Member-only story
Another Chapter of my Mixed Experience
How a Thanksgiving school event proved so much about the adults around us
In 3rd grade, it became apparent that racial lines in my very segregated community were going to impact my social circle. For me, it was no problem. As a mixed child, the black girls had no issue with me, while the white girls said they couldn’t be my friend because I was too brown.
Up until that year, my mother had lied to me about my father. She had claimed her white husband was my father, and despite my very different appearance, I was a kid.
I didn’t have enough knowledge at that time to question it…
but my 8 year old classmates were being told by their parents that brown kids are different and they needed to play with the white kids.
So they started to ask me, “What are you?” because I was the only person in our grade who was what the world now calls “racially ambiguous.”
When I came home to tell my parents, they finally confessed that the man I called “Daddy” was not my biological father and proceeded to tell me only HALF of the story of my dad.
