[Image description: The photograph shows the author, a light-skinned woman with graying brown shoulder-length hair and glasses. She is wearing a navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, and her right hand is resting against the side of her face. She is looking into the camera and smiling. Behind her is a curtain in a mandala design.] I recently decided to purchase a genetics test from … [Read more...]
How Do We Make Online Feminism Less US-Centric?
"I learned a lesson at Sunday school," said my domestic partner-in-crime. "It said that God prevented our rise to power by making us speak different languages so we couldn't understand each other. Different languages aren't a blessing; they're a fucking punishment." He'd just got off the phone with Vodafone internet support in Berlin, our home of mere weeks. They didn't speak … [Read more...]
My Biracial Identity: Figuring Out Where Is Home
My ancestry manifests in me as the aftermath of an ongoing battle. My body is the convergence of bloodlines that span continents. My heritage is layered, textured with palimpsest and patina. I am dual, simultaneous. I encompass the oppressor and oppressed, the privileged and the disenfranchised. I am mixed. Specifically, I am mixed Filipinx and white. This identity is a … [Read more...]
From Brandy and Ballet to Black Studies: How I Arrived at Black Feminism
As a child, Brandy Rayana Norwood — simply known as “Brandy” to most people — was my favorite entertainer. I saw bits of myself in her, and in her headstrong, smart, but sometimes overzealous TV character counterpart, Moesha Mitchell. Brandy was everything a young girl is raised to want to be: beautiful, an actress, a singer, and a model. She was even Cinderella, for crying … [Read more...]
5 Things I Learned as a White Person After Visiting a Southern Plantation Dedicated to Slavery
Content warning: description of life under enslavement In February, my partner and I took our first-ever trip to New Orleans, Louisiana during the city’s festive Mardi Gras season. It was an incredible experience, but the most impactful part of our visit by far was our day trip to the Whitney Plantation. Located about an hour’s drive outside New Orleans in the heart of … [Read more...]
Stop Using Mixed-Race People as Symbols of Interracial Unity To Ease Your White Guilt
Editor's Note: This piece was first published in Danish magazine Friktion and is republished with permission. Dutch beer company Heineken has recently faced backlash for its “lighter is better” ad, where a light-skinned Brown bartender slides a beer past three dark-skinned Black people towards a Eurasian woman. The bartender shares a wink with her before the slogan “Sometimes … [Read more...]
