Lebanese/Syrian | Ivorian
I spent most of my childhood in West Africa, where I lived in an affluent mixed-race family, going between my Arabic, French and African relatives was commonplace, and this diversity of people was what I knew and was exposed to. Interestingly being mixed or from a mixed family in Western Africa in my opinion holds a certain privilege as this identity becomes a sort of badge that affords a certain advantage and to some extent for some entitlement.
The most challenging part of my mixed identity has been the issue of dealing with colour; being ‘Browner’ as a mixed person. I find that as much as people can tell I’m mixed because of my hair texture or the shade of my skin they also don’t because they often associate being mixed with lighter shades of Brown or having one parent who is White. This can be quite difficult to deal with from an identity standpoint because you often find yourself having to negotiate your identity. Being Black passing vs. not looking Arabic enough for me.
The other aspect was colourism in my own family where lighter skinned relatives would be viewed or treated differently to darker skinned ones. Due to how I look I always stood in the middle of this omnipresent conflict which gave me a very rich and objective view of the debate.
I recently came out as bisexual and this was another layer of identity to unpick, this led down a very dark path but the courage it took me to come out in the current situation I was in was quite huge. I was able to come out, keep my life almost intact and move forward. My focus in this life is building resilience and strength through my identity, and my biracial/ bisexual identities really help me do this.
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