{"id":55479,"date":"2017-12-26T23:51:39","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T23:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55479"},"modified":"2017-12-26T23:51:39","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T23:51:39","slug":"toeing-the-race-line%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8awhat-i-am-and-what-i-am-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55479","title":{"rendered":"Toeing The Race Line\u200a\u2014\u200aWhat I Am And What I Am Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toeing The Race Line\u200a\u2014\u200aWhat I Am And What I Am Not<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Medium<\/a>
\n2017-12-07<\/p>\n

Kristie De Garis<\/strong><\/a>
\nEdinburgh, Scotland<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I think often of my mum\u2019s choice to change her name from Mohammed. How she must have felt when she accepted that she and her children would be safer without that name. What she had to give up within herself to change it. Growing up I loved to spell it out over and over again. M-O-H-A-M-M-E-D. To me it was a beautiful word that felt full and strong in my mouth. I had no idea of its power beyond that. The fact is, my life as \u2018Kristie Mohammed\u2019 would have been a very different life to the one I have lived as Kristie Kelbie and then after marrying my first husband, Kristie De Garis.<\/p>\n

People are interested in my current name, \u2018De Garis\u2019. I get many compliments on how \u2018exotic\u2019 it is and how it\u2019s an asset to have such an unusual name. When I tell people that my name could have been \u2018Mohammed\u2019, the most common response I get is \u2018Whoa!\u2019 and a pained facial expression. My western names mean my looks are accepted as western too because my name provides people with a false context. Throw \u2018Mohammed\u2019 into the mix and my intriguing appearance (\u2018Are you part Spanish or something?\u2019) takes on a different context. A less desirable context…<\/p>\n

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

I think often of my mum\u2019s choice to change her name from Mohammed. How she must have felt when she accepted that she and her children would be safer without that name. What she had to give up within herself to change it. Growing up I loved to spell it out over and over again. M-O-H-A-M-M-E-D. To me it was a beautiful word that felt full and strong in my mouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,10],"tags":[22668,27896,18537,153],"class_list":["post-55479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-glasgow","tag-kristie-de-garis","tag-medium","tag-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55479","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=55479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55480,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55479\/revisions\/55480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}