Social Justice Works! Acceptance Speech

As promised, here's the transcript of Fanshen's acceptance speech for the Social Justice Works!  The Aaronson Fund Award for the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.

I was born in Washington, D.C., AKA Chocolate City, and lived there with my Jamaican father in a scraggly neighborhood at 14th & A.  In D.C., I passed for Black. 

My parents divorced and my brother and I moved with our White mom to a tiny town in Maine, population 800; Black population:  1 - if you count my half and my brother's half.  In Maine, I passed for White. 

Then my mom moved us to Cambridge and for the first time I could be both Black and White and more: an actress, a football player, and an activist.  I spent a blissful 8 years in Cambridge with other children whose parents were gay, or whose families were a complicated algorithm of trans-racial and cultural relationships.  We reveled in our progressive town and frolicked in our blended love.  And then I went to college.

In my first week of college I was confronted on my racial identity. After answering the question ‘What are you?’ with “I’m Jamaican, and Scottish and Blackfoot Indian and a woman and an actress and…” I was aggressively schooled on the One Drop Rule and pressured into adopting a Black militant identity that would inform my life choices for the next several years.

The pride I had in being Mixed in Cambridge was and is difficult to maintain in the rest of the world.  But it is important and it is right.  This is why I now dedicate my time and energy to letting people in interracial/cultural relationships, trans-racial/cultural adoptive families and those who are of Mixed heritage know that their story is important and complicated and does NOT have to fit into categories.  That is the purpose of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.

The Festival co-founder Heidi Durrow and I are thrilled to accept the first Social Justice Works!  The Aaronson Fund award.  Thank you so much.

Comments

[SolShine7]

Aww, that's a good speech! Cambridge is a really cool place.

[niptuckfan2007]

Nothing wrong with you at all!:) I remember seeing Rain Pryor back in the 80's at "Interlochen Music Camp". She was great and spoke to keep her head up like you. You're beautiful