Growing up, even as a multi-racial individual, I was raised by and brought up as a Black woman. It didn’t matter that my father was Mexican American, what mattered to those who raised me was that I was well aware and socially informed of my Blackness. In my family, I have family members of all shades of Blackness, even cousins who are red-heads, and same as me, they were brought up with pride in their Blackness. In my family bubble, there was no privilege nor no colorism nor favoritism, we were all equally valued and loved growing up and honestly, I couldn’t have asked for better familial circumstances. However, as I began to grow older and attend school and enter social circles, the forefront of my identity became less of the Blackness and culture I was raised to be so proud of and more about my privileges, given my ambiguity and social capital in the world and Black communities.

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