English | Malaysian
When I was younger I didn’t fully understand the complexity of what it meant to be bi-racial. I remember the first time I heard the term in high school. That was probably the first time I had the awareness to identify myself in that way. I was the first mixed-race person in my family so the conversation never really came up with my parents and loved ones. I did a lot of identity searching on my own with input from both sides of my family, and have gone through phases of confusion, isolation, anger, curiosity, self-awareness and finally appreciation. I hope that as time goes on, my self-awareness and the appreciation for who I am as a biracial person grows. And I hope that by sharing my experience openly, other mixed-race people can relate and take comfort in knowing someone else shares what they’ve experienced and feel.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of challenges is skin colour; not necessarily my own skin colour but how this aspect is a source of marginalisation for People of Colour. I am noticeably lighter skinned than the majority of my family and growing up as a child I didn’t understand what this meant. I remember travelling outside of Canada with my Mom, at border security they told my Mom to step away and asked me privately if she was ‘really my Mom’. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but years later I came to understand that they thought my Mom was kidnapping me. I need to be grateful that my skin colour and appearance have been a source of privilege in my life, especially in comparison to how I’ve seen other members of my Malaysian family treated in White-dominated environments. But something that’s maybe less talked about or people are less aware of, is that of lived family trauma and the impact that has on children. I was most likely not a target of racism and prejudice that my family experienced, but I certainly shared the pain and damage that those events caused. And that is a very confusing feeling to make sense of, when you don’t look like someone who would normally be a target for racism or prejudice.
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