Whitney Gray.
I am mixed. I grew up with my white mom and I haven’t spent a lot of time with the black side of my family. Growing up, I was always told that I “act white” or white people have told me that they “act blacker” than I do. Basically insinuating that in order to be black you need to be loud and obnoxious. Hearing those things growing up had made me somewhat nervous to embrace my black side because I was afraid that I was going to get comments about how I am not black because of how I grew up. Now that I am an adult and a mother, I realize that it doesn’t matter how I grew up. I am a black woman! Growing up with white people does not make me less black. I have experienced racism and stereotyping because when people look at me they can’t see that I was raised by a white woman. I may not have experienced it as much as some simply because of where I grew up, but it still happens and I will no longer be afraid to call myself a black woman.
