Multi-Racial Heritage Month

I didn’t watch Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle. I didn’t know anything about it until after it aired. But that’s when I started to see hate speech about biracial people circulating across social media. If you’ve ever heard me speak, you’ve probably heard me say that I identify as a half-black, half-Jewish lesbian. When I say that, usually people laugh. To lots of Americans, my identity is a joke. It’s funny. Imagine a woman standing on a stage saying she’s a half-Irish, half-British lesbian. Do you think her identity would elicit a laugh?

The first time I said it, I didn’t expect the laughter. Honestly, I was offended by it. But as a half-black, half-Jewish lesbian, I am CONSTANTLY offended. I have black family members who make ignorant comments about white people. When I was little, I tried to defend my white father. Eventually, I let go of the habit.

I had an opposite experience in my white family. We never acknowledged my blackness. The silence was deafening. I came to learn that my white family was openly racist before I was born. It took them 9 years to accept that my father had married a black woman and had a biracial child. Through a conversation with my mom for a Spirit Uncensored event, I’d learned that his family wrote him off as dead by sitting shiva and mourning him.

This is just the challenge that came from my family. I could write a book about the challenges I faced by being biracial in my neighborhood, at school, work, in LGBT spaces that are designated as safe spaces for people of all races, my spiritual community, and virtually every space I occupy. The combination of all my identities is EXHAUSTING. 

So, I learned to deal with it. Since the Civil Rights Revolution began in 2020, dealing with it got a lot harder. The amount of hate speech I see from my family and close friends online is heartbreaking. Last year, it was so crippling that I couldn’t do my job effectively. I chose to leave my TV exec job to commit to healing my own trauma.

As part of my healing journey, I’ve been hosting conversations with friends and family about the Civil Rights Revolution through Spirit Uncensored. Our next Sunday Night Live event is made up of a panel of my multiracial friends to discuss our experience of our identities. Everyone is welcome to join the conversation on Zoom and streaming on Facebook, this Sunday, March 14th at 5p PT.