"She Could Never Be Herself": Mother Spent Entire Life Hiding Her Mixed-Race Heritage And Her Daughter Wrote A Book About Her Journey
WELLNESS & FITNESS
"She Could Never Be Herself": Mother Spent Entire Life Hiding Her Mixed-Race Heritage And Her Daughter Wrote A Book About Her Journey
Racial and ethnical identity is a social construct that can affect many things in life ahead. Sometimes we even can’t realize social challenges people with different identities face. However, the idea of accepting your race is liberating!
Speaker Doyin Richards claims that it is important for your children to have a distinguished identity. The parents who raise their kids without acknowledging their racial individuality are making a colorblind generation.
He advised that children should be taught to be conscious of race. Doyin said:
This black kid or this Mexican kid has had a different life experience than I have as a white kid, and that’s what makes it great. I see their differences and I embrace those differences and want to learn to be a better and more productive citizen going forward.
Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock
This author and speaker promotes love toward one’s own roots and owning it. What a brilliant idea!
Mother spent her whole life hiding her mixed-race heritage
Meet Gail Lukasik! This woman found a mystery in her family history and wrote a book about her experience. She uncovered her mother’s secret. Her mom had kept her mixed-race heritage hidden from the world’s prying eyes her whole life. Even her husband was kept in dark of her truth that she was actually a black woman. Society viewed her as a white woman, but she never became her true self.
Gail noticed her mother’s suspicious habits — like sleeping with makeup on, not going out in the sun, and wearing gloves or hats to cover her skin. The woman decided to know more about her grandparents. She found records for her grandfather, Azemar Frederic and noticed something unusual. She recalled:
I saw something very curious. Behind every single Frederic name was the letter ‘B.’ And I had to go up to the head of that column and find out what it represented, and it said ‘race’.
She confronted her mother in 1997 and her reaction was surprising:
Promise me you will never tell anyone until after I die.
Her mother’s birth certificate gave away that she was colored and had an intermixed race. Gail had never met her grandparents or any of her late mother’s relatives. The mystery finally started to unravel further!
After her mom’s death in 2014, Gail wrote a book about her journey, ‘White Like Her.’
Gail met her relatives
Gail met a half-uncle and half-cousin, family members she only recently realized she had, by deliberately advertising on TV.
What an amazing story! We are so happy that Gail managed to find her roots. Do you agree that race is far beyond color and should be valued as part of a unique identity?