Our Human Family

​Our Human Family celebrates the inherent value of all human beings by fostering conversations on…

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Blackness and Whiteness

Emily Cashour
Our Human Family
Published in
10 min readMay 7, 2019

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The author and her mother.

Growing up, I was unaccustomed to discussions about race. For most of my life, the color of my skin was something simple, a fact that became more or less apparent alongside the changing seasons. When it started to become impossible to ignore, as a young child, I pushed to downplay my color difference. I sat in the shade with my white cousins at the beach to prevent the sun from reaching me, complained with a gentle fierceness each time my mother took me to get my hair braided, said quiet “thank-yous” with no further explanation to people who gleefully oohed and ahhed at my beautiful tan.

As a teenager, I embraced wholeheartedly the idea of tan equaling beautiful, at least so far as in the context of tan being simply a new shade of whiteness, rather than brownness. I was a tan white person. At least, that is what everyone in my town assumed me to be, and rather than fight the simplicity of that label, I allowed it to begin defining me.

My mom, a white woman and single mother, was quiet during these years. If I had questions, she would answer them willingly, but quite honestly, I rarely ever asked her anything. Sometimes, when she took me to Baltimore, we drove home the long way, observing dilapidated neighborhoods and houses with wooden boards with holes in them where…

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Our Human Family
Our Human Family

Published in Our Human Family

​Our Human Family celebrates the inherent value of all human beings by fostering conversations on racial equity, allyship, inclusion, antiracism, and equality.

Emily Cashour
Emily Cashour

Written by Emily Cashour

27 year old writer & graduate student, passionate about storytelling as a great equalizer. Email:egcashour@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!!

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