{"id":60808,"date":"2021-05-24T21:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T21:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60808"},"modified":"2021-05-24T21:03:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T21:03:29","slug":"growing-up-ethiopian-and-german","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60808","title":{"rendered":"Growing up Ethiopian and German"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up Ethiopian and German<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ethiopian Observer<\/a>
\n2021-05-20<\/p>\n

Tigist Selam<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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

Born to an Ethiopian mother and a German father, Tigist Selam enjoyed the diverse experience of growing up in Nigeria<\/a>, Argentina<\/a>, and foremost Germany<\/a>. In an article featured in the book \u201cOne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race<\/a>\u201c, Tigist explores the complexities of racial classifications, and the different ways that people live and experience Blackness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I personally identify as Black racially, Ethiopian, and German\/ American culturally. I never say that I\u2019m Black except in a political context because I don\u2019t even know what that means. Like being Black. What is Black culture? Is it African culture? Is it the Caribbean? To me, culture is very specific and I\u2019m multicultural. So, when I identify as Black, I\u2019m making a political statement; I am not trying to simplify my own cultural complexity.<\/p>\n

My father was born in 1945. That\u2019s the end of World War II<\/a>. He still had the swastika<\/a> in his passport and on his birth certificate. And my mom, she survived Haile Selassie<\/a> and Mussolini<\/a>. Both of my parents are very proud to be German, very proud to be Ethiopian, respectively. Very, very strong people identity-wise. But they\u2019re not very sensitive when it comes to race. To them, everybody else is an idiot. And that was really helpful growing up because my mom never backed down. When she didn\u2019t get seated, she would say something or not pay for the meal. My dad took me voting when i was 11. I was forced to watch international news every day. So me and my brother got politicised at a very early age. But it was also the experience of living everywhere-Nigeria for two years, Argentina for three years, Germany ten years, and now America<\/a> off and on for 10 years…<\/p>\n

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

Born to an Ethiopian mother and a German father, Tigist Selam enjoyed the diverse experience of growing up in Nigeria, Argentina, and foremost Germany. In an article featured in the book \u201cOne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race\u201c, Tigist explores the complexities of racial classifications, and the different ways that people live and experience Blackness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,395,28,8,20],"tags":[676,31417,2948,1691,31418,31416],"class_list":["post-60808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-europe","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-argentina","tag-ethiopian-observer","tag-germany","tag-nigeria","tag-tigist-helen-schmidt","tag-tigist-selam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60808","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=60808"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60812,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60808\/revisions\/60812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}