This is great! I’m in the process of writing something like this a.k.a. about having that middle space where we allow some of the two extremes to mix so we don’t get polarized all the time.

And this part of your story here is very relatable as I noticed the pattern not only in racial discrimination but also in gender and social class:

When we moved to the country in Northern California I became known to everyone as the “brown kid.”

I not only felt like the outsider but I demonized that same “outsider” ethnicity so as to identify more with the dominant population.

I was obsessed with my white father’s ancestry and ashamed of my Latino heritage.

Thanks for sharing how you got out of it. I’m still trying to verbalize my process and hope to be able to share it in writing, too.