A Prescription For "Racial Imposter Syndrome"

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Shereen and Gene look at "racial imposter syndrome." It's what one listener described as feeling fake, or inauthentic, in her identity. We invited listeners to write in, and hundreds of bi-racial and multi-cultural people shared their views. We'll also talk to social scientists about the basic need for belonging and the role language plays in identity. Later, writer Heidi Durrow joins us. She's founder of The Mixed-Remixed Festival, the largest annual gathering of its kind in the U.S.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I can't be the only one with racial and post-or-sendron.
0:05.9	So do you hear from other listeners who feel like fakes?
0:09.4	God, I hope the answer is yes.
0:10.9	I'm going to feel so goofy.
0:12.9	That's Christina Oglevi reading an email she wrote to us and we didn't want to leave her
0:16.3	hanging so we asked you a few weeks ago who out there feels like racial and post-or-send.
0:21.7	And Chereen, everybody was like, me, I do.
0:24.8	We got so many emails, hundreds of emails from people saying that they felt the way Christina
0:28.7	did.
0:29.7	I don't look next, I never felt as though I quite fit it.
0:32.2	In a way I think I feel guilty for even sinking apart black.
0:35.4	Like I don't deserve to identify that way.
0:37.6	I barely know any stories about my family members life in India, Iraq or Iran.
0:42.0	I kind of feel as sadness about the whole thing.
0:44.4	I feel like claiming these cultures feels wrong like I'm an imposter.
0:48.6	At the same time it's my actual family background and I wish I had more of a connection to it.
0:53.3	My parents do not read or speak Japanese.
0:55.6	I'm too whitewashed and Americanized to fully understand and relate to the immigrant
0:59.8	experience but never seen as an American.
1:02.8	I feel like an imposter.
1:04.4	How can I be Mexican if my dad doesn't think of himself that way?
1:08.4	Just in case you haven't figured it out, you're listening to Code Switch, I'm Shreen
	...

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