Impetus

My life has been injected with influence from many sources. This blog is a codification of my experiences - a kind of explanation for myself. 

I grew up in the Caribbean: I am a Grenadian - a West Indian. Culturally, ethnically, that is my reference point. With light skin growing up in Grenada I felt that nothing told less about me than the color of my skin or the texture of my hair. My identity has never been in sync with my racial heritage. As a Grenadian I felt the need to constantly assert my 'Grenadian-ness'. Now, living in the USA where my racial heritage is in the majority, my identity is never called into question - until I again assert my ethnic heritage as a West Indian. 

Race vs. Ethnicity. This has been a defining scenario in my life. Without going too in depth, here is my definition of each. Race is a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important. We don't have a separation in race for example between red haired, green eyed, people from blonde haired, blue eyed, people. We do however make a racial separation between people with tightly curled hair and darker skin tone and straight haired people with lighter skin tone. The biological traits that separate races are subjective selections of a society and in this way are conceptual constructions.

Ethnicity has more to do with a shared cultural heritage. Because my cultural reference point is West Indian, and because Grenada is my home in this world, my ethnicity is Grenadian. Although being Grenadian is often times confused with being black I assert that even though my racial heritage is of European descent, my ethnic heritage is rooted in the West Indies. 

That having been said,  I can assert once again, I am not my skin.