{"id":58558,"date":"2019-07-23T01:14:05","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T01:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58558"},"modified":"2019-07-30T16:54:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:54:28","slug":"if-w-e-b-du-bois-could-call-himself-black-then-i-could-be-white-fuck-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58558","title":{"rendered":"If W.E.B. Du Bois could call himself black, then I could be white. Fuck it."},"content":{"rendered":"

The only tribe I\u2019d ever identified with was the punk rock<\/a> scene. The few kids up north I had punk rock in common with also happened to be white, and soon I was the half-white kid who hung out with the whites. I\u2019d been mistaken for Italian in New York<\/a> and New Jersey<\/a> before, and I\u2019d always corrected whoever said it. I had read about Creoles<\/a>, who must have looked like me, and I thought about how nice it must have been to live somewhere where everyone around you wouldn\u2019t question what you are, because you\u2019re all the same thing. Here, in prison, I was accepted as white, and as time went on, I seemed unable or unwilling to correct anyone on it, thinking it would complicate things. I was tired of the ambiguities my appearance presented and decided I wouldn\u2019t tell anyone anymore about \u201cmy dark side.\u201d If W.E.B. Du Bois<\/a> could call himself black, then I could be white. Fuck it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leo Oladimu [Leo Felton], as told to Shawna Kenney, \u201cI Was a Black Nazi Skinhead<\/a>,\u201d Narratively<\/em>, November 12, 2018. https:\/\/narratively.com\/i-was-a-black-nazi-skinhead\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only tribe I\u2019d ever identified with was the punk rock scene. The few kids up north I had punk rock in common with also happened to be white, and soon I was the half-white kid who hung out with the whites. I\u2019d been mistaken for Italian in New York and New Jersey before, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6180,30033,27451,27450,20002,30032],"class_list":["post-58558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-leo-felton","tag-leo-oladimu","tag-leo-v-felton","tag-leo-vincelette-felton","tag-narratively","tag-shawna-kenney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58558","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=58558"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58622,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58558\/revisions\/58622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}