…I have always been brought up with an awareness that I live in a structurally racist society and therefore am engaged with on the spectrum of blackness. Accordingly, I politically align myself to Blackness. I am Black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2015-11-04 03:40Z by Steven

All mixed people are entitled to self-identify how they please. But, for some, it is very simple: you are mixed, but you are Black – not in a reductive sense, but in a reflection of a structural reality. In my case, whilst I recognise that I am mixed (my father is white), I have always been brought up with an awareness that I live in a structurally racist society and therefore am engaged with on the spectrum of blackness. Accordingly, I politically align myself to Blackness. I am Black.

Sekai Makoni, “I Am Mixed And I Am Whole,” Ain’t I A Woman Collective, October 19, 2015. http://www.aintiawomancollective.com/i-am-mixed-and-i-am-whole/.

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I Am Mixed And I Am Whole

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United Kingdom, Women on 2015-10-29 21:42Z by Steven

I Am Mixed And I Am Whole

Ain’t I A Woman Collective: Centring the Voices of Women with African Ancestry
2015-10-19

Sekai Makoni

When I heard the theme for this month was ‘identity’, the word crisis as an appendage kept coming to mind. As a mixed person it, it seems as though the word “crisis” is constantly attached to identity, as though there is confusion somewhere. This is problematic. Other phrases that have become synonymous with “mixed race” include: ‘unsure of themselves’, ‘in-between’, ‘not one, not the other’, etc. It becomes a little exasperating, especially if, like me, you don not relate to such notions of bi- and multi-racial identity. It sometimes seems alien to some that an identity crisis is not an inevitable part of your coming of age. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that identity crises are not a universal truth for those of mixed heritage…

Read the entire article here.

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