Thoughts on being bi-racial
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to invalidate anyone’s experience with racism and race identity struggle. I understand that as a mixed person with lighter skin my experience will not have been nearly as bad as other POC. I intended only to share my thoughts on what being mixed race has meant for me. Much of my identity consists of names. Names are a strange thing. We use them as a means of address and a means of understanding. Once we know the name of something we can allocate it to a specific space, a specific category and thus understand it better. The same can be said for people and for racial identity. People love to know “where you are from” so you can be put in your box, understood. My names are confused and contradictory because my identity is split. My mother’s family is from the Punjab in India and my father is from Suffolk, England. I am both a minority and a white person. I am part of two distinctly different boxes, or as my white cousin once called me, in a strange...