Good to see you again. Glad you enjoy the Limes.Unidentified female X, in comment on facebook picture of self looking v tan: oh gosh…i need to stay out of the sun! Unidentified female Y, in response: yuh lookin BLACK Unidentified female X: I know. This is terrible…definitely not the shade I want to be!!! I [...]
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 [...]
“Guess where she works!” He, a tall beautiful dread, considered me for a moment. “Give me a clue.” “Well, she’s a journalist,” said my loctician, while I squirmed in a mixture of ouch-you’re-pulling-my-hair and embarrassment. “Aha! The Voice!” he said, referring to the UK’s major “Afro-Caribbean” newspaper. “No, try again.”
“You from Trinidad! But you not half-caste!” “I’m sorry?” Walking out of Brixton tube station and into the rain, my forlorn pink umbrella, long conquered by the wind, hanging uselessly by my side. “Excuse me miss!” The voice, polite and distinctly not English, cut through the insistent chorus of skunkweedtravelcardsgetyourhighgrade. I paused. An older man, [...]