Our True Colors

Double Feature Season 5 Finale: Our True Colors at Home

• Season 5 • Episode 521

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For the first time, I’m joined by my full family—my husband Chad and our kids, Christian and Ariana—in a double-length finale to close out Season 5 of Our True Colors.

We get into it all:

  • Identity, hair, and insecurities
  • What people assume about us as a couple
  • Family culture, music, and travel
  • How our kids make sense of their biracial identity
  • What it really means to belong

It’s funny, vulnerable, unscripted—and filled with moments we’ve never shared, even with each other.

Let's stay in touch!

Stuff to Explore and Learn More About:

Previous Episodes with Christian Gann/Aimee Amour:

If this is your first time with OTC, check out EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Continue the conversation on Instagram and find Season 5 episodes on YouTube.

Our True Colors is powered by True Culture Coaching & Consulting. Head to our website to find out how True Culture Coaching and Consulting can support you and your organization, and subscribe to our LinkedIn Newsletter, The Culture Clinic, for more great content. You can find us at truecultureconsulting.com where you can also contact us to schedule a free consultation.

Chad  0:00  
Hello, Shawna, 

Shawna  0:01  
Hi Chad.

Shawna  0:04  
Welcome to our true colors. 

Shawna  0:06  
Thank you for having me. Yeah, this is a conversation I've been wanting to have on the show for a while. We've tried before, yep, just

Chad  0:13  
didn't work out. It ended up in the round bin. Yeah, but this is

Shawna  0:17  
actually perfect, because it's the end of the season, and usually I have, like, a mixtape episode with my co host, or CO hosts. And this time, I thought it would be awesome to have my family. I've had lots of families on the show, people talking about their families on the show. I talk about my family on the show, but people haven't really met you. They've, they've met Christian they have, yeah, if they've been listening for a while, and if you haven't, I'll link his episodes in the show notes for folks to check them out if they haven't already. But this is this is great. So thank you for for coming to do this with me. What do you want to talk about? I want to talk about us. Okay? I want to talk about us and our family. All right. From my perspective, be a person that's racially ambiguous. From our kids perspective, be people who are not exactly racially ambiguous, but mixed race, but presenting not so ambiguously, which is interesting. And then we also have, you know, folks, come on and talk about being in interracial relationships and being

Chad  1:16  
Th ank you for having me. 

Chad  1:34  
mixed race. No, sir, no, none whatsoever. I think the what was it, the DNA sampling or 23andme Yeah, confirmed almost without a doubt, that I'm 100%

Shawna  1:49  
German. I think you were 99% white, yeah. But all the different ethnicities and geographies and things in there, I don't remember, you

Chad  1:59  
know what? It's ever evolving so it could continue to grow.

Shawna  2:03  
That is true, which is true for me too, because, you know, I did it my little 23andme disc thing that they show was pretty colorful. My ancestry comes from all over the world.

Chad  2:13  
Mine was not. I don't think I could get any more Caucasian.

Shawna  2:17  
No, I don't think so. Yeah, so, so let's talk. I figured we could start by just kind of telling the story of us a little bit the abbreviated version. Okay, we met in Alaska, where I'm from, and you were stationed there, yep, and we were both working at Barnes and Noble when we met. Yep. I thought you were cute.

Chad  2:39  
Well, I kind of thought you were cute too. But to the show's point, I thought to myself, I don't know what she is, so I was intrigued. Tell me

Shawna  2:50  
about that a little bit Sure. I'd like to know sort of what that was like, because I Well, can I give a little bit of background? And you jump in, of course, because it's your background. But you're from the Midwest, where it was pretty homogeneous, extreme diversity here and there, but pretty homogeneous most, no, mostly

Chad  3:09  
it was white. I was thinking about that the other day. I think there was one Asian kid in our school of roughly 1000 because it's roughly one. I can think of one. Wow. There's about 250, to 300 kids per class. And I can think of, I can remember one Asian kid and I think two black kids. That's it. That's all I could think of.

Shawna  3:35  
Pretty homogenous, yeah, of course, joining the military helps you kind of get into new spaces where you can experience a little bit more diversity, very much. So yeah, and you were stationed somewhere before coming to Alaska, but Alaska Anchorage specifically is pretty diverse too. So that's that's when we

Chad  3:54  
met. My first duty assignment was from Northern Illinois to Southern Illinois,

Shawna  4:00  
yes, but on a military base where you get a little bit

Chad  4:04  
of a slight, right? Yeah, I went, I mean, I went from living in corn fields to living on a base surrounded by corn fields so, you know, broadening perspectives.

Shawna  4:15  
So the point is, it's not like you had seen a lot of people of color and then people of varying colors. I assume that was probably confusing to you,

Chad  4:24  
absolutely not.

Shawna  4:26  
No. So talk about that a little bit. I You were like, Hmm, she's cute. I like that. He said, I was cute. You were, she's cute.

Chad  4:36  
You were and, and I don't know, I mean, there was just something intriguing to say the very least, because I was like, yeah, she's different, but not so different that it wasn't relatable. Does that make sense?

Shawna  4:56  
That is kind of one of the superpowers of people who are racial. Ambiguous whether they are multiracial or not. Is that, on one hand, folks tend to find people who look like me in a way, exotic or different enough to be intriguing novel. But also, and I'm going to use a word here, and I'm not going to say this was what was in your head, but palatable, meaning there's difference there, but it's enough to be interesting, but not too much for it to be scary, because it's an unknown,

Chad  5:29  
right? On the plate of cheeses, you are not the

Shawna  5:34  
I'm a cheese, okay, go ahead,

Chad  5:37  
in a world of monster and cheddar, you were a foray into blue cheese, but not quite yet into I stink. No, no, you. You're different. I'm just intriguing

Shawna  5:54  
blue cheese. I'm just kidding. Yeah, this is how we are, guys. Sorry,

Chad  5:59  
but not yet like the super exotic and unpalatable, stinky goat cheese that we tried in Austria.

Shawna  6:11  
You tricked me into trying. That was really bad. That was really bad. Well, I had grown up in a diverse area. Like I said, Anchorage is pretty diverse, and I'm so used to having so many different people around me. And before I met you, you know, I dated a few folks. They were of different races, you know. So I was used to interracial dating, so it was no thing I saw you, and I was like, He's cute, he's nice, he's polite, He's a gentleman. But there were some things as it was becoming very clear that we were getting serious and we were gonna try to make a thing of this that I realized, you know, when you're dating somebody and they're not familiar with your culture and things like that, when you're not so serious, you can hide some insecurities, right? Like you don't live with someone, all the stuff that kind of goes into my hair care routine, my skincare routine, just the way I live. Those things aren't necessarily out on display when you're just dating, but when you're like, Oh, I think I might share my life with this person. Suddenly it unlocked for me a whole bag of insecurities I didn't even know I had, like, he's gonna see my hair big, he's going to see all the products and meet my family and come eat our foods. And it was just very different for me in that case, like, you know, dating someone outside of my race was not a foreign concept. Deciding to spend my life with somebody outside of my race. Wow. Like I was so convinced that you were gonna wake up one day and be like, You know what? I'm just gonna go find the country girl with the long blonde braid and ride off into the sunset on her horses and her fair skin and blue eyes and all the things that I am not.

Chad  8:04  
Yeah, I'll be honest, I don't think that image of who I saw myself with ever kind of crossed my mind. But in all fairness, I don't think it was. But maybe a few months into our relationship before I fully realized, Oh, she's black, yeah, I don't think we ever had a conversation. I don't think we did either. I think probably when I finally met your mom and nanny was the first time, I was like, oh, nanny's my grandmother. Y'all, yeah. Then I was like, Ah, well, I'm still a little confused, but okay, yeah, that makes more sense now.

Shawna  8:49  
Yeah, because what's interesting is, I'm so used to people asking me that question, what are you what's your background, or whatever, but I don't think you ever did. I didn't. Nope, you were like, I'm just gonna see where this goes and the answer will reveal itself, yep, hmm. So when you found out what went through your mind, especially having grown up in such a homogenous place,

Chad  9:13  
well, in all fairness, I think when it like finally became a reality for me, it was probably at your nanny and granddad's, at your grandma and grandpa's house on a Sunday, and it was a little bit like if I was ready for a waiting pool, I got thrown into the deep sky, yeah, with artificially created waves and life preserver and all those things. And then I proceeded to have a nice plate of ribs and started to eat them with a fork and knife.

Shawna  9:59  
Yes, it's. Did my grandfather

Chad  10:01  
said, I don't even remember what he said. He said, Boy, you better pick up the room, put that fork down. But I was pretty

Chad  10:07  
sure it was like, What the hell is wrong with this guy?

Shawna  10:10  
Kind of, yeah, for those of you who have watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I liken our families coming together to that a little bit, because I feel like you're like, what? What's his name? Ian, you know his family, only child, very tough, small little table. You're the toast family. Yeah, my family is enormous, huge, boisterous. We have a lot of Spirit. I

Shawna  12:13  
s so, you know, we decided to get married, and then came the scary part of you had to tell your parents, because I had not met your parents. They were in a different state. I talked to them on the phone, and, you know, probably listening to me on the phone, they don't know what I look like. This is obviously before the days of cell phones and FaceTime and all that. And I was so nervous, because it was like, should I go? Should I not go? And you're like, I will go by myself. And I just thought, he's never gonna come back. He's ever gonna come back, you know, because you know they weren't all down with the whole interracial marriage thing. And so that was like unlocking the next level, like next level insecurity for me, and even though it wasn't the easiest, I'll never forget you said to me, I'm marrying you, not my family and and that just meant so much, because I love it that for you, you could just see me, but for me, I was stuck in the double veil of consciousness, a, la, W, E, B, Du Bois, where it was like I have the veil that allows me to see through my lens of life, but the double veil is knowing how others see me, particularly white folks see me. And so it was like, When is this gonna lift? When is he gonna run away? When is it, you know? Yeah, so I suspect, because of all of our conversations over the years, you've known this for a while that it's always been tough for me, and I hate that it has been because I know that it's a social thing, like society has taught me to be insecure about who I am, racially, ethnically, and what I look like, and what that means to be in a relationship with a white man who has, you know, you're part of a community that holds so so much privilege, And so it was always been like, Can he really, honestly choose me or be with me and be happy with me? The flip

Chad  14:07  
side of that is, it was that, we'll call it ignorance, but it's probably also an element of arrogance that didn't make me even think twice, like, Oh, this is just what I'm gonna do. There wasn't a hesitation or like, Should I do this? What's the implication? What does this mean for me? Or what does that mean for her? Oh, it was just, well, this is what I want, and therefore this is what I'm gonna do. So to some extent,

Shawna  14:43  
your your privilege allowed you to to just

Chad  14:47  
Yeah, act and function without a fear of repercussions. I mean, I certainly knew that making the choice or the decision. And could have a ripple effect. But the ignorance part of it was I had no way to imagine how bad it could be.

Shawna  15:14  
Well, I was the first person you'd ever dated outside of your race, right? Yeah,

Chad  15:19  
yeah. Well, that's not entirely true. I think when I was two, there was a Native American girl that I sat next to at the at the rodeo out at the Sean Young days in Wyoming. She was cute. Yeah, I think we still have a picture Somewhere in the family photo album.

Unknown Speaker  15:38  
I gotcha. I

Shawna  16:16  
well, I remember when your mom was going to come visit us for the first time, and coincidentally, had nothing to do with her visit. It just happened to be that I had decided I wanted to have micro braids, and my friend Valerie was putting braids in my hair. And I don't even know if you remember this. No, you were Oh, he's like, No, I don't

Chad  16:35  
Oh, but I don't remember last week. So

Shawna  16:37  
that's fine, okay, fair, fair. So it was basically taking two days. It was a phased project, because anybody who's ever gotten micro braids in, then they're long. It takes a long, long time. So she had done like the first half of my hair, and had gone home for the night, and think your mom was coming, like the following week, and you'd come home and you saw it, and you expressed in a very diplomatic and polite way that you were a little nervous about your mom seeing me with brains. By that time we had had our son, he was probably just over a year old, or something like that. And you know now she had seen pictures, and we'd started making videos and sending VHS, VHS tapes, friends, VHS tapes to them, and stuff like that. And so she now knew what I looked like, what our son looked like, and so on. But I think it made you nervous that I was going to and I'm doing air quotes that I would look too ethnic like maybe because I was kind of palatable. She was not so uncomfortable with us being married, but then to introduce the braids. So I remember that, and I took them out like, Valerie never finished. I ended up taking them out like, the next day.

Chad  17:52  
Yeah, I don't remember, but I mean, over the years, there's definitely a pattern that when you wear your hair straight, you look decidedly whiter. And when you wear your hair in locks or braids, you look decidedly blacker, yeah, and when you have your hair naturally curly like that, you look Middle Eastern or Hispanic or something, something, something more ambiguous, extremely, more ambiguous. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, a bit of a chameleon.

Shawna  18:32  
Is there anything that was ever hard for you or confusing to you, or you're like, I don't know how to navigate this

Chad  18:40  
Well, I think when it comes to all black hair care, it's extremely confusing, like, I have no idea what any of that stuff means, or when to use it, or when not to use it, or why you have to use it. Because for me, shampoo and that's it, and I'll use conditioner.

Shawna  18:58  
Is it weird to you, or do you just kind of go like, well, I guess that's how it is.

Chad  19:02  
Well, I mean, having never lived with a woman before, I thought, well, maybe that's just women need that many products, but now I'm pretty much with your mom, yeah, but Well, I mean, yes, she probably used conditioner and maybe a little bit of hair, but none of the other extra stuff. So I was like, wow, women come with this entire suitcase full of product too.

Shawna  19:29  
You just assumed that was just how it was, probably until I used a straightener one day and I used to hide you guys, I used to wait. So Chad worked nights for the first two years we were married, so when I wanted to use my relaxer like I would do my relaxers at home, I would wait until he was gone to work so I could be done. And I used to try to do all of my quote, black things while you were at work, working overnight. Never knew. It just felt. Like something I had to guard, yeah, and not only that, but like, just customs and and stuff. And it's like, you know, the more time we have spent together over the years, the more I've learned, and also with the work that I do and stuff that it's less about race and more about culture.

Chad  20:19  
Well, that's one of the beautiful things I know that you've talked about this a lot in your other episodes. We moved around a lot. Yeah, if you asked me directly, is that because you're white or because you're Midwesterner, I would have thought, aren't they the same? What's the difference? Yeah, yeah, it's only after you have the luxury of moving around and seeing different parts of the US, parts of the world. Do you begin to acknowledge what's part of that particular region, or part of maybe only your family, or whatever, your world gets bigger. It gets considerably bigger. Yeah, so I made a conscious decision almost 30 years ago to make my world bigger.

Unknown Speaker  21:07  
Yeah, yeah. I

Chad  22:00  
you. Okay, so you brought up the aspect of being Midwestern, so this is one of the questions that I wanted to ask you. What is the whitest thing that I do?

Shawna  22:33  
Oh, geez, I don't even think it's something that you do. That's the whitest thing. I think it's just, again a cultural thing. Can I answer this with, like, a little anecdote? Sure. Okay, so we got married very young, and we moved what two years after marriage is like when we got married is when we moved to Illinois,

Chad  22:53  
yeah? Two, almost three years, Yep, yeah. So it

Shawna  22:56  
was the first time I had been on my own and away from my family, and we moved to Illinois, and we lived about 45 minutes or so away from your parents. Christian was a baby, and you immediately went away for training, and so I was there by myself, you know, as a single mom for all intents and purposes, for what, four or five months, something like that, and your parents were nearby. So because we'd moved, I didn't know anybody, so that's who I knew. So I began to spend time, mostly with your mom, and I started to notice things. Like, she always had these seasonal things on her door, like that. She would change out, like there would be welcome Easter. Yep, exactly. She collected souvenir spoons and had, like, oak cases to put these things in, and there were all the little like craft fairs, yeah, doodads and things. And so I was thinking, I have to fit in, and this is what I'm supposed to be as a wife. So I started collecting spoons. I had already done some quilting because I learned that before even I met you. But then it was like, Oh, I've got to do more of that. And I like, I started to whiteify myself.

Chad  24:20  
Okay, please explain more.

Shawna  24:23  
Well, I felt like that's what I was supposed to be as your wife, right? So we had gone from my home, what I was the most familiar with, to really, basically your home, even though it was a military assignment. And so I was again, very young, still having all those insecurities I had, thinking I have to be whiter, and maybe this is what white is. And it wasn't until later where I was like, no, actually, that is not me. I can't ever, ever, ever be that I'm not like it's not but it was just me trying to find myself. Yourself in our relationship. So I don't know that there is a whitest thing that you do. It was just being immersed in white culture as I saw it, foods, yeah, our foods are definitely different,

Chad  25:17  
but not so different. I mean, we both like potato salad,

Shawna  25:20  
yeah, we're not gonna get into all the Miracle Whip and jell o's and all the Midwestern foods. See, that's the thing is, I feel like it's regional, because, like, white folks, white folks in South Carolina, you know, they gonna

Chad  25:32  
tear it up. So raisins have a place in this world? No,

Shawna  25:35  
yeah, in a box, in a box as a snack.

Chad  25:41  
Slow burst of flavor.

Shawna  25:45  
So, okay, what's the blackest thing I do?

Chad  25:48  
Hmm, I don't know. I don't think I can answer that. See, yeah.

Shawna  25:55  
Also, I think why it's hard to answer is because together, over the years, we've developed our own culture of who we are as a couple and as a family, sure, don't you think?

Chad  26:03  
Yeah. And again, I don't remember last week, so trying to think back almost 30 years, it's kind of hard. Maybe the blackest thing that I've experienced with you is going to church with you.

Shawna  26:16  
Oh, that's a good one.

Chad  26:20  
Yeah. And even though that's a good one, our church experience was rather limited when we first got married. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, because the only other experience I had had was in a Lutheran Church, which is for all intents and purposes, Catholicism a little relaxed, yeah, yeah. It's just Yeah. Experience at church was like, quite

Shawna  26:48  
Yeah, quite a culture shock. If jumping in the deep end of an Olympic sized swimming pool with the wave machine on when you met my family, was that experience I can only imagine what

Chad  27:00  
it's a water park I've never been to before.

Shawna  27:03  
Yeah, yeah. I bet that that's a good example. Chad, I think, because even though I'm not like a church person right now, that is such a huge part of my culture, gospel music, church culture, but I'm talking like black church culture, like Southern Baptist Church, Pentecostal, and so that's a major part of my upbringing. And even though I'm not like a church goer these days, it is still very, very much part of who I am and what's made me who I am. That's funny, That's a Good example.

Chad  27:42  
I s so one of the questions that I think is worth asking is, is there a situation that makes you sort of stop and think about the fact that we're in an interracial marriage?

Shawna  28:58  
Yeah, actually, there are lots of situations. And okay, it's not necessarily a good or bad thing. It just is. And I wonder if, and this is no shade to you, this just, I think how America is. I think because in our relationship, I am quote the person of color, it's much more salient to me, so it's on my mind probably more than it is for you, just like you said, maybe because it's true to privilege or arrogance or whatever it is, you don't ever think about it, and I think that's because in America, whiteness is the default. And so me being with you, I always feel like there's a spotlight, but because we're so different, and I'm the person of color in this relationship, I feel like there's a little bit of a spotlight. Now, that doesn't mean that it really exists. It could be my perception.

Chad  29:50  
Well, there's a good example of that, right? We were in the ice cream shop the other day, and there was a little girl that kept looking over and you said, I think she's looking at me. Me. I said, No, she's probably staring at me and my tattoos. And I think we kind of agreed that that was what was throwing her off, yeah? But your default was she's looking at me,

Shawna  30:12  
yeah? Because I have hyper awareness, like it's kind of the curse, I guess, of being other is, even if the reality is that there's no spotlight I perceive there to be, or I'm always worried that there is. And I hate to go back to hair, but it's such a huge part of my self identity. And I think the self identity of a lot of black people, and especially black women, we talked a little bit about what happens when I wear different hairstyles. Okay, so when I have my hair naturally curly, like I do kind of today. I mean, it's up. That's when I think people look more and part of it is me not being comfortable in my own hair and being so very self conscious of it. But then when I'm with you, I almost wonder if people are like, Oh, that's an interesting couple, those two together, like we don't look like a couple so much that one time we did a he already does what I'm going to tell the story one time that we took like a class, what was it a whiskey class?

Chad  31:12  
Or it was, it was a choice making class, yeah,

Shawna  31:15  
yeah. And it was like a work event, kind of like a happy hour that somebody had put together. So we were all colleagues together, and at some point, after we'd learned some stuff in the class, there was a little bit of a contest where we got to do some mixology, and you and I both won. I won and you won. But then our colleagues were like, That's not fair. They're married. But the bartender and the people leading the class were like, what? They had no idea together, couple, right? And it's because I don't think we look like a couple that people are expecting. So then, when I'm feeling especially again, air quotes ethnic, I really think about it. The other thing is, and this is another social thing, and it's a systemic social thing, which is problematic, and I'm certainly not the only person that experiences this. But yeah, I have, over the years, seen your privilege at work. I have seen and it's this is tough, because your privilege benefits me by proxy, right? So it's not like I'm not also getting benefit from this, but it's still striking, because it's not my own right. So I've seen you get unearned privileges, whether that's through social capital that you have because you have been admitted to spaces that I am not ever part of. So you know, that's other white men, other white military men, or whatever that is, I'm not part of that. And I've also seen this happen, where you could be in a space and it's no thing. You could go through the streets of Prague or all the other places that we've lived, and nobody thinks the thing I walk through and I get stared at, you know? So, yeah, those things stand out to me. I think, you know, as I've gotten older, more mature, and have grown in my self confidence and am less insecure. I'm not gonna say the insecurities are all gone. I think that's impossible for anybody, but I think over time, I still notice things, but it doesn't impact me the same. Does that make sense?

Chad  33:18  
Yeah, it definitely makes sense. And and I think the benefit of having been around you is that level of ignorance or a lack of self awareness of what that privilege looks like would not have been revealed to me had you not pointed it out.

Shawna  33:34  
Because I kind of point it out, don't I? Yeah, you do. I mean, this space is my every day too. But

Chad  33:42  
it's not done in a accusational or sort of demeaning way. It's just sort of like, Hey, did you see how that played out? I was like, yeah. What of it? Well, this and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah,

Shawna  33:58  
I would say that's the biggest thing. Okay, I hope I even answered the question,

Chad  34:02  
yeah. I mean, in terms of any particular situation that makes you focus, or think about the fact that we're an interracial couple, maybe for you, they're too numerous for you to pinpoint one. But certainly, there are definitely scenarios or historical events that probably stand out to you.

Shawna  34:22  
It's less like an event and more like just the way things are. It's so ubiquitous that it's not like this one time this happened because, yeah, I

Shawna  35:36  
S So, okay, fast forward. They had kids, yep, two of them. Two of them. They pretty much look like a good combo of the two of us, but they're kind of white. They present white. I had these visions of my little brown babies with curly hair and hazel eyes. Nah, no, I sorry. Really, really white children with blue and green eyes. So I've told this story before, but I'll just share it for those who maybe haven't heard it yet. You know, I remember when we were still in Alaska. Christian was born in Alaska, so before we moved we were at a mall, and he was in a stroller, and he was like, itty bitty, and you went one direction. And I was like, I'm gonna, just gonna pop into this jewelry store. I wanted to look at something. And I remember being in there, and the sales lady was like, Oh, he's so adorable. And I said, Thank you, yeah. And she goes, it's so nice when couples can adopt. She clearly was not associating me with being his mother. And I said something along the lines of, I agree. It is so wonderful when couples can adopt this one. However, I did the work to grow this human, but you know, it makes me think about my mom, because I'm so much lighter skin than my mother, and people used to question her with me. Yeah, right. And so here it is another generation, and not just a light skinned baby, but like a white looking baby. And then the second one is a white looking baby too. I just want to ask you, like, what's it like? Or have you even thought about it? What it's like to be the father of mixed race children,

Chad  37:01  
yes, I've thought about it, but again, ignorance, privilege, because they look and present so white, it's not, I mean, for lack of better words, it's not there in your face. You don't see it, and I don't think about it now either. So when the kids tell us that they do see themselves as being mixed, because they have assumed half of your culture, half of mine, half of your genes, half of mine, sometimes it catches me off guard. It's like, oh yeah, that's right, they are

Shawna  37:38  
Just remembering that they're actually mixed, Yeah, Yeah, YEAH.

Unknown Speaker  44:53  
Hi, family, hi, hi,

Christian  44:54  
hello, y'all

Chad  44:55  
we've been trying to

Shawna  44:59  
do. Do this for about 30 minutes on lettuce. Yeah, it's okay. It's good. We got it. We do we got this. We got this. And it's really cool because it's the first time that all of us have been on here. I'm so glad that all of us are here. And this is really cool, because usually at the end of my season, I do something with a co host, and this feels extra special having my family here. So Thanks

Christian  45:22  
y'all, thanks for having us. Yeah, I think the

Shawna  45:25  
best place to start is with just some introductions. How about you, Ari, why don't you say a little something about you, what you like to do, just so listeners know something about you. So I really like art. Art is a

Ariana  45:37  
really good way that I can portray self expression. I love nature and communicating with others and working together.

Shawna  45:45  
Awesome, cool. Go ahead and some of you might have met Christian in previous episodes, which I will link in the show notes, but just in case, why don't you say

Christian  45:54  
something about you? Well, I am the only one who's not in the house right now, because I'm still in New York City now working as a full time drag queen, which is cool, and my husband's right next to me playing video games. So that's pretty cool, because I think the first time that I was on the podcast, we weren't even engaged. Oh my

Speaker 1  46:13  
gosh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. It's

Chad  46:17  
been that long. Hi Kyle.

Christian  46:19  
They said, hi, hi. I Hi, hi.

Shawna  46:26  
Well, what I thought would be awesome is just to have a conversation about us as a family, because each one of us, I think, comes with a different perspective, especially when we talk about this show and what it is to be a person of color or not, or to be part of a family where there's people of color, or basically it comes down to, I think we just have different perspectives. And since all the listeners are in different family roles and can probably relate to some of these things, I thought that would be something cool to explore together. Does that sound all right? Yeah, I thought it would be cool to just start us off by asking you two, Christian and Ari, what it's like having parents that are interracial. Have you ever thought about it? Because I will talk to a listener or someone that I'm working with in my research, and lots of times, folks will say, like, I don't even know the first time I thought about race, or you'll ask them, when did you realize you were fill in the blank of whatever identity, and some folks know exactly when that was, and some really don't have any clue or never talked about it. So what do you all think if

Christian  47:33  
we're talking about, like, the first time that I ever thought of race in regards to, like, our family, it's so weird, but I would say maybe Germany was like, the first time that it clicked. Because, for example, I knew that, like, Grammy and nanny were family members and directly related, but for some reason I had never made, like, a Connect. Oh yeah, sure, they're black, and I look the way that I do, and I hadn't necessarily thought of it until, I think we started having more like discussions, just me and mom about, like, why Grammy looks one way and why I look this way. And I think it may have come up too because a friend pointed it out. I really don't know where it like started, but I think the first time I ever had to question it was when I was like, Wait, actually, something's not adding up, because I truly didn't think about race much at all growing up. Yeah,

Chad  48:27  
and because there's a military family, we tell time in location. So Germany would have been about 2010 so about 15 years ago, yeah, about right, yeah.

Shawna  48:38  
We do tend to tell time by where we were in the world. And so, yeah, I think that was 2009

Christian  48:46  
to 2013 Yeah, yeah. I was around 10 or 11 where I think it like was finally starting to like, click. Did

Shawna  48:54  
you ever think about your dad and me being an interracial couple at all? Ari says, Yes,

Christian  49:01  
I didn't like, for me, it just seemed like completely normal, like, I don't think I ever thought of it as something different or like abnormal compared to other families and other parents. I just, I don't think I ever compared race when it came to their families at all. I

Ariana  49:17  
first noticed it whenever some friends pointed it out, and I had some friends that were a different color as well that pointed it out to me. They said, Oh, we had to know your mom was black. And I was like, Oh yeah, she is. I didn't really think about that. And whenever they mentioned it, I like, it kind of clicked at that moment. So, yeah, in Germany, definitely in either like Alexandria, when we were in Virginia to Germany, I started to really think about a lot more than I used to,

Shawna  49:44  
and that would have been when you were, like, in first grade, right? My

Ariana  49:49  
friend Taj, she was black, and I never, like, really thought about it. My friend Jana in, I think he was in Germany, she was, she was also of color. And I never, it's never. Something that I really thought about much. It wasn't a thing I would just focus on. That's just my friend, you know, and to my mom, that's my mom. It's never like a thing I focused on. But once people pointed it out to me that I was like, that is different, you know, like, I didn't realize that was like something to think about. Yeah,

Christian  50:19  
I think anecdotally, the first time that I connected the dots now that I think about it was Krista Nicole, because they were adopted, and I totally thought that it was normal that they were black and their mom was white. And I was like, yeah, that can happen, I guess. And then I remember you and dad being like, no, actually, they're adopted. And then Krista telling me that they were adopted. I was like, Oh, I guess okay. So that's a counter example of, like, what a mixed family looks like, whereas, for me, I just felt like that could just happen, like it was just normal. And so I think that was the first time that I ever, like, separated the different kinds of families in terms of race. Like I that is exactly now that I think about it, when it occurred to me, is

Shawna  51:02  
there anything that you've ever been curious about, either of you, our family makeup, or dad and me, or anything?

Ariana  51:10  
A question I had was, what do you think people like misunderstand about mixed families, and what the stereotypes would be when it comes to mixed families? And it doesn't just go for black people, it's with any race. Like, what is the stereotype that goes for a mixed child or mixed families in general?

Christian  51:28  
I mean, I think that, like, there are definitely more black stereotypes than white stereotypes that come into question. Like, I remember in high school being grilled about, like, how black I am. I'm

Shawna  51:41  
black. Dad, sorry,

Christian  51:45  
but it definitely happened. But I remember in class, it somehow came up. I talked about having a black mom and a white dad, and immediately, like a bunch of other black kids in the class were asking me questions about, like, what it was like being raised by you. Like, what kind of music did I grow up with? I think you caught it one time, but somebody else caught it. When I said that someone like smelled like outside, like, that's something that I've talked about before. It's like little phrases and things that, like white people don't ordinarily think about, but like black people definitely like are more attuned to. So it was just like little things like that that they were questioning. And I think that's also when I started to realize, okay, so there are definitely things that happen in black households that I wasn't aware didn't happen in other households. I just grew up that way, and it just felt so normal, like there were several steps of realizing what was and wasn't like just our family and a shared experience with other like, black or white families.

Chad  52:45  
Give another example

Christian  52:48  
in terms of like, for example, music. Like, I think that was like, a big thing. So, like, Okay, well, what did you grow up listening to? And I was like, and I say this all the time, because music is huge in what I do for my job now too, and definitely has like shaped my taste. But I would say like from mom, like I grew up with a lot of like, hip hop, R and B, and then also just like pop. And then another example that I can think of that I got from you Dad was Phil Collins that I listened to

Shawna  53:16  
a lot. But I like Phil Collins too. We definitely overlap, overlap.

Christian  53:20  
But I think I brought up the soundtrack of Crooklyn, the soundtrack of Crooklyn I listened to on repeat, because mom listened to it, and then a lot of those songs are still on my playlists. And someone was like, Where'd you hear the song? I was like, oh, it's the movie soundtrack from Crooklyn. And they said, What the hell? Because they're like, why would you be listening to that?

Chad  53:41  
No, and I'm offended that you associated me with Phil Collins. Peter Gabriel, yes, Phil Collins, okay, let's

Christian  53:49  
say Genesis. Thank you. You

Shawna  53:51  
know there's a difference. Genesis is Genesis. We could get into like the Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel thing, but Phil Collins did have his own thing, as did Peter Gabriel, he did. Okay, yeah, we get off topic. One thing I wanted to say, though, was, what's interesting is, I think Ari, you have more of Dad's taste because y'all go to concerts together. And I'm like, Nah, I'm gonna sit this one out. What was your first

Ariana  54:12  
concert? Ari anthrax,

Chad  54:19  
which you at, which you almost fell asleep at

Ariana  54:22  
no I disagree. I remember that concert very vividly. That was when we were in Prague. It was, that was 2018 I think I definitely, yeah, I have different tastes of music as well. Rock in metal is definitely a huge factor in that. But I also do very much enjoy EDM and dance house music and even folk music.

Shawna  54:47  
I was gonna say you got some funky stuff.

Christian  54:50  
I love folk music as well.

Ariana  54:52  
Yeah, like, I'll listen to pretty much anything.

Christian  54:56  
I think Falcon EDM is actually kind of sg. Strangely, where both of y'all music taste has kind of evolved into me and Ari's.

Chad  55:06  
Now it's funny, because for like mom and I, our melting spot for music, I certainly did not listen to Crooklyn. I don't even think I can tell you any of the songs that are on that album. Mr. Big stuff. Absolutely no but for us, because we did connect over music when we met, but it was with like, the blues and jazz, blues and

Christian  55:31  
jazz. Yeah, we're a very musical household,

Shawna  55:33  
but it is true that when we first connected over music, it was KEB Mo, which we did in Prague, actually go see him, like, practically on the stage, like sitting at the front so KEB Mo and Diana Krall, who we also saw in Berlin. Mini Yeah, that is a pretty good sweet spot, because, like, I cannot with the heavy metal. I could do classic rock, a little bit of progressive rock, but yeah, how did we get on music?

Ariana  56:01  
I asked, like, what stereotypes? Oh, yeah, given as a mixed family, yeah, and he mentioned music, yeah.

Chad  56:12  
So there you go. So that's the stereotype.

Ariana  56:15  
It's one of them. Yeah, it's definitely one of them. I think music, the way you dress and the way you talk? Yeah, that's one thing that I've, like, noticed, like, if I've mentioned something about, like, my mother and my mother's side of their family being African American, people don't believe me. They're like, No, you're not black enough for that. You don't talk black enough. You don't dress black enough, you know? And I'm like, I didn't know there had to be a, like, a a threshold, right? Yeah, to be that way, they're like, Yeah, I know you're definitely white and everything. I'm like, Okay, now I I know where I come from, but apparently that's how people look at you if you describe yourself, or if you present a certain way, present your race, right? Yeah, and say that you're mixed, people are going to judge you by what they can see and not what they know.

Shawna  57:02  
Yeah, because I think people have some predetermined like, they decide what they think mixed looks like. They decide what Black looks like. Even I've grown up and have been questioned about how black I am, but that's just part of the racial ambiguity part. What's so interesting is I'm not biracial. I am multi generationally mixed, which means, like my ancestry was mixed, but both my parents were black people. And I think people who aren't in the black community don't realize how many shades of black there are, so to speak, and that blackness can look just about like anything. And not only that, but then, like culture comes into it quite a bit too, right? And so even me, I have always had to feel like I had to defend my blackness, not always. I think nowadays, as people have learned more, especially post 2020 because people did get educated a lot more in these most recent years than they had in the past, I believe. And so I think people are more understanding now, but definitely growing up, I think I got a lot of the same experiences as a biracial person, because people assumed that I was or that I wasn't enough of something, but I got treated that way without having parents of different races, so I didn't grow up understanding Well, this is quote, unquote, white culture, and this is Black culture. So I was also in this weird liminal space, even as your mom,

Christian  58:28  
I guess I'll ask, kind of then in the reverse, what parts do you think of you that you've imparted on us? Like, what have you noticed as we've grown up? I

Chad  58:38  
think, to quote you,

Christian  58:41  
share, not talking about that. I know exactly what you're gonna bring up. We're not Christian. You've opened it you opened it up. No, that wasn't the question I was asking,

Chad  58:51  
served on a silver platter, nonetheless.

Christian  58:55  
All right, you want to tell the story about how it went down.

Chad  58:58  
It's not really a story. It's more of a legend at this point, but I think we were sitting at a table in Italy having lunch, and Shauna had asked something of that question,

Christian  59:10  
and how old was I? Because that's contextually to know,

Chad  59:15  
yeah, I mean, old enough to have recognized the finer qualities,

Christian  59:19  
recognized I was like six

Chad  59:24  
and and your response was from Dad you got,

Christian  59:28  
you can say it says you love telling this story. No, no, I, I think it's more authentic if it comes from you. I said at like six or seven, the qualifiers that I got my good looks and my charm from dad, and I got everything else bad from mom, more. So I think I was referencing the fact that I like have allergies.

Shawna  59:59  
You were hurting. You were it

Christian  1:00:01  
was specific to

Shawna  1:00:02  
allergies. But your dad, all he heard was, I got the good looks and

Unknown Speaker  1:00:08  
charm from dad. I

Christian  1:00:10  
mean, that's what came first. My goodness, yeah, I just thought of an example of something that dad has definitely imparted, at least on me. Do you know what I say to other people now all the time, walk with purpose for the win. Yeah, that's another thing. Especially being in New York City, I'm gonna need people to walk with purpose, because everybody's just wondering, why are we not just getting to our destination move? Yep,

Shawna  1:00:36  
yeah, that is definitely

Chad  1:00:38  
a down. There's nothing more painful than getting down to the subway or the metro or whatever, and watching your train pull out of the station and knowing that when you were looking at the pigeons a half a block back, that would have changed everything.

Shawna  1:00:55  
Okay, because then I'm like, but life happens, and we should slow down and look at the pigeons. That's me, the

Christian  1:01:02  
two perspectives there, because I feel like very much I have the, let me take in life. Let me take in what I'm doing. There's that half, and then there's also, you know, time is money. I need to get moving and do. Like, it's definitely like, a dichotomy, and like, there's cognitive dissonance happening in my head all the time where I'm like, Let me smell the flowers, and then I'm like, the flowers are gonna die. I need to move.

Shawna  1:01:25  
That is part of the yin and yang of dad and me. I think, I think I'm much slower paced in that way.

Christian  1:01:32  
I think that's where Ari is a lot more similar to you, and I'm a lot more similar to dad.

Ariana  1:01:37  
Yeah, I agree with Christian like, I do have a purpose, but I'm also gonna enjoy like how the weather is today, and I'm gonna enjoy how funny that squirrel looks when it runs across The Street, right? I'm gonna Enjoy what's around me. You

Shawna  1:02:54  
s so here's a question, and Christian and I have kind of touched on this in previous episodes that we've had. But for you, Ari, what's it like as you're navigating being mixed race or biracial? How do you identify? Because not every mixed race person identifies the same way. Do you think of yourself as mixed or biracial, or black or white or everything?

Ariana  1:03:16  
Or I absolutely consider myself to be biracial, and it's a little tough sometimes trying to explain to people who are a little bit close minded and don't understand that. So you're a little bit forced to having to, like, keep down that information, because they just wouldn't believe it, or they wouldn't, like, they can't see that. So you'd just be like, I'm white, but I do most of the time say I'm actually, I'm

Shawna  1:03:39  
mixed. Like, do you feel like, when it's exhausting you just say white? Or do you always say, I'm mixed, but you feel like, Ugh, why don't I just

Ariana  1:03:47  
say white? It does get exhausting. Sometimes it gets really frustrating, having to explain, like, over explain when people don't get it and they just can't visualize that. I always have to bring up a photo of Grammy, or, like, you have to prove it. I have to prove it. And I hate that I have to do that because it's like, why don't you just believe me? Like, because it's, it's 2025, man. Like, we've been able to do this for a long time, and so I like to express myself as biracial. But it does get frustrating.

Shawna  1:04:15  
Yeah, what's interesting to me is that you bring up a picture of your grandmother, not of your mother, because I'm not enough to

Ariana  1:04:22  
prove I knew you would say, yeah, exactly. They're like, No, well no, she's Latina. I'm like, No, she's not, and it has to be a darker skin color, otherwise nobody's gonna believe you, or a picture of Uncle Jeffrey or something. It's frustrating that I have to do that, but, and I can't even just show you, show them my mom, but they wouldn't get it. They just wouldn't get it.

Christian  1:04:43  
If I show a picture of mom, I show two different ones. I show you with the goddess locks and without too. So it'd be like, same person, but you see how one photo looks blacker than the other, and they're like, oh

Shawna  1:04:54  
my god, it's true. Like, I always say this. I always say my hairstyle is what. That clues people in, because I'm so racially ambiguous. You

Speaker 1  1:05:20  
you. Whenever we moved

Ariana  1:05:42  
from different places, like when we were stationed at different places around the world, do you think your guys' culture was enhanced

Shawna  1:05:52  
in a way? That's a really good question.

Chad  1:05:55  
Absolutely, there's no question about it, that our culture was enhanced. The easiest example is through food. I grew up in Midwest, where every other meal was a casserole or some piece of grilled meat. There was always cream of mushroom soup in the cupboard and some canned vegetables. After we moved to Italy, our diet completely changed because we learned how to cook with fresh fruits, lots of pastas, et cetera. Same thing with Korea. I'd never considered eating Korean barbecue or the way they prepare the foods, or anything like that. So just absolutely

Ariana  1:06:41  
food and languages, food,

Chad  1:06:43  
language, art or

Shawna  1:06:45  
Yeah, part of my heritage includes Creole, and I didn't grow up with Creole culture. Much of what was introduced to me came later, and so I tried to sort of tap into that and learn more about that later in life, that's part of who I am, but not part of how I grew up. And so in that sense, my culture expanded, but that wasn't really due to geography. That was more due to just me trying to learn more about my history, my ancestry, and that includes how I've begun to identify so I think like the context changes, but I would say it has really expanded my culture, not just the food, not just music, but how I move through the world. I see people differently. I'm more observant. I look for culture where probably before I wouldn't have, you know, I am definitely so very interested in other people where I think we're so isolated in the US that maybe I wouldn't have been that way before.

Christian  1:07:57  
I have one more question, and this can go to anyone. What's one moment or memory that really felt like us as a family? And I guess to expand on that, like when you look at our family as a whole, what do you think like really makes us us to other people?

Ariana  1:08:17  
I would personally have to say, definitely our experience being stationed around the world, with the different cultures that we've been taught and experienced. I think that, like all of us, experiencing that all at once was definitely a huge factor of what makes us us. I think us moving around and learning different new things at the same time that definitely taught us a lot of things.

Christian  1:08:42  
I feel like we have so many similarities, especially as I've grown up, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of things that like, really, like, unite us as a family. Like, we're all so artistic and so musically inclined, and also we love movies. Like, I think growing up like, the amount of movies that we would all watch together, truly our love for, like, nature and travel, heavily influenced by the way that we moved around a lot, but also, like you two, took Ari and I on so many adventures just growing up. So I feel like now, like me at this age, I'm like, Okay, I want to, like, explore this new place, like I travel where I can, you

Chad  1:09:19  
know, I know for a fact that I work with some folks who have never left state or their idea of vacationing is going from Northern Virginia to Southern Maryland, right, which is such a microcosm of culture in itself. So your willingness and wanting to travel and experience different places, different cultures. Everything that comes with it, I would say, is something that makes us us. I think that's probably pretty typical for most military families that move and travel, but I don't think as many military families traveled. Around the world the same way that we did.

Shawna  1:10:02  
I would say, since you guys took pretty much, what I would say, which was, I think the thing that stands out to most people about us is our world travels, and the fact that we really did live abroad more than we lived in the US and Christian I kind of made a face when you said, we're all artistic, because I always think you three are like, so visually artistic. And I'm just like, not you. Are you very much are I think I am a design person. I have a vision. I just, that's

Christian  1:10:27  
it. You are still artists. You are visually like you are a designer. I am a makeup artist. Dad is a painter, and has also explored other sorts of, oh, a photographer, duh. And Ari is primarily an illustrator. Like, I feel like you literally encompass every single medium of visual art.

Shawna  1:10:48  
Yeah, I was gonna add to that the music part. So dad plays bass, Ari plays guitar, Christian, you're a DJ, and you produce music. And then I was a music major. I was a pianist, and I sing. I always think about us. I was like, Wait, dang, we missed it. We missed it. We could have been a family band, right? And we really could have, we could have been a family band. There's one memory I have. It was like, Spring or Fall, where the weather was just right, and dad and Ari were on the back deck playing guitar and bass, and then I was singing, and I think it was stuck in the middle with you, and I just have that memory in my head. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, we could have so much fun together. How did we not pull all these parts together earlier? Maybe it wouldn't have been as fun if we tried to make it happen. But that was the thing that came through. Is music is a through line, I think, for us in one way or another. I

Christian  1:11:41  
think it's so funny that you use that song as an example, because where I was listening to the Kirkland soundtrack, I also listened to the water boy soundtrack, which that song, so that's

Chad  1:11:52  
mom, dad, one of the best soundtracks ever. It's so good. It really

Christian  1:11:59  
is. But you said that song. And I was like, I know exactly what soundtrack that's from, because I listened to both.

Shawna  1:12:04  
Oh, that's because we grew up in the 80s and 90s, and soundtracks were big then. I don't even know if they are anymore, but that's how it was. No,

Christian  1:12:12  
they're not, but it's so funny, because that is what has fully like inspired me to make the kind of music that I do. A lot of my music that I'm drawn towards is from the 80s and 90s, and that sound. And I feel like the same goes for Ari. But then it I was

Shawna  1:12:29  
about to say that I think Ari, too, you are like, super into 80s 90s. I think

Christian  1:12:33  
I love the 80s and 90s, yeah,

Chad  1:12:36  
which is why you do well as a DJ, because that's when the good music was made.

Christian  1:12:42  
I feel like music, truly, from that era, has like forever impacted how I listen to music and what I listen to and, yeah, bringing it full circle. I think music and the arts like is like how we express ourselves as a family, and then just our world travels is like what people see and what we talk about now that I'm thinking about it, now that I'm this age, like I'm 26 and when we were first moving around, like y'all were in your early 20s, you were growing up just as much as we were. It's like you guys were growing up in the world just a little differently than we were. And I feel like we all kind of were, like raised collectively by our world travels.

Shawna  1:13:36  
Thank you guys for this time. This was really fun, and it's funny because we really haven't had these conversations. You know, maybe every once in a while we've touched on some of this. And I've always been a little bit surprised when I've had guests come on the show and talk about their family makeup or things growing up that they had never discussed before coming on the show, and here we are doing the same thing. So I think that's really cool and really interesting, and I appreciate all of you. I'm

Unknown Speaker  1:14:02  
happy to be here. I love

Unknown Speaker  1:14:04  
you, love you too. Love you, love you guys too. You

Shawna  1:14:40  
so what was it like for you? Having that conversation with the kids,

Chad  1:15:01  
I was fine and enlightening, right? Like to see their perspective. You assume how they think based on how they behave, but without asking the questions directly, I guess you don't really know the answer,

Shawna  1:15:15  
yeah. I think it's so interesting that I have these conversations all the time with other people. And even though we've definitely had conversations with the kids, it was never been so direct and like, tell me about this, tell me about that. So it was very interesting for me as well. And plus, like, identity shifts. So, you know, I even wonder if we were to ask them these questions 1020 years from now, what their life experiences, yeah, yeah. Exactly one of the things that you were wondering, that we kind of asked offline, was what they thought about me doing this show our true colors. Both of them said that it was important. I think for Ariana, she was just like, it's important, because people need to talk about these things. And it was really touching because it was important to her, because I'm her mom, right? You know, I think they really think about not only that I'm doing this show, but the identity that I hold as their mother doing this show.

Chad  1:16:16  
Yeah, I just, you know, thinking back to what the kids said, I know one of the key words that caught my ear when Christian was talking about it was the platform. You know, I do think that, for all intents and purposes, this is kind of an uncharted space that has not been fully explored. So many other areas, have tons of other podcasts out there, but for your listeners and for those that find themselves and identify as racially ambiguous, it is. It's a platform to have their story told, and more and more so in today's society, that's a very important, I don't want to say, requirement, but it's certainly an ask for many people, is to have their story told. So if you ask the same question to me, what do I think about this podcast? And you doing it? You started this? What? Five years ago? Yeah, it's been five years. Yeah. For all intents and purposes, this podcast has been sort of an open platform for you to explore what it is that really intrigued you that you wanted to continue to research on and in exploring it with your guests like each of their responses and their dialog unlocked different questions and different aspects that you had not considered for yourself personally. So I'm really glad that you've done it.

Shawna  1:17:50  
Thank you. I agree. I've grown a lot, and I've learned a lot. I think one of the most important things here is that folks often assume that when you talk about racial ambiguity, or even being multiracial, that it automatically means biracial. And I'm not biracial. I don't have parents of two different races. However, because I'm often assumed to be biracial, I have a lot of the same lived experiences because of what I experienced from other people outside coming in. So it's allowed me to have those conversations as a person who is not biracial, but still somehow, in this world of racial ambiguity, ethnic ambiguity, the way that I self identified has changed quite a bit. So I think even I have to go back and listen. But I think even my start here episode, I'm like, I'm black, I'm monoracially Black. I'm all black. And then, you know, as I learned more about the different ways to be mixed race, not only from these conversations, but also from my research, because I've now done five years worth of research as well, more specific to the workplace, but identity is identity. I think what this show and what that research has done for me is given me new language, because I have always felt different, even though I self identified as a monoracial black person, and I still largely do, I learned to give myself permission to accept my mixed race heritage, even if it isn't a biracial mixed heritage, it's multi generationally mixed heritage, and I think I didn't allow myself to acknowledge that. I mean, I always knew, like, I'm light skinned, because there's some mixedness At some point, but my like, again, my parents are black. But even knowing that did not stop the fact that I always felt different, that I was living in this liminal space. Even without being biracial, I never felt all the way black, and I never felt white at all. But I knew I was something that wasn't this and wasn't that. It was other. So having all these conversations with folks doing these studies and. Really being able to have the time to reflect over these years has given me new language and helped me to understand how I self identify, more than anything so and

Chad  1:20:10  
that's your lesson to get educated kids, because the more you can describe what you're thinking and feeling with a greater vocabulary, the more accurate you can be and the more thoughtful you can be about that subject, right?

Shawna  1:20:26  
Sure. And I would also say one of the things Christian said when you asked him what he thought about this was he like, really zoomed in on the idea of belonging, which is like, underscore, highlight, bold print, italics. My thing, I have always struggled with the sense of belonging, which is why, like, the tagline for this show is, what's it like when you fit everywhere but belong nowhere all at the same time? Like, I'm really good at fitting in, yeah, but I don't always feel like I belong, right? And they are different things. And like, would you say I was like a chameleon or something like that, right? Yeah, I think that is the lived experience of a lot of mixed race or racially ambiguous people is because we sort of can just fit in spaces. It's nice, it's definitely nice, and I think that we can be good bridge builders for that. But fitting in is not the same as belonging. When you just naturally feel like you belong there,

Chad  1:21:19  
right? Well, which is why, when you see an ad or some type of a, you know, illustration, where the chameleon is all these multi colors or whatever, and they stand out against a different background, it's striking, right? That skill is great.

Shawna  1:21:34  
That's true. It can be. It's a double edged

Chad  1:21:37  
sword. Yeah, the goal is not just to survive, it's to thrive. I

Shawna  1:21:42  
agree. I think that being a chameleon of sorts, and this is a great word to use, and I'll tell you why in a second, is a double edged sword, in a way. And like Kamala Harris was described by JD Vance as being a chameleon. And so it was basically like, you can't trust her, because she's gonna be this way once, and this way over here and this way over there. So on one hand, it's a superpower to be able to fit in, but on the other, if you are someone who lives in the liminal space, like Kamala Harris, like me, like others, people don't fully trust you until they know you on a personal level, because they think that you are being two faced or three faced, or whatever you want to call it as a chameleon, blending in or fitting in because they can't figure you out. Yeah? So yeah, it's tough.

Shawna  1:22:41  
Well, I really am so glad that you did this with me and that the kids did this, because it means so much from a personal level. You know, having conversations over these years isn't quite the same as being able to explore this with the people you live with, and love and family is everything. And so this has been super meaningful to me.

Chad  1:22:59  
Well, it's meant a lot to me as well, and I'm glad that even now, several years after the first time we tried to do this, that I got a second chance.

Shawna  1:23:08  
Yeah, me too. This is good stuff. All right. Well, thank you, Chad,

Chad  1:23:15  
thank you.

Shawna  1:23:18  
All right, I'll see you downstairs. I mean,

Chad  1:23:21  
I don't know what to say. 

Shawna  1:23:23  
That's the end.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Dr. Shawna M. Gann

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