Lea Setegn
Richmond, VA
Growing up in Rochester, New York, I spent my elementary school years in a Catholic school that was 99% white. I am biracial – Dad’s from Ethiopia, Mom’s an American/Scottish/Irish mix – but no one noticed. (Truly, when you meet your schoolmates at the age of 5, who notices if you have a parent that’s a different color?) Because I grew up in white America, almost no one I met in New York thought I was black or biracial. As I grew up, finished school and went to work, white and black folks saw me as “white.”
In 2000, at the age of 27, I moved to Richmond, Virginia, the Capital of the Confederacy. For the last 13 years, the people I’ve met have seen me as black – especially other black people. I have been welcomed and accepted by Southern black folks in a way I never was in the North. I am seen as one of them, not as an other, despite my cultural background being different than theirs.
Being Black in the South is much more satisfying than being White in the North ever was. Moving South allowed me to integrate both halves of myself and truly be seen for all the parts that make up who I am.
