My Parents Made Me Think I Was White My Whole Life
This article was originally written in 2016.
I am probably black.
That statement in itself might look ridiculous to anyone who doesn't know me. To anyone who has stumbled across this article, seen a couple of my photos and thought:
Is this girl crazy?She's very clearly not white.
But for me, it sums up life as I've known it to be because for the longest time I grew up believing that I was.
White, that is.
And as unbelievable as that sounds, this went on for most of my life.
It wasn't until I lost my Dad last year, that I began to unravel the strange story that I'd grown up believing.
Because there's a lot about myself that I'm trying to find out, the story is still very much unravelling. But in order to stop myself from unravelling, I am traveling.
I'm growing through travel.
I am staying on the move.
Because my life was thrown into a permanent state of flux. So why not embrace the chaos?
I've decided to do it all on my own terms.
Growing Up White
Growing up, the word “black" was never used to describe me. I was never properly black, because I didn't talk black and I had zero cultural ties to anything considered black by the few black people I knew. To some, my features weren't black enough. To others, my very presence among white people all the time, was enough to negate my blackness.
But with a green-eyed Irish Mother, a white Father and a brother, who only had to step outside for 10 minutes to see his freckles multiply by the dozen, my own default was set as white, too.
My parents and I
I was told by my parents that I inherited my dark skin and curly hair from a distant ancestor on my Mother's side of the family.
And unless I probed my parents for answers (and I did so each and every time someone else reminded me that I just didn't look like I belonged) we just didn't talk about the likelihood of this story being true.
We got on with our lives. And I learned to bury my insecurities.
But as most non-white people will tell you, other people ask you justify your existence in a world where the default is set to white, ALL THE TIME.
So when my protective bubble of whiteness was popped with probing, persistent questions from strangers, it stung me because I never had an answer for why I was black.
On holiday as a kid, the reminders that I stood out like a sore thumb in a family where Factor 30+ sunscreen)was always a necessity in anything hotter than 64 F, always hit me like a freight train.
Was it possible I'd been adopted? How was I related to these people? Where did I get my hair from? Was I mixed, or Eritrean or just in denial?
Sometimes it was comical. Surrounded by white people on both sides of my family, I used to think my appearance in Christmas photos was funny. But I grew up never posting pictures of my family online because I cared too much what people thought.
My younger half-brother and me
When we visited my Mum's tiny town on the West coast of Ireland each year for my summer holidays (where you'd be hard-pushed to find anyone a shade up from milk-bottle-translucent, for miles) and I was told to “go back to Africa" — I wasn't particularly amused.
When aged seventeen, a teacher asked me in front of the whole class why I was marked down on the school system as “white-British" (not the smartest move from my parents, admittedly), I just didn't know what to say.
Looking back though, racial issues didn't take up too much of my headspace. But then again, that's because white people don't give too much thought to their whiteness unless they absolutely have to.
Unless they're forced to square up to their whiteness in the mirror and address how this sets them apart and above, other groups.
Not to mention, up until around the age of 16, I really believed I was white, too.
Not necessarily white in appearance, but more in the cultural, ethnic sense. I wasn't blind but I didn't believe I was black, either.
Mainly though, race was something I didn't think too much about unless other people asked me to explain myself.
My parents were ticking boxes that said I was “white-British," so to anyone who asked me, I was that too.
Luckily, I was surrounded with the kind of love from two parents that was so thick, so unwavering and so real, that sometimes I felt smothered by it. I never felt unloved. And I never felt like an outsider among the people that loved me.
But unfortunately, my family home was not a microcosm for the real world.
I did — and still do — get asked “where I'm from" around five times a month. I still don't know what to say.
On the rare occasions I heard ignorant friends or family members speak about blackness as an illness — as a concept that made people more threatening, or less attractive, or less palatable and then turned to me and said something like:
“Oh well, you're not black so it doesn't matter,"
or, “Yeah, but I'm not talking about you, am I?"
…that was alienating. THAT made me feel less than human. And so, I overcompensated. I grew louder and more confident than anyone else, because I felt I had no other option.
The Catalyst
But then two years ago my Father got really sick – and then last year he died. Like so many people who lose a parent from cancer, I found myself unable to function. My life and the life of my family was drained of colour. Things went grey, bleak, desolate.
I also felt extremely disconnected from who I was, or should I say, who I thought I was.
So when I reached rock bottom, I started to dig myself out. I started digging because my Father's death was the catalyst for change and I felt that I didn't have anything left to lose. Half of my story had died with him, after all.
And so I did a DNA test in Easter 2016 and discovered that I'd never actually been related to the fantastic, funny, blue-eyed man who raised me — in the biological sense, anyway.
There's some material online about how to put yourself together after losing a parent. But the manual into how not to implode when you realise that parent was never related to you in the first place?
That one's unchartered territory, unsurprisingly and the news hollowed me out from the inside.
When I found out via email one afternoon at work in London that half my family weren't actually related to me, that I wasn't able to call my Dad my own anymore and that I probably had a whole other life waiting for me in a not-so-distant universe, it nearly broke me.
I must have left around five dents in the walls in the house I grew up in, whilst screaming at my Mum for an explanation, which came about slowly and painfully when I begged for it.
My Mum doesn't know much about this man (who I'll never call a Father), other than the fact he was “dark" and spoke with an Irish accent.
So I'm also coming to terms with the fact that I may never have that missing piece of my ethnic jigsaw puzzle either.
And after 23 years of saying I was British/Irish and something else unknown, I don't really know what I am.
And more than anything, I would love to know WHERE my blackness comes from.
Travel and Identity
So to overcome all this; the death, the lies, the awkward conversations, the lack of closure over my heritage and the near-collective family silence that has ensued since I've told everyone the truth — I've decided to travel.
To some, it might look like I'm running away from a series of painful experiences back home. To me, I'm delving head-first, arms wide, legs akimbo into my great unknown (read: non-white spaces) to see how that's going to help me define my own identity.
Because after 23 years, I've decided that my identity is going to be on my terms.
Whilst “blackness" is something I felt I could never really lay claim to, I also know there is no one-size-fits-all approach to being black.
And if I don't want to identify as black, I guess I don't have to.
There's still a part of me that feels as if I'm denying my Father, though (the one that raised me) by exploring this unknown part of my heritage.
I'll never want to replace my Dad, but I also feel a bit guilty that all he did for me wasn't enough to quell this deep-rooted desire within me, to find out where I come from, ethnically.
But then again, doesn't everyone deserve to know that?
At the moment, I guess I still don't really consider myself any different to the person my parents raised me to be. But after 23 years of not knowing why I look the way I do and finding out all this crazy, weird information, I feel…a shift in mindset.
And I plan on doing a DNA test to shed some more light into where my ancestors may have come from.
To be raised white when you're black is to feel like you're in a permanent state of flux with your identity; it's chaotic and confusing and so, I've chosen to embrace the chaos.
Adapting to white and black company growing up means I can feel at home almost anywhere and at the moment, the journey is my home.
Traveling helps me find out more about where my ethnic origins lie. It's the obvious and only way to facilitate my journey of personal growth, so I'm not going to stop.
Right now, I'm traveling to find out who I am and where I come from.
I'm traveling to shape myself into the person I want to be.
And I'm traveling to find my own identity – whatever that is.
Because I think I'm (probably) black.
Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless (2021) and Black Girls Take World(2021) and the host of Audible's The Secrets In Us DNA podcast.
ItGirl 100 Honors Black Women Who Create Culture & Put On For Their Cities
As they say, create the change you want to see in this world, besties. That’s why xoNecole linked up with Hyundai for the inaugural ItGirl 100 List, a celebration of 100 Genzennial women who aren’t afraid to pull up their own seats to the table. Across regions and industries, these women embody the essence of discovering self-value through purpose, honey! They're fierce, they’re ultra-creative, and we know they make their cities proud.
VIEW THE FULL ITGIRL 100 LIST HERE.
Don’t forget to also check out the ItGirl Directory, featuring 50 Black-woman-owned marketing and branding agencies, photographers and videographers, publicists, and more.
THE ITGIRL MEMO
I. An ItGirl puts on for her city and masters her self-worth through purpose.
II. An ItGirl celebrates all the things that make her unique.
III. An ItGirl empowers others to become the best versions of themselves.
IV. An ItGirl leads by example, inspiring others through her actions and integrity.
V. An ItGirl paves the way for authenticity and diversity in all aspects of life.
VI. An ItGirl uses the power of her voice to advocate for positive change in the world.
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I think we all can agree that social media really is a double-edged sword. What I mean by that is there is just as much bad that can come out of it as good. At the end of the day, it really is about 1) having your own mind, 2) finding balance when it comes to how much time you spend online, and 3) doing your own research instead of taking random people’s opinions as the gospel (i.e., facts).
Gee, I wish more folks did all of this when it comes to if a man needs to have a large penis to sexually satisfy a woman (he does not) and if a woman who has had multiple sex partners will ultimately end up with a vagina that is too large for smaller penises to please her (a lie).
Science totally has my back on debunking both of those things (more on that in a bit). Know what else does? A particular type of sex method that is becoming more popular by the day. One that just might convince you to, as they used to say back in the day, focus less on the “size of the wave” and ride out the “motion of the ocean” instead.
It’s called shallowing. Here’s what it’s all about.
What Is Shallowing?
GiphyIf there’s one thing that I wish folks would say more thoroughly when it comes to women and orgasms, it’s that when it comes to75 percent of women not being able to orgasm from only intercourse, the accurate statement is they struggle with achieving a vaginal orgasm without the assistance of some type of clitoral stimulation. Yeah, we’ve really got to remember that very few things in this life are a complete monolith — orgasms included (check out “U-Spot Orgasm, Fantasy Orgasm & 6 Other Orgasms You Should Try Tonight”).
In fact, it was while I was reading up on pairing — a word that is used for when clitoral stimulation transpires during penetration — that I decided to do some deep-diving into shallowing (because it was mentioned inone of the articles that I read).And what is it? Shallowing is when a penis, finger, tongue, or sex toy of some sort is used in order to ever so slightly penetrate the vaginal opening of a woman.
And why is shallowing not just a current sex trend but something that every woman on this planet should try? It’s because of what I’ve said, more than once, on this platform: it focuses on the most sensitive part of a woman’s vagina, which isthe first two inches of her vaginal opening.
When the emphasis is placed there, not only does it increase your chances of experiencing “the big O,” but it can also build up anticipation, which can intensify your orgasms too — yes, shallowing can also be seen as a form of edging.
Another thing that’s cool about shallowing is — and it really and truly can’t be said enough — something that makes vaginal and blended orgasms easier to achieve for some women really has little to do with the size of a man’s package or even his technique; it’s straight up anatomy. Yep, the closer that a woman’s clitoris is to her vaginal opening, the easier it is for a penis to stimulate both. So, science makes it possible for vaginal orgasms to be easier for some women than others.
At the same time, shallowing can make it possible for more women who want to see what a vaginal orgasm actually feels like (because it’s easier for the head of the penis to stimulate the opening of the vagina while the shaft can rub up against your clitoris; based on the position that you are in, of course — the missionary with some pillows propped under the lower part of your back is ideal for this).
Now that you see what shallowing actually is, do you get why I said that penis size doesn’t matter when it comes to doing it — and getting the kind of orgasms that you want? Contrary to popular belief, your vagina is only around four inches. In fact, some health experts say that it ranges between 2-4”. Anything larger, your body literally has to stretch out to accommodate; this includes penises and babies. So, if your vagina is “making room” for more than four inches, why in the world do you think you need a 10-inch man? Yeah…exactly. It really is time to get over the silliness. The average penis continues to be 5.5”. Makes sense when you take it all in (no pun intended).
Aight, so now that you know what shallowing is all about, let me try and hard sell you on why it’s a sex technique that you should try as soon as tonight (if you possibly can).
1. It takes the pressure off of you and your partner.
I’ve been working with couples for almost 20 years at this point. This means that the topic of sex comes up quite a bit. And if there’s one thing that continues to be an issue is inconsistent orgasms (check out “Why Do Orgasms So Often Seem Like A ‘Hit-Or-Miss’ Experience For Women?”).
Listen, no matter how many articles you read or sex positions you try, if you’re anxious, stressed out, or overthinking, it’s gonna get in the way of you experiencing high peaks of pleasure on a consistent basis. Since shallowing is something that can easily be done even in foreplay (via fingering and/ororal sex) if you get that first “release” off, that makes it easier to just sit back and enjoy the ones that (hopefully) are to follow.
2. It teaches you more about your vagina.
A part of the reason why I keep repeating certain facts about vaginas in these articles is that it’s amazing how little certain things are discussed en masse — like the size of the vaginal tube. And since shallowing helps you to stimulate the nerve endings at the entrance of your va-jay-jay along with your G-spot (which is housed a little ways from your opening), shallowing is a great way to explore that area of your body as you figure out what truly works for you and…what doesn’t.
3. It’s the perfect merging of foreplay and intercourse.
When you really stop to think about it, shallowing is like the bridge between foreplay and intercourse because you can use so many different things to do it. So, if you want to experiment with a new sex toy or you want a bit more time to “warm up the engine” before full-on penetration begins, shallowing is one of the most sexually arousing compromises there is.
4. It can help to increase your partner’s stamina.
A few years back, I penned an article for the site entitled, “We’ve Got Some All-Natural Ways To Increase Stamina & Sensitivity.” Listen, even though I onceread a GQ article that said that over 60 percent of the people they polled were fine with intercourse lasting no longer than 5-10 minutes — that poll doesn’t speak for all of us, chile.
So, if you would like your man to build up to going longer, shallowing can help to make that happen. Since he’s barely putting beyond the tip in, he can learn how to be in you for longer periods of time without being, well, in you.
5. It helps you to appreciate whatever “package” he has.
Again — and it really can’t be said enough — if shallowing is all about exploring the mere entrance of your vagina, you don’t need a man with BDE (check out “BDE: Please Let The 'It Needs To Be Huge' Myth Go”) or honestly, even anything close to it.
I mean, even though, reportedly, the size that the average woman says gives her the most orgasms is eight inches — I bet those women have never really tried shallowing before. 10”, 8”, or the average 5.5” can certainly get the job done. And well.
6. It feels A-MAZ-ING.
Okay,so now that you know about shallowing, I promise that if you put the word into your favorite search engine, you’re either gonna see articles on golfing (LOL) or sex, especially as of late. That’s because more couples are trying it out and getting mind-blowing results from it. So, if you’re looking for something new to try, give shallowing a shot.
Hey, anything that’s designed to stimulate your most intense vaginal nerve endings has got to be something for the record books. I mean, how could it not be? Lawd.
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Featured image by Juan Moyano/Getty Images