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My mom is Chinese, with black hair and tan skin. My dad is white, with light eyes and skin the color of office paper. I, on the other hand, am an awkward midway point: dark skin, but not super dark; black hair, but not super black.
It used to be that I never thought about my mixed-race. But as I’ve gotten older, and now that I attend a predominantly white suburban school, race is constantly on my mind.
Recently, my classmates and I participated in a survey calculating our privilege, as a part of a diversity awareness workshop.
One question asked whether bandaids match my skin color. Are band aids supposed to, I wondered?
I looked around my English class and saw blond hair and pale skin.
At the end of the quiz, my white classmates had racked up scores suggesting they have three times as much privilege as I do.
I’m not white. I’m also not not-white. So it’s fuzzy figuring out exactly what privileges I benefit from.