White Supremacy Has a Deep Impact on Interracial Families
For interracial Black and white families, honest discussions about racism need to be had in a white supremacist world.
By Savannah Lee-Thomas
While I recognize that we are all the same species, due to pigmentation and a white supremacist culture, some of us are treated differently than others, and some of us are treated unfairly. In the ninth grade, our class read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and I remember reading that the children of a mixed couple were considered nothings. Non existent. As a mixed child, I had to stomach that that situation would have been a reality for me during that time. With a West Indian mother and a White father, I grew up knowing that I was mixed but never understanding.I didn’t understand why I was bullied for no reason or not liked by my teachers. I didn’t understand why dolls didn’t look like me or why I didn’t see myself on television. And then, there was my family. I was brought up under the impression that we are all the same. I was never taught about Trinidadian culture or tradition and lived with a father who had spent his entire life in a small suburban town outside of the city. There was no access to my culture and I was never taught about it in school. Because of this, I had an extremely difficult time connecting with others and getting to know myself as an individual. It wasn’t until I became an adult and moved to the city that I discovered how many things were wrong with the way I was raised. My mother likes to argue that she tried to teach me that everyone was equal and not to view people based on their race. But now as a grown woman who experiences and witnesses racism, fetishization, and judgements based on appearance, I am finding it harder to see how my parents could have possibly thought this was the right way to do things.Related: STOP WEAPONZING BIRACIAL CHILDREN
The Complicated and Sometimes Racist History of Referring to South Asians as “East Indian”
"East Indian" is a remnant of archaic geopolitical Eurocentric positioning and shouldn’t be used at all in a modern context, unless you are talking about people from the eastern part of India. Once upon a time, in the year 1492, a