When you're bi-racial, in the town I was in, in Maine, people kept asking, 'What are you?' It was like I wasn't even human.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'
My mum is black, my dad is white, and when I was a teenager, people would say, 'So what are you? Are you black? Or white? What are you more of?'
And I used to say, 'I'm black, too.' In other words, I - my whole life I've been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that. I take that and stand.
At the end of the day, I'm a human being and I just think that's what it is. Challenging stereotypes by just being who I am.
I'm a half-breed. You know, I'm Puerto Rican and Norwegian from descent, and I grew up, born and raised in New York City, and I stood out amongst my friends in my community. I was very blond-haired, white, and 'Lemonhead' was the name that they gave me.
I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.
I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
I have always, or for the most part, identified myself as a biracial person.
Like, you can't tell a certain race, like, 'You're supposed to act this way, and you're not supposed to act this way because of what color you are,' like, that's just holding everybody back, you know what I'm saying?
The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.
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