Good to see you again. Glad you enjoy the Limes.Back in 2008, I wrote a piece that argued thus, on the subject of my preferred “hairstyle”: I am my hair. I am challenging, I am defiant, I do not apologize. And the next time some Wall Street multimillionaire or Oxbridge-educated middle-aged perpetually entitled white British [...]
(Pace India.Arie) I started growing my locs five years ago. Since then, I’ve fielded a host of questions from friendsfamilyclassmatescolleaguesrandomstrangers, including but not limited to: – Do you wash it? – How do you wash it? – Can I touch it? – Does it itch? – Is it real? – Does it hurt? – Don’t [...]
I have the right not to justify my existence in this world not to keep the races separate within me not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity not to justify my ethnic legitimacy to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify to identity myself differently than how my parents [...]
I feel an identity crisis coming on. This most recent bout of mixed-person-itis was triggered by a post over at What Tami Said, in which the eponymous author comments on “black people” (italics mine) who claim mixed heritage. While she makes some interesting points, two of her affirmations thereupon unsettled me: Mixed ancestry is often [...]