French | Moroccan
Your ethnicity is not a separate part of your identity. You do not experience being a woman and being a person of color separately. The same way you don't experience being queer and being a woman of color separately. Intersectionality is an amazing conceptual tool that allows for a more nuanced and precise understanding of complex identities. Because being at the crossroad of multiple categories is more than an overlap of all those categories, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.
My queerness is not something that I vocalize too much as it is the part of my identity that is still in need of more in depth exploring. My neurodiversity (I have ADHD, dyspraxia and I am autistic) is something that I am in the process of learning how to advocate for. Invisible disabilities are often misunderstood and stigmatized and it took me a bit of time to accept the labels, reclaim them and fight for a better inclusion of my neuronal difference.
The complexity that comes with belonging to 4 minorities (based on race, gender, sexual orientation and disability) makes it harder at times for people to comprehend where I am coming from. It is not always easy to understand something you haven't experienced and I often have a lot of explaining to do. The plus side is that it gives me the superpower of thriving on complexity, the capacity to see and understand nuances and layers that some people can't. Also, you can't survive that level of complexity without tremendous empathy and emotional intelligence. Oh and patience, you do need a lot of patience.
I feel profoundly European and African, and I do get along better with people that are either or both. I feel more comfortable with other mixed-race people no matter the mix. It is not about the cultures, it is about the multiple perspectives, the otherness, the double set of norms and standards, the complexity of having multiple belongings. Of course among mixed-race people, I would relate more with the ones who, like me, have a foot in the West and a foot in the Global South, because of the power dynamic between those two blocs.
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