Christina Crawley.
My father is white, my mother is mixed-race (from Martinique – Arawak Indian, Black, French and Other European dissent). My mother experienced racism growing up and even more when she met my father. Out of these experiences and hurt, she did not raise me to “see color” (which is not even a real thing). When she was asked variations of “What are you?” or “Where do you come from?”, her response was also “Human.” or “Female” or “Same place all babies come from.” Needless to say, I grew up ignorant and not understanding some of the experiences and situations that I found myself in. I was a cheerleader in high school, I was friends with everyone in all groups. But there was always something that made me feel like an outsider, like I never truly fit in. In college, same scenario – I was friends with everyone and I was a bartender. I never had a shortage of people to surround myself with, but I still felt like I didn’t fit in and I internalized it. There must have been something wrong with me. It wasn’t until I got older and married my husband, who is a black man, that it began to make sense to me. As I told him my experiences he had the talk with me that maybe my mother should have had as I was growing up. I grew up in a prominently white town, but I was not white. And to POC I was not white, but I was not black or black enough to be fully accepted in that culture either. I think despite the time I spent thinking that there was something wrong with me (which I know now is not true), the silver lining to my experiences and the way I was raised have allowed me to build stronger relationships and to relate better to all people (empathy) as an adult. Someone recently made a comment to me when I had expressed that I felt that the way I was raised was a disadvantage. They said to me, “But how beautiful would it be if everyone’s parents raised them like that.” I like to live in faith and optimism — maybe one day we will get there.
