Who I am - June Marie Davis

Coming from a single parent home my mother made it her business not to live off government assistance.  Back in the day it was a common stereotype for Latinos and Blacks living in urban areas to be on welfare.  My mother worked two jobs to give my brother and me a roof over our heads and have food in the fridge.   As a child, I never thought anything of skin color until one day my mother dropped me off at school and I was asked if I was adopted.  I laughed it off and said, no.  I was told that I had to be adopted because my mother is white and I am black.  It was that day that I became familiar with the word race. 

I am bi-racial, my mother is Puerto Rican and my father is African American.  Growing up I was never made to feel different, but outside of home I was.  It was also very relevant to me that I was not part of the “norm” because the shows I watched on television did not resemble my family.  I watched shows like, The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, Family Matters, Family Ties and Full House (http://classic-tv.com/80s-shows/). None of these shows pertained to my lifestyle, but you had shows like, Different Strokes and Webster, which were about white families adopting black children; yet that wasn’t me either.  The media I consumed growing up made me feel like I didn’t belong; that I was not “normal”.  I didn’t grow up in a two parent household; I grew up in the projects and I wasn’t adopted.  So who am I…I’m me and I love that I am.