1st Place, Diversity Coverage
2022-23, Division 4, News Writing
By Izzie Jacob
The Communicator Magazine
Ann Arbor Community HS
When you’re multiracial, simply existing is walking a tightrope between the oppressed and the oppressor.
Ela Khasnabis-Upton has felt this pressure all her life. A freshman at Washtenaw International High School, Knasnabis-Upton is half-Indian, half-white. She identifies as biracial and remembers becoming aware of this identity as early as first grade.
“When I went to a new school I remember some of the other kids and parents would ask me if I was adopted, because I didn’t look like either my mom or dad,” Khasna- bis-Upton said.
She would often get comments from her peers in elementary school like, “Why is your skin color different from your mother’s?”
This prompted a rude awakening in Khasnabis-Upton’s life that forced her to think about identity at an early age, which left her confused.
“I was almost separated from my mother and father because I looked different,” Khasnabis-Upton. “It was as if we weren’t what a ‘real family’ in America is supposed to look like. I think it has to do with the fact that interracial families have only legally existed since the 1960s.”
The landmark case Loving v. Virginia was a monumental civil rights case that legalized interracial marriage and stripped previous “racial integrity laws’’ in Virginia which made interracial marriage illegal. According to an article from history.com, “The Lovings appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that so-called ‘anti-miscegenation’ statutes were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.”
Interracial families have been legal for less than 70 years. How normalized can interracial families in American society be if they’ve only been granted the legal right to exist for a single generation?
“Our country was founded on segregation,” said Khasnabis-Upton. “Being multiracial, you’re existing on the lines of oppression. The whole goal of segregation is to keep races separate and when you’re multiracial, you’re walking the borderline between that and I think that’s very powerful.”
Embracing all sides of her identity is something Khasnabis-Upton gradually learned to do. But she finds herself leaning towards one side more than the other due to the ways she is often perceived.
“The world perceives me when I’m in spaces that are majority white like an outsider. This is because I present differently than the other people in the room. I think because of that I fall subject to certain forms of harm. I also think that there’s a certain privilege to it as well, that I try to be aware of as much as I can, because I have a lighter skin tone for example. When I walk into a space I car- ry that with me like having those traits. And I think that gives me certain privileges in certain spaces,” Khasnabis-Upton said. “Both things can exist. I still fall subject to the harm as a Brown woman, but I also have certain privileges as well in the way that I look.”
Khasnabis-Upton makes it a point to identify with all of herself instead of individual parts.
“Society pushes us to choose either side, we’re forced to fit into one box,” Khasnabis-Upton. “I think that if you can grow from that feeling of having to fit in, then you can grow and bend the boundaries of race.”
Being forced to reckon with your identity at a young age is a common pattern among multiracial kids. Sadie Todd knows this familiar feeling from staring at the fine print on medical forms at the doctor’s office, checking off the boxes – instead of box – for the races she identifies with.
Todd is a sophomore at Community High School and identifies as Jamaican, Chinese and white. Growing up, Todd realized that she didn’t look like the other people around her. She grew up in pre-dominantly white communities, which made her feel like she stood out among the crowd. When fill- ing out medical forms, Todd never knew what to check for her race be- cause she wasn’t just one.
“My entire life I have not looked like everyone else,” Todd said. “Nobody quite looks like me. I didn’t quite match up with anyone.”
In elementary school, Todd would identify herself as white. When she was younger she was un- able to understand her peers’ questions about the way she looked and found that saying she was white was the easiest default answer.
Growing up, Todd could tell the difference between how people treated her mother and father.
“When I’m with my mom, I often feel more comfortable with her because I look more like her,” Todd said. “When I’m with my mom, people still treat her differently… they will speak to her differently, in a condescending way and that’s due to the experience of being a woman and woman of color. It’s interesting to see the privilege my dad has.”
Todd often confronts the privilege that she has over other people of color because she feels as though she can be white-passing and how in some situations that can work to her advantage. “In the winter, when I’m pale, and straighten my hair and things like that, it makes me look more like the description of someone who’s white,” Todd said. “Then I get some more of those privileges and people will treat me differently. I think that’s interesting.”
Todd and Khasnabis-Upton still have the discomfort of being multi- racial, but have now reframed their identity to view it as empowering, as proof that the systems that hold us back were meant to be broken. “You couldn’t separate the races that I come from,” Khasnabis-Upton said. “In order to separate that you would have to fully untangle my DNA. It’s very beautiful that the ethnicities, races and communities that I come from are inseparable within me. We are living proof that race is a social construct and that we can exist without race and that it’s only limiting us from every- thing that we can become.”
NW-16. Diversity Coverage
This story tells about the lifestyles, challenges and potential of those from a diverse background. It will cover not just the plight of the subjects, but may also look at how subjects deal with their diverse backgrounds and how diverse backgrounds are dealt with by others. The term “diverse” is not limited to ethnicity and may focus on a wide range of subjects, depending on the author’s story angle. Submit a PDF of the print page(s) on which the story was published or the URL to the story on an online news site.
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Topic relevant to the school or students and reflects lifestyles, challenges and potentials of those from a diverse background
- Sharp, attention-getting lead grabs reader and arouses curiosity
- Shows thorough reporting skills through research and interviewing
- Effective use of facts/quotes from both primary and secondary sources
- Balanced, fair and sensitive presentation
- Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly
- Proper diction/grammar; use of third person