April Faye Weathers,
Los Angeles, CA.
I’m light skinned and have always felt self-conscious about my skin tone. Growing up, my white mom taught my brother and I to be proud of our black identity and feel comfortable in our own skin. She embraced our father’s culture and made it part of her own, blending our family even when my father wasn’t around. Nonetheless, we dealt with the “Are those really your kids?,” and the “Do you know your father?’s” plenty. Being some of the own mixed people, let alone people of color, in our rural Eastern Oregon community was confusing enough, but being often pegged as the “black” kids was another thing entirely. Especially when we didn’t hold the typical black visage, myself pale and my brother chocolate, neither of us had quite the “right” look, at least not for a lot of people. My sense of identity shifted in college when I realized there were more, many more in fact, people of mixed backgrounds. I was thrilled to meet more people to relate to, but confused when presented with people, both white and black, who felt or acted like I wasn’t dark enough or black enough to hold the title. I never realized it was a title to win, or be doled out, but it certainly can be. I may continue to struggle with my pale skin and light eyes and dirty blonde curly hair, but more and more I let the race card that others want to play for me be played, and I keep my own rules to the game.
