{"id":63373,"date":"2022-03-11T03:40:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T03:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63373"},"modified":"2022-03-11T03:43:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T03:43:33","slug":"a-canadians-perspective-on-the-american-multiracial-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63373","title":{"rendered":"A Canadian\u2019s Perspective On The American Multiracial Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Canadian\u2019s Perspective On The American Multiracial Experience<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Oberlin Review<\/a>
\nOberlin, Ohio
\n2022-03-04<\/p>\n

Zach Bayfield<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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

Before coming to Oberlin [College]<\/a>, my racial identity was something I rarely reflected on. My mother is a fifth-generation Canadian with entirely European ancestry. My father was born in Jamaica<\/a> to an English father and a Jamaican mother. The Afro-Caribbean side of my ancestry was discussed comfortably in my family, and I felt no pressure to identify with one race over the other. Regardless of who I surrounded myself with or what activities I was engaging in, I felt like my identity was understood.<\/p>\n

When I first came to Oberlin, my identity suddenly became more contentious. I remember my freshman year, I was eating lunch in Stevenson Dining Hall<\/a> when one of my Black teammates asked me, \u201cWhat are you?\u201d I explained my genealogy in an abbreviated version of the previous paragraph, and his response was, \u201cSo you\u2019re Black, right?\u201d I was confused and taken aback by this statement. How could I identify as Black when I\u2019ve never experienced racism directly? Why do I have to identify as a particular race? Why can\u2019t I just be me?…<\/p>\n

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

How could I identify as Black when I\u2019ve never experienced racism directly? Why do I have to identify as a particular race? Why can\u2019t I just be me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,2895,19,8,20],"tags":[33014,2846,22100,22099,33221],"class_list":["post-63373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-campus-life","category-canada","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-mike-mcdaniel","tag-oberlin-college","tag-oberlin-review","tag-the-oberlin-review","tag-zach-bayfield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63373","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=63373"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63376,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63373\/revisions\/63376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}