Meet Season 6 Co-Host Marcel De Jonghe: Mixed is a Whole New Recipe

Season 6 is here—and we’re starting with a Meet the Co-Host episode. Shawna welcomes back Marcel De Jonghe (joining from Birmingham, UK) for a warm, funny, and deeply reflective conversation about what it means to live in complexity. Marcel shares why being mixed isn’t a neat “half-and-half” story. It’s more like ingredients baked into something entirely new. Together, Shawna and Marcel talk about how identity often gets filtered through other people’s assumptions, how microaggressions can feel “frosted” in the air, and why belonging can be hardest in that in-between, liminal space where you’re moving… but never quite “arrived.”

Marcel also opens up about well-being and the importance of men speaking honestly about mental health—especially when pain can stay hidden for years until it demands to be addressed. He introduces the concept of sonder—the reminder that every person you pass is carrying a whole life of their own—and invites us to move through the world with more curiosity, care, and humanity. This season, Shawna and Marcel are leaning into honesty, nuance, and the courage to show up as our full selves—without shrinking into whatever version feels easiest for the room.

Connect with Marcel:

• The Belonging Lab 
  LinkedIn
  
  

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Transcript

Jason  0:00  
SG, welcome to our true colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in. You.

Shawna  0:22  
SG, hello, hello, my friends, welcome back to our true colors and Welcome to season six. I am thrilled to be back for another season of these amazing, insightful and thought provoking conversations. Thank you so much for joining me. Also joining me is my new co host for the season. Those of you who have been around for a while know that I love to invite new folks to come in every season, just so that we can have a difference of perspective, someone who can relate to what we're talking about and gets it, but also can add a different spin on things as they see it. His name is Marcel De Jong. He was a guest last year, but this year, he's going to be joining me on the mic for this whole ride. Marcel and I originally connected on LinkedIn. We just hit it off. We started talking, and we're like, we should talk again. We should meet again. And the next thing you know, I'm asking him to be my co host. And yes, I'm genuinely excited that he agreed. Marcel is joining us from Birmingham in the UK, and right away you'll hear what he brings. He's got sharp perspective. He brings the real talk and this thoughtful way of looking at identity and belonging that feels both grounded and big picture. In this meet the co host episode, we'll talk about what it means to live with complexity, especially as someone with black, African and white, European heritage and how quote, mixed isn't a neat half and half story. It's its own thing. You'll also hear Marcel open up about well being, the importance of men talking honestly about mental health and why he's passionate about people finding a version of themselves that doesn't shift depending on who's watching. Let's meet my co host for season six, Marcel De Jong. Marcel, yes, I'm so sorry you guys. It's really funny because we could see each other, and he was doing his little warm ups, which I wish you could see. But anyway, hi, hello. I'm so glad you said yes to this adventure. Thanks for deciding to hang out with me this

Marcel De Jonghe  2:25  
season. My pleasure, my pleasure.

Speaker 1  2:28  
I am so looking forward to it. Welcome and thank you. Oh, thank you

Marcel De Jonghe  2:32  
very much. Like, it's a privilege, really, isn't it? Someone gets to hear my voice and maybe listen to my opinion.

Shawna  2:41  
Geez, he has some pretty, pretty good opinions, some good insights. It is the Meet Marcel episode. The spotlight is on you, my friend. They get to know about you, and I think it's a great way to start the season, because as folks continue to listen, they'll have an idea of where you're coming from with the insights you bring and the ideas you share. So with that, just wonder, how would you like to introduce yourself as a co host of our true colors?

Marcel De Jonghe  3:07  
So my full name is Marcel De Jong. Actually, that's not even my full name. My parents really didn't like me. I think that's the only reason I have the name of Marcel Jean, Michel Francois De Jong that yeah, that is my name. Yeah, I've quite very quickly found out when I was a kid that no form had enough characters for me to be able to put my full name down and actually have more letters than the alphabet in my name. So it probably is because I I really rude Christmas Day 1983 for my mom by being born on that day. So she said, I'm definitely gonna make sure you can't spell your own name for the

Shawna  3:43  
first Well, that was your Christmas your birthday Christmas gift. Yeah, to my mom, was your beautiful name. Yeah, birth. Must I have lots of names too, also, which don't fit. So when I was like, in elementary school, we used to have to take these standardized tests, Iowa basics, and the teachers would make us fill them in ourselves, and I never had enough spaces either. I have two middle names. I can't repeat that beautiful French sounding name that you said you're full I

Marcel De Jonghe  4:15  
couldn't for the first eight years of my life. My daughter can. She knows my full name, and then she sometimes goes, walks around saying that she's Jean Michel. I'm like, Yeah, I couldn't spell it for years. I was like, Jesus that I could do the alphabet. I can even probably do pi. But my own name, no.

Speaker 1  4:36  
Well, I rather like it. So tell us more about you besides your name,

Marcel De Jonghe  4:41  
oh, all the fact that my name I also share with a monkey from friends. Like, come on, that was a bad time of secondary school for about two days. Oh, Ross's monkey.

Speaker 1  4:51  
That's right, Ross's monkey. Yeah, yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  4:53  
Let's move swiftly. Move on from that one. So yeah, a little bit more about. Um, as you might have guessed from my accent, I am not from the States. I live in a city, second city in the United Kingdom, called Birmingham. You might know it as Birmingham, but we definitely call it Birmingham. Here. Terrible TV show, I'm not a big fan of it, called Peaky Blinders, which is over the UK, and I think they've sold it everywhere and anywhere, but they wait till you hear the Birmingham accent, and that's a thick accent. Is logs to speak. Look that a bit. Yeah, they've got to be to look that a bit of a song

Shawna  5:33  
I've lived so that was English. Just now I see

Marcel De Jonghe  5:36  
that was English. That was I've lived here for 15 years, but I'm from a city, like, 20 miles away, and we have a completely different accent.

Shawna  5:44  
I mean, I say, Wow, but it's like that here too, right? Like I live in Northern Virginia, the accent just 20 miles south of here is different. It gets way more southern. So I kind of want

Marcel De Jonghe  5:54  
to see if you can do the whole of this show in the more Virginia.

Shawna  5:59  
No, I cannot challenge. I have my strictly West Coast Alaskan accent. Will be here.

Marcel De Jonghe  6:09  
I've been told, from a British perspective, I have a very neutral accent. It's very hard to work out where I am. I think the UK is smaller than the whole of the state of California. So we're not that big,

Shawna  6:24  
even if it's a small place. You guys do have a lot of accents. I've watched like YouTube videos of people doing like all the different accents, and so I'm always pretty amazed. Tell us about your family, because you mentioned Genevieve, but I don't think that people know who that Yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  6:38  
Okay, so Genevieve is the apple of my eyes. She's my daughter. She's two and a half. She's my face with my partner's facial expressions. So she's got the best or worst of us. I don't know which one it is yet, but she's strong willed. She's I've picked her up from nursery this this evening, and I was told that, just to let you know, you always think that, oh, that's never a good start to a conversation leading in with that. Yeah, it's just Genevieve decided at circle time she was going to serenade everybody by singing her ABCs. All the kids. No one asked. Okay, not one child. Well, she did it. She Yeah, I've heard a voice. Not sure it's a gift. It sounds more like a threat, but she really loves it. You have a performer, yes, yes, oh, she's just got to her frozen era and Moana era. And so now I wake up singing, you're welcome. By Dwayne Johnson, it's in my head, free. It is a good one. It is, I'm not gonna lie, but it's meant free living there, taking up some other capacity of space which could be used for something more productive.

Shawna  7:49  
Well, good luck with that. As a parent of nearly 27 years, I will tell you that all those spaces that you thought you had reserved for yourself and your brain just forget it, doesn't, doesn't change, not when they're 18, not when they're 20s. Yeah, good luck. But I can vouch that she is so adorable because I have seen photos she

Marcel De Jonghe  8:12  
is. She's stalling my heart. Yes, I

Shawna  8:15  
do think that one of the things that will be great this season is that, because you are in Birmingham, I just wanted to say it like that, because you're in the UK, you'll probably have a different take on some things, geographically, culture, you know, maybe a little bit different and so on. I'm just wondering what you think people should understand about some potential differences, or how you see things from that side of the world

Marcel De Jonghe  8:45  
more than happy to share. And I will state it to my perspective. I am quite left wing, as I think so. I may not agree with a lot of things which are going on generally in the world anyway.

Shawna  8:56  
These days, things happen so quickly that I feel like between the time of us recording this and it being published in just a couple days, something else could happen. So who knows? Right?

Marcel De Jonghe  9:07  
I'm going to caveat it with and it's getting worse. That's there's a level of expectation, I think unfortunately, or if you want, we can cut and I'll go and things are getting better now. So you can choose which one you want to go with.

Shawna  9:24  
Okay, people, so there you go. Folks, you have you can choose which one

Marcel De Jonghe  9:28  
you wanted to hear, A or B option. Yeah,

Shawna  9:31  
I think I just wake up and I have gratitude that I'm still here. My family's still here, and we are gonna make it through, certainly, learning a lot of things these days about myself and others, but yeah, there is certainly a lot that happens, and we do touch on politics, sometimes on the show, at least traditionally here in the US. I think it's probably true there too that politics has typically been regarded as taboo now. It's something that you should bring up because it makes people uncomfortable, but I am of the mindset that politics affects policy and policy affects people, and so like never want to encourage behavior that isn't civil and respectful, but I always do welcome some good dialog. I don't always think it's a bad thing to have discussions with people who have differences of opinion. It's just about how you do that. So I think you know, from time to time, we might have some guests that do you have differences of opinion. And of course, I definitely want to hear your perspective and what it looks like. What's it looking like? What do we look like from over there? Because I'll tell you what from in here, man, it's it's rough, or it's whatever fill in the blank.

Marcel De Jonghe  10:46  
You know, when you go to your aunt's house and you've got that crazy cousin and you then you're glad you're leaving damn forgot how crazy they were. It kind of feels like that a little bit, I think. And I think there's not a lot of people in the UK who go, that's a good decision. That seems to be working out for people. It seems to be so what? How is that legal? Oh, they're going to make it legal. Okay, yeah, honey.

Shawna  11:16  
Marcel, I wake up with many of the same questions. But you know, it having lived outside of the US for a long time, for those who are just joining for the first time, I've lived in Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, and then also spent some time in South Korea. And it's it was always interesting to me, in those days, being asked questions by folks who live in those places, like what actually is happening there, or people being very willing to share their opinions and their perspectives. So that's why I ask questions, like, what's it look like to you? Because you guys might be spotlighting something a little different than what is being spotlighted here within you know? So yeah, I look forward to those conversations too, switching gears slightly. The show is, yeah, pretty much about being mixed, but basically complexity and identity in general, and very much about belonging and finding a place of belonging. Because when you hold identity that is so complex, it can be very difficult to find that belonging. And to be honest, I think there are lots of folks out there who are not mixed race, who still struggle with belonging. So I think even those listeners can get things out of our conversations. So can you tell us about your complex identity a little bit, and then also what that means to you as we move forward in the season.

Marcel De Jonghe  12:46  
So who am I? That's a really difficult question. I have definitely changed. I remember who I was, as little Marcel, as not so little Marcel to thinking I was an adult, to hopefully be an adult now, and I think that's changed. It's grown, it's progressed. I've left some things behind. I've picked some things up about myself. I've acknowledged a lot of what I was trying to probably hide or suppress. But I think what's interesting is when we talk about mixed, people say, okay, what are you? What was your mix? And it's for myself, black, African, white, European, but those are two binary things, so therefore I'm not a whole. I'm this amalgamation of two things. But like, say, if you get half a cake and then another half cake, even if you put the two together, they'll look like a whole cake, but you'll see that there's different. But that isn't what we are. We are the ingredients put together. We all baked up, and we were something completely different. And I find you can never replicate that again. Did you know like, you make something off the cuff, you're cooking something, and you just throw a little bit of this in, and you're like, that is probably one of the best meals I've ever had. And then you try to replicate it, and it's like, that is probably one of the worst meals I've ever had. I did too much of this, too much of that. We're never, ever the same. And that's, that's, that's what I've come to embrace. I don't find that just because there's another mixed person in the room, that automatically, there's this level, lot of relationship between us and bonding. It always feels like there is no space for people of mixed heritage. But then I realized I don't need that anymore. I could like it, but do I need it? Probably not. I have my own little gang. I have my partner. She loves me for who I am, irrespective. I have some good close friends, and they are mixed of black people, white people, Asian people. I live in the most super diverse city in the UK, in Europe, actually, you know. So I can walk out my door and I can see people of every single faith, every single color, every single kind. Of ideal, and that's beautiful, and I don't feel like I therefore need to adjust, whereas if I went somewhere a little bit more rural in the UK, I'd probably see a lot more white people, and the white part of me would probably come out a little bit more I would suppress the other part. So living in Birmingham gives you this opportunity to be who you want to be, and that's what I love. So 42 year old Marcel is telling you that I feel I'm privileged with this. I've been given input from various different cultures. I've been given input from various different perspectives, and I'm happy with who I am.

Shawna  15:42  
Well, you said there was some change. What do you think contributed to that?

Marcel De Jonghe  15:47  
I had a bad 2024 like, it just wasn't the best one in the world. I didn't have the best upbringing, you know, around certain parts, like mental health, and I observed just not the best of the world. And I didn't realize that how much that was with me for such a long time, like it was this. It was a Ghost in the Shell. It was there, and I just didn't realize and then it decided it wanted to come out and just be addressed. So I took some time I addressed it, and it was such a relief to recognize that all of the things which made me came from those actions so like my need to care, look after people, make sure others are okay, and I never knew why, and they were just reactions rather than choices. Now I'm still that person, but I know why. I have answers, and I never had them before. I'm a big advocate of taking the time to look after yourself, because you can't fill anyone out as cup if yours is empty. But also, especially for men, like mental health is just one of those things which doesn't happen to me, doesn't happen to men. Men don't talk about it. I don't know if it's the same in the States, but in the UK, suicide is one of the highest killers in men.

Shawna  17:20  
I think it's super important that these kind of, like, what we're talking about right now, these kind of conversations happen, because I think they don't happen. At least over here, there's been more and more conversation about like, hey man, something's going on with the guys. Then throw loneliness on top of that, and the other things that just people in general are experiencing a lot of now, it seems to be like this question of what society is expecting of men when they've been raised a certain way, with the narratives. Thank you for sharing that. I know that's tough.

Marcel De Jonghe  17:49  
It's well, if I don't share it and I keep it to myself, it stays with me, and it doesn't give other people permission to recognize mental health, physical health, intrinsically linked. You know, one feeds the other. Vice you know, if you have a bad physical healthy there's a strong possibility someone's mental health will deteriorate, and vice versa. But for me, weirdly, I had to go through that, and that just allowed me to be the best version of who I want to be. I'm not saying I'm the best, because I know I'm not. I've got a partner who will testify that I'm not. There's a lot of things I don't do which make her happy, like she hates the fact that I constantly ask her to remind me to do things. She says, I'm not your calendar and I have a calendar on my phone. She's like, set just set yourself a reminder. But I am the best version of who I want to be, and I want to be kind. I want to help others. I want to be able to set standards, which means that we only get better. I think there's a Greek saying. It basically says, Be a better man than your father, and it doesn't mean that your father was bad. It just means, if you could be 1% better than the previous generation, we're going to eventually get there. Not sure we're going in that right direction. At this moment, right now, I think the standards are so low that you just don't have to murder someone sometimes. But I think that there is a need to be better people. You

Marcel De Jonghe  19:25  
I love the term sonder. It's the idea of you sitting out in the world, going about your business, think about your world, and how important your world is to you, and then suddenly realizing every single other person is exactly the same. They've all got their own little worlds. They've all got their own things which make them important. And I sometimes contemplate that the person I just walk past, they have so many senses of detail, of family, love, bills, all the things which pain them, make them. Happy, and we don't do enough of that. We don't think about it enough when we walk around. Sometimes I just like letting the world pass by and just thinking, how can my my influence, or what I can do change someone else's world, even if it's a small little thing.

Shawna  20:15  
So love that maybe a week or two ago, my husband, Chad, and I were coming back from somewhere, and we were at a stoplight. It was a long light, and we're just watching, you know, we're just waiting our turn, but the cars are going by, and I asked him, I'm like, Do you ever wonder, like each one of those cars is holding a different story, like all these cars are going by, and every one of them contains a story of a family, of a person, of a brother, a sister, a mother, whomever. And he was like, No, I just want to go home. But I know I was like, dang. I wasn't trying to be too philosophical, but at the same time, you just think about that like every single individual is walking around with their own POV, right? And so that's so cool that you brought that up, which is cool about the show, right? Because we're able to tap into that and ask people to share a little bit of themselves with us. And I think that helps to open our eyes to the other things that people are going through, and realizing there's a lot that we can resonate with, and then some things that are actually completely unique to them. Kind of in that same vein, I would like to know what you want to take away from this season, like as we're talking about people's stories and things, what are you hoping to learn or get out of this experience this year?

Marcel De Jonghe  21:36  
Me, I love hearing people's stories, because I've only ever lived my own life. I only really can feed off my own experiences, and just been able to tap into the world of other people, but especially people who are mixed, especially racially ambiguous. Still, this year and last year, especially, got questioned about my blackness. I've been questioned about, am I black enough to do certain things? And it was 2025, and you're

Speaker 1  22:06  
like, come on, like we're still there.

Marcel De Jonghe  22:10  
You're allowed to have the opinions, but I don't want to hear them and compare. There's this safety in numbers. I'm not alone. My heart would bleed for anybody who has to experience some of the stuff which I've experienced. And my experiences aren't probably even that bad compared to some of the worst ones out there. But knowing that it happens to others, it's kind of cathartic. I want to stipulate I'm not looking and salivating at other people's pain. I'm not like one of those people. It's just that I think there's a lot to gain to know that we're not alone. Yes, because I think for a larger, round amount of mixed people, there is this sense of loneliness. This like you and I get along like a house on fire, one which probably one of us has set on fire

Shawna  23:03  
or both different rooms.

Marcel De Jonghe  23:05  
Didn't know, yeah, but that's not because we are mixed race. It happens to be one of the catalysts which brought us together. We just happen to have similar ideals and ways of thinking. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to meet another mixed race person and just suddenly get along with them. 100% 100%

Shawna  23:27  
you know, I'm so glad you said that, because I do research in the area of multiracial or mixed race experiences, specifically at work, and it's really interesting, because some of the results I got back from the survey, there are people who were like, Oh, my God, thank you for doing this, and I get to share my experiences. And there were other people that were like, are you serious? Why are you asking me about this? One person responded and said that I was racist because I asked them about their mixed race experience. Now, by the way, the survey was voluntary and anonymous, so they did not have to answer, but they did. But I thought it was so interesting that people sometimes equate conversations around race as racism because they've been taught to be colorblind, ie not see color or not to acknowledge it in an attempt to erase racism. And there's a lot of differing views on that, like whether that should be the case or not, but the truth of the matter is, I'm not even biracial. I'm multi generationally mixed, yet I am often assumed to be biracial, so the questions that I get, the way that I'm treated, often means I have very similar lived experiences to people who have had parents of two different races. I just didn't the mixing in my family happened generations ago and ta da, this is, this is how I am. So I think, yeah, it's very key to point out that, just like a person who identifies as being Asian or identifies as being black is not necessarily the same as somebody else who identifies those ways, people who are mixed are not all the same. In fact, it's even more complex. I would venture, thanks for bringing that up. I think that's something that comes up quite a bit, actually. Speaking of which, what do you think gets oversimplified when people think of mixed race identity?

Marcel De Jonghe  25:13  
Suppose it's more of a locational thing here. Whether the UK had this thing for a very long time, and still, I would say it is. It was glorified having a mixed child, having a child who was light skinned, who was coffee colored, and it was, and it was just this weird fetishism about it. And interesting. It's odd, because, like you said, None of us look alike. We all look slightly different, and there is no picture perfect mixed heritage person or mixed race person. However, it is. If some people say, are you getting easy, easy time in life? You can tread whichever walk or path you want, like that. That's actually half the time. That's not true. It's dictated by how people perceive what you look like. It's like he's got freckles, he's got but he's got an afro. So I like this. This man looks like a really terrible version of like, Guess who? And don't worry, for the first, like 35 years of my life, I was, I was playing Guess who with myself. But the fact of the matter is, our identity isn't always our choice. It's how people want to perceive us. I get mistaken as white so often by white people, and they embrace me, and I hear some horrendous things, because they think it's a safe space to be upset in front of me, and I'm straight away up there to tell them that weird ideology just gone and spouted I am not part of. And they're like, What do you mean? Like, just to make it very clear, you need to know that my mom is a black, African woman, and you just see their face go, what? I'm mixed heritage, but you don't look it. That doesn't give you carte blanche to say what the hell you want, and it doesn't also make me forget what you've just said, correct?

Shawna  27:13  
Also, yeah. Like, why do you think just because someone might kind of look like you that that's okay anyway, like just because you might share some similar features or phenotypes doesn't mean that people are going to automatically default to your way of thinking, this idea of your identity being dependent on what other people think or how they perceive you. That's social identity theory, and I've studied that quite a bit. I still am constantly figuring out who I am and how I fit in this place. Maybe it's because of the history of the US, but people really do care about race, even if they don't want us to anymore, and it's something I think about because other people's perceptions impact how you are treated, or how you get to walk through life.

Marcel De Jonghe  28:00  
I must admit, I think we probably have a easier in the UK when it comes to how certain people perceive black ethnicity and also mixed we don't have a history of, okay, I need to be careful about slavery. You know,

Shawna  28:23  
before us, you stopped it before we Yeah,

Marcel De Jonghe  28:26  
yeah, yeah. We were also one of the main instigators of it

Shawna  28:33  
all around this world.

Marcel De Jonghe  28:35  
There's this thing called Winter ish, which is over here, which is the first boat which came over from the West, indies landed. And it was the name of the boat was Wind Rush. And that was after the Second World War where Britain, or the Commonwealth, was asking for people from the Commonwealth states to come and rebuild the UK. So you had this influx of people from the West, indies from Asia, from Africa, even Eastern Europe, which not many people know about. You know, most people think it's the West, indies especially. But like, yeah, people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, no, Central Africa come over because they were Commonwealth countries and they had the right to come over here. So their rights were a little bit more spared, I would say. But was their path welcoming for them? No, no. They still faced copious amounts of racism. You know, you couldn't rent a place. You couldn't find a room for lodgings. The signs would say, No, blacks, no Irish, no dogs, and that was the sign in the window. And then

Shawna  29:40  
help rebuild, but you can't stay here.

Marcel De Jonghe  29:42  
Yeah, yeah, we'll allow you to fix it, but you're not equal. But that doesn't mean that we haven't got our history. We've got the history and the UK and their relationship with racism is complex, just probably as if not. Are more than the states. I think racism isn't as overt over here as it is probably in other places, but we do have, like, siloed areas where certain areas of the UK are exceptionally white. You know, I've looked the stats, and I know that stop and search if you're in a very white area, unfairly impacts black people or people of mixed heritage, because primarily that homogenous exposure the police over there, oh, there's a black person over here. My own experience of black people, oh, my own experience is on TV, and there must be criminals. Oh, let's go and have a conversation with them. And it's like, well, your biases are built from things because you don't actually have black friends. You don't understand the black community, you know, and which is completely, to an extent, understandable. But then, once you're aware, you must do more.

Shawna  31:00  
Yeah, for sure, while it was a horrible time 2020, here with the combination of trying to survive the coronavirus, in addition to a very violent year with the murder of Ahmad Aubry and George Floyd and others that really made people pay attention to the biases that they held like I feel like we did make some steps forward, but it's almost like the current administration and those ideals have given permission for people to boldly be racist without apology. What's interesting is that many of them will still deny it, but at the same time, you're kind of like, that's okay, show me who you are. Don't, don't, let's not try to, you know, do the nice thing. I often cite the Staple Singers song. I know a place, do you know that where Ain't nobody crying? No, I thought, and then the next line is ain't no smiling faces. And it used to confuse me, because I was like, why would I want to go somewhere where there's no smiling faces? But the line after that is lying to the races, because it was this idea that you smile the whole while you're persecuting people, right? That's the nice the nice way versus the kind way. And so we still have a lot of that too. But I think people post 2020 the authenticity has gone up. For better, for worse. Some people are authentically and unapologetically racist, but at least we know, because they're not hiding it from us, and so at least you know what's in front of you and what you're dealing with.

Marcel De Jonghe  32:45  
I can deal with the overt racism because it's there. It's the microaggressions, it's the small indignities, and you can't quite put your finger on it, but you know that there's something wrong. You know that, yeah, the atmosphere is frosted when you walked in.

Shawna  33:01  
And it's maddening, yeah? And it's like, because you know, you know, there's a thing there. Yes, I agree, yeah. I think there's a lot of people that do dumb shit that don't even realize they are like, I think they're starting to learn. But the microaggressions can come even unknowingly, like, if they just haven't had exposure. Also, I think people are deciding these days whether they want to continue to have patience or not, because it's like, Okay, I think you should know now,

Marcel De Jonghe  33:29  
Michelle Obama, they go low, we go high.

Shawna  33:33  
Yeah, people aren't doing that anymore.

Marcel De Jonghe  33:36  
I stick by that. I am not.

Shawna  33:39  
I shouldn't say people so generally, a lot of people aren't doing that anymore because it hasn't worked. And, you know, I'm in the Washington, DC area, and we have the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And on one of the levels, they have an like a sit in counter from when they used to do the sit ins to protest segregation. And you can, like, pretend you're at the sit in and it asks you questions like, Okay, this just happened. Your friend has just gotten snatched off the stool, and you know, whatever's happening, how do you react? And then it basically, depending on your answer, tells you what, oh, you would be an activist, or you would be a freaking writer. You would be this person you know in that time, and I'm just thinking, like, what would I do? Because part of me wants to have a lot of self preservation, and I want to be safe, but the other part of me, I have a very strong justice gene, and I want things to be right. So I think it's about how you go about trying to make change. I'm not at all an advocate for any kind of violence. So I won't go low, by that means, but now I'm much more likely to speak out. I feel bolder. As a matter of fact, I challenged people for 2026 to be bold and be courageous, and it's not easy to do, but we're at a time where there's a risk that if we try to go too high, things. Are going to go on in a bad way, whether we're up there or not. And so do we need to be on the ground low, facing his head on so I think that's just something that we have to decide, right? And to be honest, it's kind of a day by day thing. These days,

Marcel De Jonghe  35:16  
it's about how high do you want to put your head above the parapet? Because the more you look

Shawna  35:21  
fancy the parapet.

Marcel De Jonghe  35:23  
What is that? It's a British saying. It's like, when you put your head above the parapet, it's like, from my understanding, correct some few people correct me here.

Speaker 1  35:34  
It's done in a castle where you've

Marcel De Jonghe  35:39  
got, like, the top of the castle, where you've got, like, the top of the castle, and they've got like, little squares, and it does people can't see it, like a turret parapet, yeah, and like, you want to stick your head above it, and you're like, oh, look down. The more you peak, it's peaking. But the more you do it, the higher you go, the more they can see, the more are they Yeah. They have

Shawna  36:04  
Yeah, that's true. You become the target, right? You're right.

Marcel De Jonghe  36:08  
And I've done that before. I've stepped into spaces where I thought I was going to help, and I ended up being person chewed up, and you're like, what? Yeah. But in it is knowing when it's right to do it, and even then you're going to get it wrong. So sometimes you just got to be prepared to face the consequences of a decision. But it comes down to if you cut me in that in the middle, I'm all about integrity, as long as I could sleep at night knowing that I did the right thing. Yeah, you know, I need to be able to look at my daughter in the eye when I'm older and say, I have done the right thing by people. And I would like you to do the

Shawna  36:50  
same, but do it better, like you said, that 1% better. So because, I mean,

Marcel De Jonghe  36:56  
she'll do it better because she's a female, because, you know, come on, you heard it here first, ladies, yes, I'm not gonna lie. Women are able to do what we do, and that's with about two tons of weight on their back. Imagine if that weight got taken off them.

Shawna  37:35  
So we're about to dive in to the season. Marcel, I'm wondering what would make you feel proud when we reach the end of season six? What do you hope to look back on and go, I'm proud that we accomplished x, y, z.

Marcel De Jonghe  37:50  
I'd love to just help people come out of the ambiguity of who they are and just not care when it comes to mixed heritage. It's like, what? Why am I trying to please one part of me when I am a whole you know? I'd love it that people are in a position that they feel confident to step out of their home, their workplace and not worry about what version they need to be that day, even if it's subconsciously, you know, let's be honest, I used to think I have to dress a certain way to for people to understand, Oh, he's got black in here because of the way he dresses, you know. And then I used to hate having to wear suits all the time, but then I eventually embraced that part of me because, oh, he looked very professional. But then people would think I was white, and they would be

Shawna  38:41  
shocked, because they equate professionalism with whiteness. Yeah, look.

Marcel De Jonghe  38:46  
Man's wearing a three piece suit. He's got a tie on. Oh, and then sometimes, if I took my suit jacket off, oh, my God, you've got tattoos. And then that would be like, Oh yeah, you can see them through my shirt. Oh yeah. You'd be like, a person with tattoos. Like, what does that even mean? So you know, to be able to be in a position that someone just walks out and goes, I can't be more than one person. I can't have two people living up here. I need one conducive place for me to exist. I just, I just want people to find their sense of belonging, that sense of worth, and their worth is not dictated by how people perceive them, but how they perceive themselves. That would be the

Speaker 1  39:30  
goal at the end of all of this, for sure. Yeah, I appreciate that you're here

Shawna  39:36  
with me to have these conversations. We have so many interesting guests already lined up. I can't wait to introduce you to them. I've gotten to meet a few already. It's going to be a phenomenal season. I'm always happy every season, but I think whatever's happening in our world at the time definitely shapes the kinds of conversations that we have and how people. People see themselves and the way that they move in their spaces. So we've got some great conversations ahead, and I'm so glad that you're here to have them with me. Well, listen, we are trying something new this season. I would love to invite you to participate in this box. I have a whole bunch of cards which contain quotes from previous guests, previous co hosts, of our true colors, as well as folks who have been participants in my studies and I've interviewed them, or things that they have shared in their responses to open ended questions. I'm calling them the mixed messages. We have a lot of mixed messages out there, but I have felt like for a very long time. We don't have enough of these conversations. So I thought, how about if during our podcast episodes, we can introduce yet another voice, even if they're not here? So I'm going to randomly pick a card and read the quote to you this mixed message, and I'm just going to ask you to respond to it. It doesn't have to be an experience that you've personally had. I would just like to know what it brings up for you. You game?

Marcel De Jonghe  41:04  
Okay, yeah, I'm down for that. All right, here we go.

Shawna  41:10  
I picked one key. Let's see it says this, there may be a feeling that you are in between two racial groups, but not quite part of either. That can be very isolating and lonely.

Marcel De Jonghe  41:23  
What comes up for you? I was thinking, I don't know why, but I'm quite a visual person. It's like Joe, when you go in in you're flying and you're not quite at the location you're going to but you've left your home and you're in no man's land. Are you looking over and you can see that your flight the track where you are and you're in the middle of the ocean.

Speaker 1  41:47  
I would say that's what it feels like, the liminal,

Marcel De Jonghe  41:50  
liminal space, that that bit where you're just you're nowhere, you're coming from somewhere, and you're going to go somewhere. You're constantly trapped in this always up at 30,000 feet. Never quite there, never quite where you were, and it's just that feeling of, okay, when will I get there?

Shawna  42:12  
Wow, that's such an interesting thing. Because for me, I kind of had this spectrum in my mind, right, some kind of continuum, but more of a fixed beginning, and as in, like a, how do I want to say like a static place? But in your analogy, the way you saw it, there's still motion happening. You're moving. You're moving from or towards, even if you haven't arrived. That's an interesting way to think about it.

Marcel De Jonghe  42:46  
Yeah, it's just, just feels like sometimes we're not always in control about where we go into land or where we took off from, which I would like to start taking more control over.

Speaker 1  42:57  
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Shawna  43:16  
Again. I'm just so grateful that you are along this ride with me, and we're gonna have a great season. I just know it have such great insights. I love the philosophy. Actually, I'm not even a big philosophy person, but you come up with some good stuff.

Marcel De Jonghe  43:29  
They just roll out of me. I can't even tell you where they come from.

Shawna  43:32  
So thought provoking. It's great. Well, is there anything that you want to leave us with before we close this very first episode of season six.

Marcel De Jonghe  43:43  
I think I said about sonder. I think it's such a impactful way of looking at the world. Is anybody who's listening, you have the ability to impact a million lives by just a small little change. We're not the most important thing in the world. It's hard sometimes to express that to ourselves, and we sometimes think we are however, let's be kind. Let's be nice to people. And if we don't know what the people are going through, just remember, we're just all part of this human mess which we are trying to survive. Why not have some fun, share some kindness whilst we're here. Love it.

Shawna  44:25  
Well, y'all, that is the season six opener, and I am so glad that you were here for it. What I love about this conversation is how clearly Marcel names the experience so many people struggle to describe. It's that liminal space that being in between, moving through the world with an identity that's real and whole, but still constantly filtered through other people's assumptions. And I've just got to highlight sonder, the idea that Marcel shared with us, this reminder that everyone you pass is carrying a full life of their own love, stress, Joy. Grief, pressure, hope, all of it. It's such a simple shift, but it changes how you move through the world, more curiosity, more care, more humanity, which we need a lot more of right now, as we head into the season. That's the energy I want us to keep honesty, nuance and the courage and boldness to be ourselves without trying to shrink into whatever version feels easiest in the space. If something in this episode hit home for you, check the show notes for ways to connect and share this episode with someone else who might need it. You can also reach out to me directly, and you can always learn more at true culture consulting.com including how to sign up for updates about my upcoming book. Mixed signals. In the meantime, stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon. You

Jason  46:03  
You've been listening to Our True Colors.