“I wasn’t white enough, but I also wasn’t black enough. I’d be in line checking out with my mom when cashiers would remind me to put down the grocery dividers between us. It was a constant reminder others didn’t see me as belonging to my parents. Every birthday, I wondered if my birth mother thought about me. Every holiday, I wondered if she missed me.”
‘They bluntly asked, ‘So, where is your real Mom? She didn’t want you? Is there something wrong with you?’ Everywhere I went, I stuck out like a sore thumb.’: Transracial adoptee says ‘it’s okay to grieve the loss of your birth family’
‘I can find my foundation skin tone because of white privilege. I can exist without fear of getting shot. That is white privilege’: Woman says ‘none of my struggles are because of the color of my skin’
“I haven’t lost a job or called the n-word because of the color of my skin. I haven’t had to work harder and prove myself as a person AND because of the color of my skin. I’ve known what it’s like to lose a job, be broke, and have zero in my bank account. But I still have white privilege.”
‘They don’t look like they’re brothers. My boys have the same mom and dad. They are not the same.’: Mom urges us to take action against racism. ‘Show your kids there’s beauty in their differences’
“I live in white suburbia. There will come a day when I have to explain to my kids why they are being treated differently than their friends or even each other. When they grow up and ask me what I did to effect change, I hope they’ll be proud of my response.”
‘My son was gone a little too long on his bike, and I worried about his life. My husband walked out to protect and serve during riots, and I worried about his too.’: Police wife, mom to bi-racial family urges ‘advocate for them both’
“Two of the humans who I love more than they could ever fathom, I have to worry about them dying for no reason other than the color of their skin or the badge on their shirt. My heart is in pieces.”
‘Did you have ALL these kids with the same woman?’ He is a loving, faithful husband, but he is not treated like everyone else.’: Woman in interracial relationship urges ‘color exists, and so does racism’
“He’s avoided walking down grocery aisles. People call him Obama because he’s very well spoken…for a black man. He’s been told, ‘Our entrees start at $50,’ as we walked into an upscale restaurant. He’s listened to heinous racial slurs casually dropped. But don’t worry, they apologized afterwards. They would never want to offend him.”
‘Because of autism, my daughter doesn’t know her beautiful brown skin is a threat in this world.’: Mom to daughter with autism says ‘I must worry about protecting her’
“Because of autism, I don’t have to explain the growing list of hashtags. Because of autism, I must worry about protecting my nonverbal child from authorities who don’t understand she will not comprehend or obey verbal orders.”
