Author: Emily Parada

A Point of View: Half White 

No one has ever asked me if I am half white. I’ve been asked if I am half Black or if I am Spanish. I’ve been asked “What are you?” and “What are you mixed with?” more times than I’ve been asked what my name is. There are so many issues with these questions and the circumstances in which they were asked, but the most unsettling for me were the underlying implications: the clearly defined yet unspoken understanding that there was probably white in me somewhere, but that color, that half, part, and piece of me, wasn’t the one that needed an explanation. 

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Gen Z and Y on D&I: Empowering Myself to Confront Modern-Day Racism

I am adopted and was raised in a small town by my adoptive family. My enduring, supportive and loving family, worked hard to provide me with the social and emotional tools required to build a really good life. Even though my adoptee-brain makes it difficult for me to process why someone would choose to love me, the continued reassurance, backed by constant action, gave me extra bursts of strength when I needed them most. As I grew older, I began to realize that the way I was raised stirred up a lot of turmoil inside of people who couldn’t stomach the idea of a biracial person living what they deemed to be a “white” life. 

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Gen Z and Y on D&I: Navigating Unintentional Ignorance vs. Blatant Racism as a Biracial Person

Being biracial comes with a lot of warning labels — but unfortunately, no instruction manual. As a biracial adoptee, more layers of uncertainty are added to this uneven terrain. It wasn’t until around the fourth grade that I felt like, overnight, I morphed into the mixed elephant in the room, and I became fully aware of how loudly my appearance was speaking for me before I ever actually spoke.

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Racial Justice at Work book cover

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Cover of the book We Can't Talk about That at Work (Second Edition) by Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N Reese

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