by C.A. Davis \/ August 14th, 2017<\/p>\n
I remember, vividly, on a certain Martin Luther King Jr Day during my childhood\u2014back before schools regularly observed the federal holiday\u2014when my kindergarten teacher passed out coloring pages of Dr. King\u2019s portrait which the class was to fill in. Not a minute after I began coloring brother Martin\u2019s face the same color as my Afro-Filipino father\u2014brown\u2014I noticed all but two or three of my white classmates were coloring the page with black<\/em> crayons.<\/p>\n When I asked my friend why he was using that particular shade of crayola, he replied with an undisturbed confidence in what he felt was obvious.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause: he\u2019s black.\u201d<\/p>\n BLACK<\/strong>\u2014the same color as galvanized steel\u2014was and still is perceived by many people in America as one end of the spectrum of human diversity.<\/p>\n My world shifted at that very moment. I was just a child; I wasn\u2019t old enough to understand the vexed, traumatizing complexities of the American Identity and had yet to live through anger and frustration while developing \u201cRacial Impostor Syndrome<\/a>.\u201d And yet, I remember feeling a very distinct tug behind my sternum. A line was drawn that day between me and the rest of world with a black crayon.<\/p>\n Identity is a heavy word. Not because of the weight of information it presents about any given individual, but because of the magnitude of the exformation shed via the process of understanding oneself. As a child, the lines of separation between you and all the bits of…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n