them uncomfortable. I had always loathed the superiority complex some mixed girls toted around like crowns. I could not stand it when Black girls pontificated about their trace percentages of Native American blood as a means of separating themselves from their own African lineage. Rather than heeding the urge to conform or shrink as a response to being “othered”—like I did at that sleepover with my White friends, and again at that college party—I saw the power in embracing all of what it means to be Black in America. This was precisely what my mom had been instilling in me since preschool. But
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