From Luanda Angola to Los Angeles: Joy DuVivre on Mixedness Across Borders

What would people assume about you if they could only hear your voice? In this expansive and thought provoking episode, Dr. Shawna Gann and Marcel sit down with global cultural commentator Joy DuVivre to explore identity across borders, histories and lived experience.

Born in Romania to a Romanian Romani mother and an Angolan father, and raised primarily in Angola, Joy brings a deeply layered perspective shaped by colonial history, colorism, migration and disability. From the legacy of Romani enslavement in Europe to the impact of colonial borders in Africa, this conversation moves across continents while staying grounded in one powerful truth: identity is fluid, contextual and constantly evolving.

Joy shares reflections on colorism using the framework coined by Alice Walker, the historical reality of Romani persecution including during the Holocaust, the parallels between Romani experiences in Europe and Black experiences in the United States, and what it means to become disabled after building a career rooted in physical expression. She also introduces her playful yet powerful identity markers like "West Coastian" and "Sunsetter", reminding us that belonging can be self-defined.

In this episode, we explore:

• How perception and voice shape racial assumptions
• The global roots of colorism and colonial hierarchy
• Romani history, enslavement and ongoing discrimination
• Afro Romani communities in the American South
• Assimilation, survival and generational silence
• Disability as identity
• Why mixedness is not a box but a lived experience

Joy mentions her excitement about attending the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference taking place February 19 through 21 at UCLA in Los Angeles. Click here to learn more about the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association. Consider becoming a member!

Don't forget to check out Dr. Gann's new book, Mixed Signals: A Multiracial Window into Civility and Belonging at Work available in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. 

If this is your first time with OTC, check out  EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram

Our True Colors is powered by The Culture Crucible. Go to THE HUB to learn more!
Consider joining the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Intro  0:00  
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.

Shawna  0:22  
Hey, Marcel,

Marcel De Jonghe  0:24  
hi, Shawna, I have a question for you. Yes, hit me.

Shawna  0:29  
What would you say? Like if you were to be dropped into a room of people who are blindfolded, like they can't see you, they only hear you, right? So obviously they're going to make some assumptions based on what they hear. What do you think that people would assume about you before they knew anything about you?

Marcel De Jonghe  0:47  
Okay, so just based on my voice, and I've had this too many times, like way too many times, I'm a white, Aryan looking guy, in their perception, my voice is quite deep. I think it therefore has a level of authority. But then I'm also very open to talking about the softer stuff, so that maybe we'll start giving a clue away. But always remember, once someone got my CV, rang me up and we were talking, and it was a recruiter. And then, yeah, okay, so you know what? Why do we connect to LinkedIn? And I yeah, cool, cool, cool, let's do that. And she's like, Oh, just gonna copy your name in now, I can only find this guy with freckles. And I'm like, Yeah, that's me. And she's like, No, no, no, as I should know what I look like. She was adamant. And that's just, I had to ask, what did you think I looked like? I'll be honest, blonde hair, blue eyes, kind of guy. So I've walked into spaces and people Double Take when I tell them my name, because it isn't what they assume. But I think that's less nowadays, because we can look people up on the internet, we can work out, oh, that's going to be the person that the perception is right now I'm rocking an afro, which I don't normally have on any pictures, so that's usually a talking point.

Shawna  2:06  
You're saying people are surprised once they go,

Marcel De Jonghe  2:09  
Oh, so you are black. Isn't the only token thing which makes me black. But yeah, it's perception is a dangerous thing to have, and it can really make someone feel othered quite quickly, because you can see people backtracking. They're like, you're not what I expected. Yeah.

Shawna  2:32  
They're basically like, reconnecting dots. They thought their dots were connected. And they're like, oh, shoot, this is a different picture.

Marcel De Jonghe  2:38  
Yeah, so, but does that really change how you need to communicate with me? Does that change how you need to treat me? And if so, that's something you as the individual need to think about more. I have my level of intelligence. I have my own thoughts, my feelings, color of my skin or my ethnicity should have no influence on how you then go and treat me.

Shawna  3:00  
I agree, but I think that there are a lot of folks in this world who, I mean, honestly, all of us, to some degree, rely heavily on categorization, right? Because we do have these sort of expectations and these assumptions that are made before we get to know someone at a deeper level. And I think folks can be surprised when they find out, like, oh, what I had expected isn't really true, or there's more to the story. But isn't that true for all of us? There's always more to the story. And so it's about having people get to know who we are and what we're about. Yeah, for sure.

Marcel De Jonghe  3:35  
Yeah, we're more than skin deep, absolutely.

Shawna  3:37  
Well, I ask you that question because we have such a fascinating guest joining us today. Her name is Joy de vivre, and she's a global cultural commentator. She's a storyteller, a writer, and her work explores mixed identity across post colonial and transnational contexts. She was born in Romania to Romanian, Romani mother and an Angolan father. And Joy was raised primarily in Angola, but has lived across Europe, Africa and the United States. Her professional path includes work as an actress, a television presenter and multimedia producer, and she now writes from Los Angeles about her cultural identity and also belonging while navigating life as a disabled person, her perspective is shaped by a lifetime of being read differently across borders, languages and racial systems. I think you will find she has a wealth of knowledge, and she brings in her own history, while also being able to tell us a lot about racial, ancestral, geographic history as a whole. You ready to meet her? I sure am. Yeah. Joy. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Joy  4:42  
Hi, hello, Jana, hello Marcel, thank you for having me. It's a moment for showing my true colors with you.

Shawna  4:50  
I love it. I love it. You know, our show is a lot about identity and belonging in general, but everybody that shows up, even if they show up. Up as identifying as a mixed race person, racially ambiguous. However, that is every story is different. Everyone sees themselves a little bit differently. There is no one bucket for mixedness or being multiracial and multicultural. For our listeners, could you describe yourself a little bit? How do you identify and how do you see yourself presenting in the world?

Speaker 2  5:18  
I go usually by context. Depending on the context, I will use different epithets or objectives, but generally, I like to see myself as cosmopolitan, someone that is used to travel, you know, interact with different culture, different societies, different people, and also work in different settings. So I'm a very much of a city doll, experienced, yes, the farming side of life, and for all the people that think that they will survive in the wild or like you're too comfortable with the city, city conveniences and privileges. I also like to identify myself as West Coast Ian. And I discovered that in a very, very funny way, I was in Eugenie in Copacabana, which is like a big one of the beaches right there in the city, and I was spending the day, and by the end of the afternoon, I was like, why something is off here? Like something is off. And I couldn't pinpoint. I was like, something is off, until I turn around from the ocean and start heading back to the street, and I noticed the sunset behind the buildings, and I was like, Oh, this is east coast. Rio de Janeiro is east coast, so there's no sunset on the ocean. I'm a Sunsetter, so I'm used to see the sunset over the ocean. I grew up doing that. I am from a West Coast, and then that became engraved in my mind if I go to a place that I cannot see the sunset diving into the horizon of the ocean, it's not for me. So I became very happy to find myself permanently in Los Angeles and being another West Coast mimicking, basically my home city in Luana. So yeah, West Coast Ian is a thing for me.

Shawna  7:27  
Usually, when I ask people that question, like, can you tell me about yourself, how you identify? Probably because of the premise of the show, folks immediately talk about their racial heritage or their language, or something about their physical features and how they look. I think it's so interesting that you described how you physically are in the world, the coast, the city. That's really cool. I never thought about it like that. So thanks for introducing yourself that way.

Joy  7:54  
Well, I missed the part where I was about to say that, because I'm a global person, I'm just like Beijing Stani or brown isnani. That's it. You have the Whitey stand, the blackest tan, the beige iStan and the brownie stun. Yellow brownies stun. You know,

Marcel De Jonghe  8:13  
Malaysian I've heard everything, but not brown is Daddy.

Joy  8:21  
If we start analyzing racism from the perspective of colorism, especially in urban societies that are more and more globalized, colorism, it's more deep. Is a deeper discussion than racism. But like Alice Walker said, colorism exists within communities, but also exist in a global perspective. There's certain advantage that people would say, Oh, this is a white privilege, or this is a white adjacent privilege. But it depends. Some people think like colorism only happens within the communities of the global majority. However, on a global spectrum, doesn't work like that, because colorism came as a result of racism, and one of the things that affected me most my entire life, and I spent my life trying to prove wrong was the fancy girl epithet slash destiny. So fancy girls, and this is the translation I found more accurate to describe were the mixed race women in French Louisiana, before the Louisiana Purchase, that were a better alternative for many white men to engage as an extramarital affair than engaging with a black woman, a monoracial Woman's biracial woman was always like, boxed into like you're pretty enough, exotic enough to be at the moment. Mistress, that person that will be taken care of financially, that won't start, won't have to work in a field, because of that exotic appeal of being mixed race. And this was part of the culture, and believe it or not, is not exclusive of the United States. It's part of the entire Latin America and Africa. You know, I have a fourth great grandmother that was enslaved in what is now Angola. So people usually forget that, because coming from Africa and the social dynamics was better to call off your your ancestor, that was the European one, you know, you have to, like, pull something up. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe dark skin. Let's say my entire family looks like, like the skin tone of Dave Chappelle. But they would say, yes, black. But I am not the N word, you know, because that's the distinction, or history, the ancestry, or I'm black, but I'm not indigenous, you know, I'm not Bantu. Bantu, you know? So, because that will allow people have access to assimilate culturally, to the colonial rule. So do you? You could get a better job, get better payment, get better housing.

Shawna  11:23  
What's really interesting about what you're saying? And Marcel and I have had conversations about this a little bit here, and there is this idea of proving one's ancestral roots in order to gain membership into a space, whatever that is. I feel like things have changed where folks who have black ancestry in the US don't want to be seen as white much of the time, many folks are like, Wait, see my blackness, or see my Asian Ness, or see my whatever non whiteness they possess as part of their racial and cultural heritage. So I find that an interesting swing where many people want you to see the parts of them that are non white, and want to prove that part it's I just find that fascinating. The other thing that you said that I'd love to just mention, I like to highlight this, is that you used the Alice Walker definition of colorism, which I always do. She's one that coined it anyway, but many times colorism is described as being a preference towards lighter skin. Alice said it's a preference towards a skin color, and that tells me that it depends on the context you're in. Sometimes it isn't a preference for lighter skin, and I imagine based on your world travels and your global outlook that you've probably experienced different things from folks depending on your geography, where you are and how people read you despite how you see yourself.

Joy  12:50  
Yeah, that's That's true. I grew up in Luanda, which was a cosmopolitan type of city, a capital. However, I study in public school, so I went to school with everyone, you know, but yeah, you I had that experience in Angola where I would be called White to be teased. However, as soon as a white person came to the room, I wasn't no longer white. I became a mulatto because the same as in South Africa, you have the color category that was implemented very strictly by the apartheid regime. In Angola, the group called mulattos are also their own group and have their own particular culture. I am Angolan. I am Angolan as the context within I was born and I was raised, and that has nothing to do with race, because ethnogenesis happens constantly, and that's how my identity was built, because that's what I was I grew up. That was the language I learned, Portuguese. You know, golden language is Portuguese. Yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  14:10  
So color is still a term, and it's still a group of people in South Africa compared to black. However, you also got a large amount of people from, say, India and Pakistan who are over in South Africa. So yeah, you've got a large amount of cultural diversity in South Africa, but I've been thinking about what you said about colonialism and Africa. Looking back at the history of Africa, how do you think colonialism steered how people perceive themselves? Obviously, you said that borders were built. So countries were made you've got, let's be honest, Europe saw us mostly as a pick and mix Africa, you know, like you take this bit, we'll take that bit. You've got that, you know. So there's multitude of languages and stuff. How do you think that has created division in those countries, or in, at least in Africa?

Joy  15:00  
Yeah, it's the is actually the answer for why many African countries add civil wars after the Declaration of the Independence from the European powers that were kicked out because of the many uprisings and people taking back their country as a collective group oppressed by the common oppressor. So in the case of Angola, or the Portuguese however, when the independence arrived, there were different groups. There were the groups of the North that were more the people that were divided between what is to now the Democratic Republic of Congo and the north of Angola. So you have the same people divided by a border that they didn't create. I actually see a lot of Angolans trying to claim some Angolan purity. However, if they dig deeper, they are ethnically mixed. You know, my Angolan ancestors are a mix of umbundu, umbundu of in bundles of ambo, and within families, the ones in the know, they will be like they're married in the north, so that you still have that heritage of people talking crap against the other ethnic group when the realities that the ethnic ethnicities have been mixing for at least 500 years. So the world has been mixed forever.

Shawna  16:35  
We as human beings can't help our tribalist. He was so tribalist. We want those categories so bad because, and this goes to, I guess here we are back to belonging. It goes back to wanting to belong to a group and knowing for certain which group that is. Because our human nature, we have to feel like we're part of something. And so we need a name for it. And I think that that's that's so hard, you know, especially when you are a person who embodies the complexity of so many different identities, there is no one thing, and that freaks people out.

Joy  17:11  
Sometimes, if you talk with people that are part Chinese and part Japanese, or part Japanese and part Korean, there's this mixed identity issue, because we as human beings are very tribalist, and the root cause of our misunderstandings is xenophobia.

Marcel De Jonghe  17:30  
Well, you talk about like Korean and Japanese, the languages and the words which they use are so similar, it's quite scary when you actually sit down and look at the two common language languages, they're not that too far apart, but there is this gaping hole between how culturally they identify themselves. I think we never look at how similar we are. We always look at the differences, when in fact, there is so much more that connects us in this world, you know, even just the common purpose of life, the common purpose of family,

Joy D.  18:05  
yeah, and that's how a lot of people marry and end up creating mixed people because they realize they are more similar than not. And then there's like, oh, oh. Is what happened to my mom and my dad. They are completely different. Ancestries, completely different countries, but they share so many similarities. They were both coming from struggling political parents and on the case of my paternal side, although my grandfather was on and off jail because of political activities, he was constantly put into prison by the Gestapo version of the Portuguese fascist power. They label him a dangerous man. Wait, wait, wait,

Shawna  18:52  
can we hang here for a second? Because it's a little bit freaking me out, because that's what is happening in the United States right now. There are people who are activists. And, you know, I know people, some folks are probably don't want to talk about this, but I just, I have to talk about the similarity. Just real quick. We had recently two people killed by federal agents. But the government, the US government, labeled these people who were killed as terrorists. And these are just like, one of them is an ICU nurse. The other was a mother who had just dropped off her kid at school. They labeled them terrorists. That's what, that's what this is making me think of, right? I know this is not what we were talking about, but I just had to stop and pause. It's it's telling me that it doesn't matter place or time, these things still happen and

Joy  19:42  
all the time, yeah, and my parents lived under those circumstances. So my grandfather, paternal grandfather, was in the fight against colonialism. Then my father was also in the guerrilla war. For the fighting for independence with many others. He ended up then being sent to Romania because he had the high school so he could go to Romania. And that's when my father met my mother in Romania, and my mother, because was also Romani, her mere existence was political.

Shawna  20:21  
I think a lot of folks listening Joy don't know Romani. Can you explain? Because I think some folks listening don't really know what that means.

Joy  20:29  
All right, so Romani is ethnic, itinerant group, nomadic by tradition, originally from northern India, I would say, Rajasthan, Punjabi, a little bit of Pakistan. And they have been moving towards West due to several factors. So the same way we have now the digital nomad. We got this group that has been over 1000 years moving through Europe and having to experience the construction of borders. And this construction of borders eventually made them a big group stuck in Romania, where they were enslaved for 500 years. If you want a parallel, Romani people are treated in Europe like black people are treated in United States. And so you have this history in Romania, and you have this group that also were put in boats, the same way the Irish, or a lot of people of Celtic descent, were put in boats to the Americas, to the indenture servants. So there's here as a bigger tradition, and as old as the African people that were trafficked specifically for slavery against people of African descent because of the European categorization of human beings, you have this commonality. So you have a man that come is African, has all that background, all that ancestry, even similar to many African Americans of African descent. And then you have the Romani people in Romania that have a very similar parallel situation and experience. And I was like, wow, my parents were actually more similar than different. And if you apply this to many others, even for myself, that I'm in an interracial relationship, it was like, yeah, it's about the similarities we share as human beings more than the groups we belong. Because belonging, I think is fluid, you know, and having this heritage, you know, bound to with some ancestrality of Portuguese, Iberian and then Romani, with some Jewish Hungarian in the mix and some Greek Orthodox in the mix. I was like, Okay, I've been a kind of a multi generational mix. But, you know, people call me biracial.

Marcel De Jonghe  23:05  
I've got a question about that, because not a lot of people also realize that as a community, brutally subjugated to some horrendous things through the Second World War as well, like there is, you know, the Holocaust impacted.

Joy  23:22  
Thank you. Thank you for you for mentioning that the Romani people were the people used to see if the gas chambers were proper to then go after the Jewish people. That's exactly what happened, because they were not considered people like the same experience of black Americans.

Marcel De Jonghe  23:41  
In the UK, you've got black, Asian, minority ethnic now, since the murder of George Floyd, as a country endeavor to try and not use BAME as a catch all. It's, you know, if you're going to refer to an ethnicity group, you don't say, Oh, you're BAME, you would refer to the exact ethnicity of that person. You're Asian, you're black, or even asking them, how do you want to identify? You know, they said that sense of belonging. It's important to know how that person identifies. And we also have the GRT, which is gypsy Roma and traveler in the UK, and it's considered an ethnicity now, but in the last couple of years, since 2008 UK has really pushed to better understand that community. July is grt history month over in the UK, and we understand that there is culturally nuances, but it has been vilified.

Joy  24:34  
There are three groups that were labeled for institutional purpose under the same umbrella, but they are still distinct, that's why, and they will be vilified because, individually, they have been vilified for centuries in Europe. Different european kingdoms and after the abolishment of monarchies, different republics try to kick out the Romani people or the Gypsy because some Romani groups were. For and embraced the label gypsies, like in Spain. In Spain, they know they are Romani, but Gitano. Gitano is the label that you will identify many of the Spanish Romani people. You have different groups all over Europe. In France, you have the manouche, the sinti are very much in the north. They are a group of the Romani people. But some people like the word gypsy. However, gypsy became very associated with a traveler, a type of traveling person, a type of nomad, you know. And the name because came from a pejorative background. Some people embraced it because they don't know, and some people embrace it because that was the symbol or the marker of the oppression. Is a constant, being put down for something that you have no control over, just because people cannot control their bigotry, cannot control their hatred, cannot control the discrimination, biases, and this is all actually manufactured to make some people that are considered part of the privileged group, but racially but they are actually not. They are the pores, and to make these pores the illusion that they are special than others, so the elites keep exploiting all of us. You know, same story,

Shawna  26:25  
different land is everywhere. This is yes, but you're not in the room. Yeah, it's exciting. Definitely. Beast involved.

Marcel De Jonghe  26:42  
You is there in the States, especially recognition for the Romani or traveler community? And if so, how does that look? Or if there isn't, why do you think that is

Shawna  26:56  
the United States so very young and so very isolated from the rest of the world that I think that a lot of our folks just aren't educated on different ethnic groups that aren't immediately in front of them in the United States. So what I have seen is the caricature of what gypsy means. Lot of people, in my experience, think of a costumed version of what gypsy is. They think of the movie, for example, the dis, I think it's Disney, the, yeah, they imagine there's this exotic woman. And also, like, I don't even think they think of men like, I think

Joy  27:39  
they just think of women. Oh, the men are the thieves. The men are the

Shawna  27:42  
well, and they say the women are right. So there's this connotation that there that's the kind of thieves, tricksters. As a matter of fact, there's a word that people will say that I stop folks from saying, they'll say, You gypped me out of that. They don't even know that. It's coming from the word gypsy.

Joy  27:58  
My husband, no, I one day he used that, and I hit him, like,

Shawna  28:03  
Hey, watch him talk. Yeah, I got gypped. And it's like, Yo, that's not okay, because this is what it comes from. It's no different than someone saying, and I hate to even say this as an example, but I think that people need to be educated. It's like saying I got Jude out of that. And some people don't even recognize, like they were taught that to mean they were tricked out of something. But some folks don't even realize what they're saying when they're saying that, that they're

Joy  28:34  
being so entire group of people. Yeah, exactly. So that's

Shawna  28:39  
my experience of what I know about, what folks say or understand or don't understand about the group in the United States. What about from your perspective?

Joy  28:48  
Joy from my perspective, there's the historical fact that Columbus brought Romani people to the Americas. And many Romani people came to the Americas in various circumstances, they also served as in the indenture servants, and in a South like Louisiana, many of them actually intermarry with black Americans, and they created their own communities of Afro Romani. So to this day there's an historically Afro Romani people in the south of the United States. I could never had this connection this discussion and with my Romani family, they tried to assimilate very hard, which is another similarity my mom shared with my dad, like my paternal family, also tried to assimilate very hard. You may not change your race, but if you assimilate into the culture, talk like us, behave like us, you become us. This assimilation is very common amongst Romani people, and over time, some for survival, because there's a moment that you're like, how much more oppression do I need to fight against? Just. To exist. And in the United States, you have those communities. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the war in the Balkans, there was a big wave of Eastern Europeans towards United States and other parts of Europe. And many Romani are now very pale. You know that melanin start fading over time and adaptations and assimilations, many of them, I will put, quote, unquote, pass as white. And a lot of Romani live in America's, you know, your regular American but, but they usually don't talk about Romani, because there's other eastern communities that came to America, you know, to start a new life, and they also brought the discrimination they have against the Romani people here. So it's

Shawna  31:01  
not necessarily like trying to pass among your traditional Americans. They're knowing who else is around them, and they're trying to be careful that, yeah, who know that?

Joy  31:10  
Especially they are other eastern Romanian European immigrants. Yes, for example, there's a big community of Romanians in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have family there. I was talking about racism in America, and my cousin say, Well, we are always deal with that, because, you know, we are Romani. And when they say, Roman is always like, it's all hush hush. I grew up under circumstance, and they talk about how they have to endure a lot of indignities as well, and what we call microaggressions because of that, especially if you are surrounded by other European immigrants. And one of my cousins, the daughter of my great uncle, she moved to another state, and this other state, who was her landlord, was apparently a Hungarian woman, and when she came to visit me, she came to visit me with a friend that also knew her landlord. And while we were eating, she Oh, look at those old photos we try and change because we hadn't seen each other for decades. And I was like, Oh, look at us and her friend that knew her landlord says, Oh, look, this person looks like gypsy. And as a Yeah, of course, that's what you are. My poor cousin. She's a very pale, white, blue eyed woman. Grew red she was kicking me under the table and me not understanding. You weren't supposed to say that priority, yes, I didn't understand this. And then, yeah, I outed her without knowing, because supposedly, if you are discovered to be Roma people, you can lose your home. Oh, my God, yes, literally, literally, because the label, it's so entrenched that people treat it as if is a genetic thing, you

Shawna  33:10  
know, yeah, that. Well, that's the history, right? That gets back to all those other parallels.

Joy  33:15  
Funny enough, I have African, black family, you know, they are dark skinned, but they are very aware that they have a white ancestry, even if they have more black ancestry so far than anything else. And even them with racism and colonialism, they looked at me and my brother like sideways, like they're the gypsies. Oh, look at the gypsies. Oh, they are the children of the Gypsy. So was always this hush hush that my brother and I doing any mischievous kid thing poo is Don't Don't steal it because you're a gypsy, and I never understood the gravity of that, because seemed like a joke, and because my Father never made me see my Romanian ancestry something negative. He just said, like, yeah, you are Romani. So I have a lot of Indian I have a lot of Rajasthani in me. And he says, like, yeah, on your grandmother's side that you've been Roman Europe for a long time, but and your grandfather's side is more recent out of India.

Shawna  34:22  
Bajastani, yes, the Beijing, yeah. So how would you say who you are and how you show up in the world has shaped who you are as a writer, a storyteller, an actor. What's that been like for you? And I know that means different things in different locations.

Joy  34:42  
I have many iterations of how my identity shifted and informed my path, career wise, what I can tell about what I'm living right now is this discovering of another identity, which is disable that may not. Not seem like a very obvious identity, but it is because the disabled community is real exist. Have been fighting for a lot of things that we enjoy today, but we don't actually think about that as a fight for disabilities and disabled people act. And for me, who was a body able person and always had that reliance on my body to pursue my career, especially as an actor, because as an actor, the body is my instrument. Becoming disabled and not being able to do what I used to do made me rethink entirely about my identity, and more so because I was a recent immigrant to United States. So my writing today is informed by those changes, mixed nationality, mixed ethnicity, race, quote, unquote. I'm a global citizen. I've been in a lot of place, seen a lot of things going on, so I try to be flexible on how I set that landmark to identify myself. And instead of being too attached to past labels and to who my parents individually were, I try to find my own thing. Because my parents are my parents. They are their own people. I am my own person as well. I am the one that embodied the mix. My parents were not a mixed couple. My parents were an interracial couple or an inter ethnic couple. They interrelate. I am the one that is the full cake with all ingredients turned into something different, right? Catch it on. I look very much into defining my own self based on what I'm experiencing now and what I like a little bit tidying up with the beginning, a West Coast Ian, a Sunsetter, a brownie stunny beige Stani, so is a is a constant process.

Shawna  37:02  
I we have a new segment this season called the mixed messages archive, where basically I've taken messages from past guests or folks who have participated in studies that I've done, and I've selected some of the things that they've said, because I always like to bring in as many voices into these conversations as possible. So if you're interested in participating, I'd like to select one of these cards at random and just read the quote to you. And it doesn't have to be something that you personally relate to. I would just like to know what comes up for you. Are you interested? Of course, game on. You have all these cards here, so I'm just gonna randomly pick one let's see what we get. All right, got one, okay? It says this, my family never made me feel divided, but the world around me did, correct. Oh, that's a response, correct.

Joy  37:59  
Okay. Is an experience, you know, and like, what is family? After all, depending on which society you live in, family takes different connotations. In America, family is mom, dad, children, maybe grandparents. Everyone else is a relative in Africa or in the Romani community, excuse me, your first cousin is your sibling, you know, and your second cousin is your first cousin, and your third cousin counts as a cousin, and is close family.

Shawna  38:33  
So what does it mean whenever you hear that the family never made me feel divided, but the world around me did 100%

Joy  38:41  
correct, because I mentioned that my dad, my dad in particular, never made me feel like that, but my relatives, from the world view of United States, all my relatives made me feel like that. For example, my stepmother and my step family, they were all multi generational mix, so mulattos group, you know, I didn't understand, but I wasn't like them. I look like them, but I wasn't like them because exactly of my Romani ancestry, you know, like, yeah, we are all mixed, but her mix is not really like us. You know, they are all the epithets that Romani people get to receive, very, very essentialist. Very essentialist is horrible. Yeah.

Shawna  39:30  
Marcel, what comes up for you when you hear that? Okay,

Marcel De Jonghe  39:32  
so I've always had a never good enough feeling from my mum's side, which is the Bantu, black, African Zimbabwean, and that was primarily because the toner run out of when it came to melanin on my part. However, a large amount of my mum's side of the family all mixed. Zimbabwe was a it was South Rhodesia, so you had white people there. But. Reason my dad's DNA fought hard, right? And yeah, I remember as a child, I was different. I was Yeah, but you're not black, are you, though, because you might experience that. You know, you get to walk the walk differently. You get to enter a room, probably not immediately. Get looked at over time, people will start questioning you and but you've already allowed your personality, your ways of thinking, to penetrate their mind, so that they know who Mars is. But my cousins and stuff like that, especially if they're darker, they would say, Well, I'm judged immediately, and that's not fair, so I'm just taking out on you. So for me, that slightly differs. I'm more of the approach. They're actually some of the worst things, or some not the worst things, but some things which are resonated you carry with you has come from family and society hasn't always seen me for what I am. And then when I try to take my place in society as a multi racial, multi ethnic individual. I'm even told I'm not that by society. I'm like, no, no, or you're one of us. And that's why people telling me, don't we see you as one of us. I'm not, though I'm also not black. You know, I am a product of two people come together who have their own identities, and I have a new identity. My family will have their identity when you look back. I never once turned round to any of my families use their color that their melanin as a negative. I think there's a large amount of conversation to which probably not for this podcast, but there's somewhere in the world where we don't talk about how mixed people, the white part of them, is also very, very, very much attacked compared to the black or brown part of them.

Joy  41:53  
Oh, yes, agree with you 100% yes. I can't relate to that experience.

Shawna  42:00  
Thank you both, firstly, for this amazing conversation, and thank you also for participating in the mixed messages archive. This one gets to go in the archive now.

Shawna  42:20  
Joy you're full of so much knowledge, and you could see your global citizenship comes out quite a bit in our conversation. I wish we had more of that here in the US. I wish that we could begin to learn even more about each other despite our geographic separation from the world. And Marcel, as always, you always have such great insights and questions that you bring the conversation. I appreciate you both. Is there anything that you would like to leave us with joy where, if you would like listeners to reach out to you or find you anywhere, or any projects you've got going on?

Joy  42:52  
I think the only project I have going on is being physically able enough to enjoy the critical mixed race study coming to Los Angeles,

Shawna  43:06  
I'm doing a little dance in my chair, because I'm going to

Joy  43:09  
do that. Yes, we meet in person, and then, because I'm so excited about that, me not having to travel so far to be able to attend and participate. Yeah, I can't wait to be there. Excellent.

Shawna  43:23  
Yeah, I'll put the link in there, because I think you can still register Well, thank you again. What a great conversation I've learned so much. Really appreciate it. Take care. Everybody. Be safe out there.

Speaker 3  43:34  
All right, thank you so much. Next time, appreciate you. Next time you SG,

Shawna  43:44  
my friends, I just want to say this conversation was super powerful to me. Joy's reflections on identity as fluid, contextual and deeply shaped by history really remind us that mixedness isn't a box. It's a lived, evolving experience, from colorism and colonial legacies, to Romani history, global belonging and even disability as an identity. This episode offered so many moments to pause, reflect and rethink how we define ourselves and each other. I mean, I might start calling myself West Coast Ian, well, I live on the east coast now, so I don't know if that works, but identity is fluid, right? There is something I'd like to highlight. Joy mentioned at the very end of the episode that she's excited to go to the critical mixed race Studies Association Conference, and it's coming up on February 19 through the 21st at UCLA. I will be there. I am also so very excited. I encourage you, if you're in the area and you can make it to check it out. I'll link the conference details in the show notes, so you can check that out. But even if you can't go this time, I think you should look into the critical mixed race Studies Association. Anyway, I'm a member, and I can tell you, there's so much to learn. The folks are amazing, and it's just so great to have community that gets it as always. You. And find more information resources and ways to connect with me directly at true culture consulting.com and while you're there, be sure to sign up to receive updates about my upcoming book. Mixed signals, I'd love to stay connected with you beyond the podcast. As a matter of fact, you can also find me on the social medias, at the our True Colors podcast, on Instagram or on LinkedIn, find me there. Thank you so much for listening. I'm just so appreciative of all of you for holding space, for complexity and for being part of this community. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon.

Marcel De Jonghe  45:43  
You've been listening to our true colors. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai