Racial Identity Examples

During all my life, I considered myself as a light skin person, and I was always told how lucky I was for not being too black. I acknowledged my father’s blackness but denied my mother heritage, attributed my light skin to her and her “whiteness”; and ignored the importance of my parents’ careers in the Afro-Peruvian music industry.
Regardless of what I thought, I was always treated like the black girl, and the color of my skin was something that affected the way people perceived me and treated me: while growing up, being black meant being vulnerable to discrimination, stereotyping and exclusion. Because of it, I took advantage of my light skin to be as white as I could be: I would often deny my ancestry, stay out of any activity that was associated with common stereotypes related to black people like doing sports or dancing; and always highlighted that I was not …show more content…
When I first entered to Communications school, I wanted to work in the advertising world. It was a very good idea to me to be able to create new ideas, to design strategies, develop my creativity, make good money, and live a comfortable life. However, I soon realized I would not belong in a world that helped to reproduce role models that defined beauty, success, and happiness that did not represent me. I understood that it would take more than one person to change old paradigms that ignored the great racial and ethnic diversity of Peruvians and decided to dedicate my academic life to development issues, mostly related to race, ethnicity, and gender, that affect my country.
Another important moment in my life happened when I became a photographer, since my work allowed me to get closer to the Afro-Peruvian cultural expressions that I rejected for years, that took a different meaning for me since I learnt the importance of arts and culture as resistance tools for a community that has been marginalized and ignored in my