Tia Mowry Discusses Choosing to Identify as Black Despite Biracial Heritage
Actress Tia Mowry is opening up about her choice to identify solely as a Black woman despite being biracial.
It all went down during a recent “The Cool Mom Podcast” appearance with host Lizzy Mathis. The “Sister Sister” star, whose mom is Afro-Bahamian and father is English and Irish, explained that her decision was rooted in her life’s experience.
“My mother is Black, you know what I mean?” she began. “My mother is dark-skinned, and I have seen, and I have felt her struggles as … a Black woman. Umm, and so to me, of course, my dad is white, but I am an extension of my mother.”
The “Family Reunion” star said that while she acknowledged her “mixed race,” she identified as Black because “That is how I’ve been viewed, how I’ve been seen.”
The former child star also shared that growing up, she was raised to see herself as Black. She jokingly referenced the “one drop” law that, for years in the United States, claimed that an individual with “any traceable amount” of African-American ancestry could not be considered white.
“That’s how we were raised, and so, that’s how I consider myself, and I just feel like that is my purpose, like I was saying, and my passion in life is to be that representation for my community of diverse women and Black women,” she said.
