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.
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'
It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.
I understand if everyone looking at me is seeing a Jew and seeing me as a kind of 'other.' But I can't be expected to see myself that way. That is, to me, Jewish is the normal way to be; it's not a type of being.
I've always known exactly who I am. I was a girl trapped in a boy's body.
The truth is, for me, when I was a young black girl who knew I was different, was watching TV, I would always be staring at the TV set looking for myself, and I didn't see me. And when you don't see yourself, you start to think that you don't matter, or you start to think that something is wrong with you.
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