I am a mixed child.
My mother is French.
I love and am proud of my European heritage.
My father is Moroccan.
I love and am proud of my African heritage.
Up until recently, I had never said that last sentence.
These past months, I’ve had to sit with myself and get real about certain of my ideas and actions. Both the conscious and subconscious ones.
The deeper I dove into self-reflection, the more painfully apparent my internalized racism appeared. I began to see the ugly truth behind the why’s and how’s of this insidious package.
For most of my formative years — 10 to 23 years old — I shaped myself in:
- a conservative, predominantly white town in France;
- a joint business school between England and my hometown;
- a corporate setting in Luxembourg.
In these containers, my core belief was:
“the more white I can pass as, the more safe, more accepted I will be.”
And so I molded my identity and behavior to get closer to my whiteness.
I’ve listed below some specific examples of how that belief translated into my daily life.
*non-exhaustive list
Before you continue:
I am not sharing these examples for pity points.
I love and am proud of my African heritage.
Black is beautiful. It’s not just a movement. It’s a truth.
The behaviors below all stemmed from the illusion that there is a racial hierarchy, dominated by whiteness.
I’m sharing in hope that through concrete examples of my day-to-day reality, others can better understand how pervasive internalised racism is.
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APPEARANCE
- I did not wear lipstick.
I worried it drew attention to my full lips and made them look bigger. - I did not style or wear accessories in my curly hair (braids, scarves, pins, etc…)
I worried it drew attention and made my hair look voluminous. - I straightened any strand of hair that is frizzy.
But I kept the defined curls. Those are the “good kind”, they look exotic. - I did not wear colorful patterns or textures.
I considered solid, mainstream tones would draw less attention. - I did not wear products that had coconut or cocoa perfumes.
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DATING / RELATIONSHIPS
- I didn’t tell my friends when/if I was interested in a black male.
I did not wants others to mentally associate me to a black partner. - I limited my pool of romantic interest to white, light-eyed men.
- When I was rejected by white partners, I directly assumed it was due to my Moroccan origins.
- When I dated white partners, an inner voice constantly told me I was being chosen only for my exoticism.
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MISCELLANEOUS
- When people asked me if I came from Greece, Spain or Brazil, I felt an “internal win”.
I was relieved to be associated to non-African countries. - I deeply envied my sister for her straight sleek hair and paler skin.
Members of my family would comment that she looked “more kept together” and “European”. - A few times, in specific contexts, I lied about my father’s origins and said he was only half-Moroccan.
I believed that somehow diluted our African roots. - I vehemently separated home-life and school-life.
I did not want my peers to know the details of living in a multi-cultural household.
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Nowadays, I look back on these behaviors with a soft heart.
My old self was choosing her actions based on what she thought was safe at the time.
Since my return to the US, I have seen Black culture being celebrated in my inner circles, despite it’s constant global oppression. This new environment has helped me grow and love my African roots more and more every day.
Layering off the years of conditioning, insecurities, and internalized racism is a work-in-progress.
Dismantling racism is not an overnight feat.
As for any movement of change, the journey starts within us.
We must each dive deep into our behaviors and beliefs, with a critical lens. Once we identify our shadows, we can consciously begin to change them.
Final words of wisdom, from Lao Tzu:
Watch your thoughts, they become your words;
watch your words, they become your actions;
watch your actions, they become your habits;
watch your habits, they become your character;
watch your character, it becomes your destiny.