-frazer-carroll","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54836","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=54836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54837,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54836\/revisions\/54837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}