Forum: New here

Posted in The Multiracial Activist Forum and Chat by JameyTravis:

I am having a great deal of difficulty finding reading on this topic. My lineages include White, Cherokee and Black.

At what point can I embrace the heritages I did not get to be made aware of due to my families’ disconnection?

Generationally, they were in Georgia, then Arkansas and Oklahoma, Texas and California (where I am from) — they were part of the re-education boarding school in Texas in the late 1800s.

Growing up in California, we identified as white and partly Native American (although at that time we had no idea what). There are some traits that show some different heritage, so we weren’t entirely sure… I have spent two years researching my lineages and learned a lot.

I have a BA in Religious Studies and am a political advocate/activist. As such, I recognize this is about the edge of my comfort level– that I won’t be able to be any part of the conversations regarding racism because I don’t look the part. I have serious reservations about expressing anything publicly at all.

I have studied many of the practices of those I share the lineages with, but not the cultural upbringing. I have longed to practice these things myself– and out of a strange sense of fear of being misunderstood, I have not done so.

I recognize the issue of cultural appropriation and white colonization– but in me is also a victim of identity erasure and cultural genocide. As someone wholly cut off from traditions, how can I approach those I am otherwise related to; how can I take on these parts of my own heritage?

I want to embrace and value these parts of me. I need to have this conversation and there are seriously few people I trust to have it with because of the polarization on both sides– even within my family. And I have been looking for reading–

Please be kind to me. I am a little uncertain of this also….but it seems like I found someone who may understand??

3/5/21 7:47 PM