Stephanie Bradley.
I am a Filipino american woman, raised in a predominantly black community in Charlotte, North Carolina. My entire childhood was spent with black people, all my friends are black, all the men I ever dated have been black, and I am even in a black sorority. My six word story were actually words said to me by my high school boyfriend’s mother – who is now my mother-in-law. I haven’t always embraced my Filipino culture, but in that moment, I realized the importance of finding and embracing my identity which was largely influenced by both the community that raised me and the community that birthed me. So now, I don’t allow my relationship with the black community to validate my allyship. I do the work, so that my two beautiful black and Filipino daughters have the knowledge to equip them to live in this world as women of color and so my husband knows that I will defend and be proud of his blackness. And for my mother-in-law.. well.. she hasn’t made a statement like that in a very, very long time. Because she knows she can’t.
