https://www.facebook.com/afropolitaninsights/videos/1546570818729461/
For a number of mixed raced professionals, it was a struggle discovering their racial identities while growing up between two separate worlds. A recent clip from the four-episode digital documentary series “The Loving Generation” which explores the stories of Americans born to one white parent and one Black parent between 1965-1985, highlight those experiences.
“I am a Black woman. I see myself as a black woman, but I also have to be honest,” said Erin Cloud, a public defender. “I love my mother. I can’t say for many of my Black friends that they deeply, intimately, without any bounds love a white person.”
Writers like Rebecca Walker and investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones shared similar stories of experiencing different realities with their white sides, who either refused to “see color” or disowned the family completely and their Black sides, where they felt they could just be themselves.
“It was always clear we were different from the other kids,” Hannah-Jones said. “When we were around our Black side, we were just like them. When we were around our white side, we weren’t like them. I had the best grandparents, but they also were prejudiced so I could never be my whole self around them.”
Editor and writer Panama Johnson also spoke of his struggle with the harsh reality that his own mother is an avid Donald Trump supporter and even once sported a “Make America Great Again” t-shirt.
“Like how do you as my mother, with black kids — like you are a woman with children who are negatively impacted by the hate this man in drudging up.”
Hear more of their stories above.
