broomhildassims2 replied to your photoset “aphtoncorbin: Day 9-Paper Bag Test”
years ago someone asked me why I don't just say my kids are Mexican because they look that way and I said why..I am not ashamed of what or who they are..they are part black and I don't want them to be ashamed of who or what they are...
I’m mixed race ( Black, Native, Various White ). In short, I’m half black and half white with native on both sides. I look Hispanic to most white people I’ve met. I look black mixed to those who know better or other blacks, or hispanics that are non-puerto rican ( puerto ricans usually say ‘you look like my [relative]’ which is pretty damn reasonable honestly). When I was younger, I was teased, and made fun of for having ‘good hair’ and ‘light skin’ both of which have their own draw backs. And I would get so mad, because I didn’t understand how that set me aside, even after hearing about the paper bag test I didn’t see it as a benefit because I didn’t know how it still applied to today’s world. I didn’t know that my family, my mother, my best friends would have more or less struggles because of the color of their skin.
I used to have /friends/ who would tell me I wasn’t ‘that kind of black’ or ‘all that black’ or that i didn’t ‘act black’. I didn’t understand that this we a product of systemic abuse of minorities, but it still made me angry. I didn’t know why I had to defend my blackness to everyone. I’d been raised in a black hood, by my black mother with my black friends, and yet I was an outsider.
Now I know about things like the paper bag test and how europeans used whiteness as this reward to divide and placate blacks. That this was the same here as in South Africa and we still feel those affects.
You’re did right by your children. They will struggle with the hims and haws of being mixed life long, but let them, let them feel each part of who they are and they will always be better for it.
