{"id":56471,"date":"2018-05-27T20:13:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T20:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56471"},"modified":"2018-05-30T01:54:48","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T01:54:48","slug":"akala-as-i-grew-up-i-became-embarrassed-by-my-mothers-whiteness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56471","title":{"rendered":"Akala: \u2018As I grew up, I became embarrassed by my mother\u2019s whiteness’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Akala: \u2018As I grew up, I became embarrassed by my mother\u2019s whiteness’<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2018-05-26<\/p>\n

Akala<\/a> (Kingslee James Daley)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Akala\"<\/a>
\nAkala<\/a>: \u2018From that day, my relationship with my mother was not just that of mother and son, but of a white mother to a black son.\u2019 Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Guardian<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

At five, the hip-hop poet was racially abused at school. Could his mother ever really understand?<\/em><\/p>\n

One day in 1988, at the age of five, I returned home from school upset. My mum tried to work out why but I was reluctant to tell her. After some coaxing, I told her that a boy in the playground had called me a particularly nasty name. As I was about to spill the beans, a strange thing occurred. I said, \u201cMum, the white boy\u2026 \u201d and trailed off before I could complete the sentence. A profound realisation hit me. With a hint of terror and accusation, I said, \u201cBut you\u2019re white, aren\u2019t you, Mummy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before this, my mum was just my mum, a flawless superhero, as any loving parent is in a five-year-old\u2019s eyes. I sensed that something about that image was changing in the moment, something we could never take back. I wanted to un-ask the question. My mother\u2019s expression was halfway between shock and resignation: she\u2019d known this day would come, but the directness of the question still took her aback.<\/p>\n

She thought for a moment and then, using one of her brilliant if unintentional psychological masterstrokes, replied something to the effect of: \u201cYes, I\u2019m white, but I\u2019m German and they\u2019re English.\u201d It didn\u2019t matter that my mum was not really German \u2013 she was born in Germany<\/a> but brought up in Hong Kong<\/a> \u2013 or that I was technically English: my mum had created a safety valve for me, so that I could feel comfortable reporting racist abuse to her without having to worry that I was hurting her feelings. Even at five, I knew instinctively that whiteness, like all systems of power, preferred not to be interrogated…<\/p>\n

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

At five, the hip-hop poet was racially abused at school. Could his mother ever really understand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,414,8,10],"tags":[15319,22954,2103],"class_list":["post-56471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-family","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-akala","tag-kingslee-james-daley","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56471","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=56471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56472,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56471\/revisions\/56472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}