050 – Dem Smell De Blood, They Know Who You Are

Kennon was raised by in the lumber town of Mattawa, Canada, where he was one of the only people of color in the community. Growing up in a predominantly white community, he later had trouble assimilating into the black and Jamaican communities when he moved to Toronto. Struggling to find himself, Kennon journeyed to the land of his roots, Jamaica, discovered Rastafarianism, and ultimately found the love and acceptance he missed his entire life.

The post 050 – Dem Smell De Blood, They Know Who You Are appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Kennon: (00:05)

She just said, like, I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you. If I knew that just I would have gone to Canada, myself to bring you back to Jamaica, to make sure that you grew up around your people. You know,

Damon: (00:22)

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis. And today you're going to meet Kennon. He called me from Markham, a suburb of Toronto, Canada. Kennon is a man of mixed race who grew up in a predominantly white community. And the racially charged comments he heard in his youth were alienating for a guy who just wanted to belong. When he moved to Toronto, his upbringing in the small town hindered his ability to fit in with people of color throughout Kennon's life. It seems like he didn't belong anywhere until he found his roots in Jamaica. This is Kennon's journey. Kennon grew up in Matawa Canada, a small French Canadian lumber town. He was a Brown skin child in a community filled with white people. He said it didn't take him very long to feel how different he was from the rest of his community.

Kennon: (01:36)

I was different than others because I lived in a principally white community and a French Canadian community. And I was Brown you know or black or whatever you want to call it mixed. I'm mixed race. So, you know, I'm not, uh, I'm not the darkest man around, but I'm also not a, nobody would mistake me for a white person either. So the pressure of being different, you know, probably prompted me to inquire with my parents, uh, probably earlier than most adopted kids might as to why I'm being targeted for being different and all those kinds of things. Right. You know, my earliest solid recollection of, of really starting to feel that sort of, uh, awkwardness and, and, and understanding that I wasn't, the child of my parents was probably, I don't know, seven, eight, nine years old before it really started to like sink in, in a way that I could, you know, actively think about in a conscious manner.

Damon: (02:40)

That's fascinating. And what did you think about what, when you say you were targeted for being different, what kinds of things were happening to you that really sort of flagged your difference?

Kennon: (02:53)

Well, I mean, you know, principally, it was name calling, uh, you know, I heard the N word lot when I was a kid child. I was called Oreo cookie a lot, like Kamala the Ugandan giant. Like there were a thousand names that people had me, you know, tar baby, uh, you know, there is even within my family, you know, my, my mother's uncle, I remember used to always rise me saying I was blacker than Toby's arse and things like that. And, you know, I didn't really think much of it maybe at the time, but, you know, and I'm thinking about it in subsequent years, you know, that's a, that's a highly offensive racist kind of a statement.

Damon: (03:36)

Yeah.

Kennon: (03:36)

And, uh, and this was a man who, who was a native American, right? Uh, not a hundred percent, but probably 50 or 60% native American. And so it was a weird dynamic between him and I, I would, I would sometimes fire back, you know, things at him to sort of, you know, degrade his person a little bit with respect to his, you know, but it wasn't, it wasn't healthy. It was definitely something that undermined my confidence, a great deal. When I was young,

Damon: (04:09)

Kennon is feeling his differences from others. He's hearing racist, epithets barked at him by his peers. And even his uncle when he asked his parents, liberal teachers respected in the community, why he was being singled out, they tried to remind Kennon that there was nothing wrong with him and challenged the ideals of those who would attack him.

Kennon: (04:30)

They provided me a fairly consistent message of, you know, it was a combination of, you know, you're special and you're unique. You're not like the others, but that doesn't mean you're bad or that there's something wrong with you. And then that usually followed up with, uh, with some messaging around other people being ignorant and other people, not really being able to, to understand and appreciate who you are because of their own backwardness and things like that. So, you know, they did their best to defend me, but, um, and to sort of give me some tools to sort of help manage, you know, what I was feeling, but, you know, they couldn't, they couldn't really speak to me, you know, as a black person, they couldn't really give me much more beyond, uh, you know, just kind of show yourself up and be prepared because this, this is going to be the last of it. And the people that are going to call you these things may not be your friends. And they may not truly, you know, understand themselves either. And that kind of thing. It was more along those lines.

Damon: (05:33)

Kennon said that he was a happy kid growing up, playing hockey, going fishing and riding his bike. But as he got older, things changed, he said, his urge is to search for biological relationships started when he was a teenager. And he was further isolated.

Kennon: (05:50)

Once I became a teenager and I started to see my other friends start dating, you know, it just seemed like there was no girl that was interested in me and anybody that I asked out, very quickly said no, or, you know, oftentimes I would hear like I couldn't because my parents would absolutely lose some of their minds if they knew I was dating somebody like you, things like that. So that's what really started to sort of make the whole thing, start to percolate that little bit more to say, like, there must be something else. There must be some other place, some other people's or some other place I can move to, to find somebody of like minds of light skin tone, you know, all those kinds of things.

Damon: (06:31)

I was, I'm glad you raised the part about dating because as you, as I asked the question, I'm thinking to myself, you know, this guy's growing up in a predominantly Caucasian lumber town. He's, I mean, you had to be one of maybe two, if any other people of color. And I was wondering about that, you know, you grow up, you start trying to date, you know, the dating circle can be very, very close and competitive in