Identity and belonging are concepts that mixed race individuals are acutely aware of and may grapple with all their lives. For UW graduate student Emily Gipson, engaging with her own identity in a more complete way is a process that is just beginning. .
Before leaving Wyoming to begin work with The Boeing Company in Seattle as a structural analysis engineer, Gipson looks back on her experience as a Black, mixed race woman in a predominantly white field.
The daughter of a Navy veteran, ex United flight attendant, and now Maritime and Aviation lawyer, Gipson spent her earliest years in airports with her father and developed a fascination with aircrafts that would eventually lead her into the field of aerospace engineering.
Gipson spent her childhood in suburban North Carolina, a place she described as lacking a diverse population that may have given her greater Black representation early on.
“Growing up in Charlotte, [there are] some predominantly black communities happening closer to the city center. As you move out in the suburbs, you see more predominantly white communities.”
“My mom is white, I ended up living with her. I went to a predominantly white elementary school, middle school, high school, everyone I saw was white.” said Gipson.
Gipson went on to earn her bachelor’s from North Carolina State.
“When I went to NC State, There were people of different international origins, there were plenty of people who are black, people who are mixed, plenty of people who are Latinx. There was always someone in one of my classes, someone who looked like me.”
After moving to Laramie, Wyoming to pursue her masters, this was no longer the case for Gipson. She described walking into classrooms as the only person of color and one of few women. Seeing representation in her new community has become an infrequent experience.
“Now it’s like I see someone who’s maybe mixed or has the same hair texture as me, maybe has the same complexion as me and and it’s like Oh, my goodness, I haven’t seen one of us.”
She described dealing with questions of identity and belonging all her life, a very common experience for mixed race children. As an adult, Gipson has made a point to seek out community to begin the hard work of understanding her blackness in a new context.
“There was a lot of time that I spent as a youth, as a young adult, in my early 20s, not really understanding how to navigate being black and kind of saying, Well, you know, I’m not fully black. Well, you know, I’m not dark skinned. Well, you know, I’ve got a white sounding name, and I sound white on the phone.”
“At the end of the day, all these things were excuses for doing the uncomfortable work of facing my own blackness,” Gipson said.
“I’ve had to unlearn that I’m not just white. I am black too, I thought I just wasn’t ever going to be allowed to be a part of this community.”
“And there are plenty of people in the black community who are more than willing to accept me with open arms and celebrate me. And I can, in turn, celebrate them”
This Black History Month, Emily Gipson is celebrating more freely. While engaging in the discussion regarding persistent inequality Black Americans face, Gipson is also appreciating the overwhelming joy and laughter coming from the Black community at large.
“I have really, really loved how out of pocket the black community has been this Black History Month. It feels like with every passing year, everyone’s just getting a little bit more out of pocket.
“When I sit down to watch TikTok and the black creators are doing sketch comedy where they’re pretending to be Harriet Tubman, and someone forgot a backpack and they’re like, you want me Harriet Tubman, to go back and get that backpack? You’re out of your mind. I feel like it’s not closed off for me, and laugh with it.”
“I remember last February, Black History Month, it was all the creators on TikTok, Instagram, whatever, making jokes about like, I’m gonna ask all my white friends for reparations every single day during Black History Month. That’s hilarious.”
Gipson makes this joke among her friends and in her daily life in the month of February.
“I slipped on a patch of ice? Someone owes me reparations. I spill my coffee down my shirt? Somebody owes me reparations. Being willing to make it that absurd and take kind of a weird thing to say, upping the ante every year, I think it’s so funny.” Gipson said.
“There’s so much joy, so much to celebrate. There’s so much Black excellence to celebrate. It is rewarding to be a part of.”
Emily Gipson goes deeper into her experience in a letter written to the Branding Iron on Jan. 24 titled “White Guilt is Lazy”.
