I’m Biracial, But Rejected My Blackness For Years. Here’s Why I Stopped Passing For White.

By Eleanor Beaton, Huff Post Guest Writer

“Unknowingly, I started to reject all of the parts of myself that were Black.”

The school bus screeched to a halt. My mother, a Black Fijian woman who proudly embraced her natural ’fro, was waiting for me at the bus stop.

“Bye, n***a,” another kid said loudly, as I got up from my seat.

My stomach sank and I put my head down as I hurriedly got off the bus. I didn’t know what that word meant, but I knew it was something I should be ashamed of.

It was 1984 in rural Nova Scotia and I was just 5 years old.

As an adult, due to my mixed heritage, many people describe me as “white-appearing” or racially ambiguous. But in Nova Scotia in the 1980s — with my tanned skin and thick curly hair in a sea of whiteness — I was reminded on a daily basis that I was different. I was an other. No matter how hard I tried, I would never blend in.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. That day on the school bus taught me that Black is dangerous. My 5-year-old brain made the link to my mother. Maybe if I distanced myself from her, I would be safer?

Follow the author’s journey to accepting her own blackness.

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