When you are in the public eye as a person of color, you are given very little room to mess up.
Yara ShahidiRead
My mama is African American and from Wisconsin. My baba was born in Iran. My parents have stressed the idea of creating your own path, and creating your own identity is part of that. That's why embracing these two cultures is important to me.
Interpretation
Embracing multiple cultures helps shape one's identity and fosters individuality.
This quote by Yara Shahidi highlights the importance of cultural heritage and individuality. It reflects her experiences of growing up in a multicultural environment and emphasizes that creating one's own path involves recognizing and valuing different aspects of one's background. By embracing both her African American and Iranian heritage, Shahidi illustrates how diverse influences can contribute to a strong sense of identity.
In practice
In a speech about diversity at a school event.
When you are in the public eye as a person of color, you are given very little room to mess up.
I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.
When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.
My mixed-race background made me a broad person, able to relate to different cultures. But any woman of colour, even a mixed colour, is seen as black in America. So that's how I regard myself.
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
American? Indian? I don't know what these words mean. In Italy, it is all about blood, family, where you come from. I'm asked where I am from. I'm from nowhere; I always was, but now I am happy knowing it.
I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible.
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