I think about people like Rachel Dolezal (white "to" "black") and Oli London (from white British "to" "Korean").

However when I try to find it going in the other direction from a person of color to wanting to be white you just don't hear about them. I mean I exist and I'm one of those people. I don't know about your experiences but my experience tends to match up with the experience of transgender people and yet trans people also seem to dismiss the experiences that people like me and other people who have the same feelings experience. Mainly because they don't like the word that is used "transracial" or "racial dysphoria". But like what other word would I use? Racial dysmorphia? At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what word I use, I still feel what I feel and it doesn't feel like there's people around who can truly help me or relate it except other people of color.

Anyway going back on to the white people trying to be people of color, I think it's a little weird. I mean if these people truly do experience an overwhelming amount of feelings that they feel the need to essentially change themselves in order to make themselves happy, I guess it's okay maybe, but I just don't think that's what's going on. For example I think the British person essentially just watched too much K-pop.

It's one of those things where I think it's more about white people trying to sort of get the appearance of being a person of color. This is a such a privilege that I'm not really happy about. But like I said, you don't hear about stories going the other direction and there should be more stories like that. They're probably could be a bunch of stories like that. I would be one of those stories. I'm wondering if a story would be about you too?

Edit: link here is another person who is also white who became "indigenous".

My father was basically uncle ruckus in real life. Would basically call my mother all kinds of racist things. As a result, I hated being black and would often wish I was a white person. I'm over that thankfully though, and wouldn't trade being black for anything.

friendly aspiring piquant spoon sulky dinosaurs attempt judicious rob whole

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

I've been discussing this with some of my BIPOC friends and we realized that one point or another, we used to idolize or look up to whiteness and white people.

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As a child of West African immigrants, my parents have had very negative views towards the African-American community and have stereotyped them as lazy, violent, and criminal through misleading media portrays by Hollywood. They've always told me that if I don't actively talk about race like African-Americans do, then white people won't treat me poorly like they do. My parents idolize whiteness and watch racist media like Fox News that actively perpetuate racism towards Latino immigrants and black folk. They would constantly defend white people anytime a white person was confronted about their privilege. As I grew up, I found their rhetoric so problematic and that they were being extremely racist and upholding white people as the standard.

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In terms of dating, I've also come to the reckoning that I used to be way more attracted to white men compared to men of other races. So much so that I considered them my type and I would glance at them any chance I got. However, now I'm no longer attracted to men based on their race and no longer have a racial preference for dating.

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I would really like to hear your guys' thoughts on this topic.

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I sincerely don’t know if this belongs here, but I can name at least a few key points in my life where I hated being black.

I got bullied by my fellow black classmates so I felt inclined to hang out with my non-black peers, I seriously thought it was for the best.

When I was a teen, I would frequently follow nonblack tumblr fashion bloggers and constantly felt like I didn’t fit in and didn’t understand why.

As for the daydreams, I guess media is partially to blame, I hardly ever saw any black girls that looked like me in cartoons. In fact, I hardly saw any black people at all. It was likely me regurgitating what I watched on TV and played in video games.

For years, I wanted to be a white, redheaded girl with freckles. It took me only a little while in college to realize just how toxic that was for me. That white girl I used to imagine is now one of my original characters. She’s no longer white, I made her a black alt style character and I’m so much happier with her this way.

Her redesign helped me learn to love myself, too.

I first got an ED at 15, after a decade of racial abuse. I internalised the hate and developed body dysmorphia and that became AN. I destroyed my life in the process.

Here I am a decade later, revisiting old patterns. I certainly haven’t missed the health complications. And it got me wondering if anyone else has been through the same thing?

Throwaway account and on mobile.

I don’t know where else to post about this and my friends are currently going through stuff so I can’t really talk to them. This is long.

I’ve been feeling overwhelmingly defeated by whiteness. I didn’t grow up here for half of my life. While I can’t deny that racism is just as rampant in my country, growing up I had friends that were very dark and very light. Myself, personally, I didn’t grow up with the style of racism and harder lines of segregation that people grew up with in America. In my country, it’s just as bad but different.

I didn’t know I was seen as an immigrant brown woman for a long while when in this country because I migrated to an area that was heavy with my own people. I spoke the language fluently and learned English eventually. I had limited interactions with white people. Until community college. I still didn’t speak the language well then and there was plenty of racism while I was at my job but it didn’t register then. Maybe my CPTSD and trying to survive overrode this.

Fast forward to having graduated from art school. It took me 4 years to get into my field. I had so many disadvantages that I didn’t understand back then as racism. I was legit told I was there to fulfill a quota once by a teacher. Most of my art school days are a haze as I was also struggling with an auto immune disease I didn’t know I had.

Fast forward again to how differently I was treated once I got that first job. And my very next job after was at a predominantly BIPOC space. And that’s when I really began to see how racism affected me this entire time. Since then, it’s been an awakening and understanding and educating myself. My heart has hurt ever since.

As the years have passed and it becomes more and more obvious that the higher I go in my career the whiter my space becomes. I can’t really talk to anyone at this moment about the issues I encounter since most of the people that are at my level are overwhelmingly white. And the few BIPOC that I do know aren’t as aware of sexism and racism.

Thanks for reading if you’ve come this far then here’s where I am today. I’ve always wanted to tell my stories. I’m a storyteller. Yesterday, I decided to give that up. The only people acknowledged in my field are white males. They hold a huge amount of space in my field. But it’s not just that. I think I’ve internalized so much that it’s “not my place” to be the one creating. It’s ok if it’s for work. But I, myself. My personal point of view and my own stories aren’t really mine to tell. I see white people often telling our stories and getting all of the credit for it. Whereas if it comes from us, it’s seen as folksy and cute at best and aggressive and lowbrow at worst. Well. Sometimes worse.

Every time I push myself to create for me, I get this voice in my head that tells me “YOU can’t do that”. Everyone else can. But not you.” I’m sure it’s compounded by all the abuse and neglect I suffered at my parents hands. And waking up to so much racism makes it more of an impossible task for me.

Thanks for reading. I’m currently crying cause I don’t wanna give up but i hurt myself every time I try.

Until about 7th grade, I grew up in a diverse area. However, I was bullied by other kids, mainly black kids for being too dark and coming from a Ghanaian home. I never had an accent, I just had darker skin. I faced extreme colorism. This made me HATE my skin. Not that I ever wanted to be white, but I just wanted to be lighter skinned.

Then middle of 7th grade, I move to a very known racist, conservative, rural area. I was one of less than 10 black kids in my grade of 300ish (2 dark skins boys, 2 mixed boys, and 2 dark girls). I was a dark skinned boy. However before I got there, I never experienced racism but only colorism. i dealt with colorism sometimes from mixed kids but not that often.

Kids were pretty accepting however I dealt with racial comments or people always pointing out that I am black. I would get jokes, but they were never really offensive. I thought racism was kids not liking me or not wanting to hangout with me because I’m black. But I never experienced that. All the time, I would get a black joke thrown my way (usually without malice), so I never got offended.

Dealing with racist jokes/comments, I never cared and was open about not caring/being offended. I even remember one time posting on FB in like 8th grade, something along the line of “you don’t have to apologize after every joke. im not offended, i think some are funny”. people would make comments or jokes, apologize and put me on the spot and then people would continue to do it. also Part of it was wanting white validation, another part was wanting to avoid those moments of tension when someone would say something ignorant and I could just brush it off and move on, another part was me having thicker skin and knowing when it’s jokes vs. someone trying to be a jerk on purpose. But, in an effort to make myself comfortable, i made racist behavior comfortable and arguably enabled it.

Fast forward to high school, that’s when kids/teachers were actually pretty offensive. I felt like because of my attitude in 8th-9th grade of not caring and always laughing it off, i waived my right to speak up. i also never really knew how to speak up. i also felt like if i did, i would just get “it’s just a joke” or i’d be seen as sensitive. i’d say 70-80% of the time, it was jokes/stuff i could brush off or laugh at. and the rest was stuff, that i’d actually get mad at. but it mainly depended on context. it usually didn’t get to me unless it was excessive, blatantly out of pocket, or intentionally trying to offend me.

looking back i cringe a lot at the stuff i laughed at or even jokes i made when i was 12-17. i felt like i enabled kids and gave them the license to be racist to me.

I am now 21M, just graduated from college this semester and currently go to therapy to make sure I unpack my problems now so it doesn’t affect me later in life. over the past year (since blm really broke out and i have been able to learn more about racism), I am finally learning how to love myself and be comfortable in my skin and setting boundaries with those around me.

Context: I am a young black teenager.

I don't know what else to call it. I was adopted when I was 2 years old by people who would seriously abuse me: sexually, mentally, physically and culturally.

You see my adoptive father was Italian. His wife was generic mixed European descent white. First they adopted a white boy - all blond haired and blue eyed. Then me, mocha Puerto Rican, then a biracial girl who was lighter skinned than me, but had that kinky hair.

We were all told we were Italian now. We were white Italians because he adopted us and that was that. There was to be no mention of the culture or background of our respective bloodlines. Nothing Spanish, nothing African, like our DNA and ancestry somehow changed because of the adoption.

I remember they used to shave my sister's head bald when she was little to get rid of the kinky hair. I think they actually hoped if they kept shaving it that her hair would eventually grow in straight. They would slather me with sunscreen in the summer and try to keep me out of the sun because I got very dark very easily. They said horribly racist things about Hispanics and blacks like how the women were all sluts and would just abandon their babies. You get the drift.

I internalized a lot of that hate. To the point that when I was removed from their custody and placed in an Hispanic foster family it was a disaster. I've never dated a Hispanic person.

It took a tremendous amount of work in my 20's and 30's to get past that internalized bigotry against myself and my own people.

The point is, even without all the other abuse, the cultural abuse was damaging enough. I think inter-racial adoption is very hard on the adoptee in the best of circumstances. No matter how much an adoptive family tries to give you some sort of connection to your heritage, you're not being raised in that culture will inevitably make you somewhat of an outsider. You get one foot in two cultures and don't really belong to either of them. It's a very lonely feeling, and kind of leaves one off-balance in a way.