‘Rubbing Your Skin To See If It’s Real’: Boris…
Boris Kodjoe could also be eternally positive, but his experiences as a visibly Black biracial little one had been something but. In a sit-down on the Pivot podcast, the actor opened up about his tough upbringing in Germany.
Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty
In response to a query about what his expertise was like being raised by his white mom in a predominantly white nation, Kodjoe gave a weak and trustworthy reply.
“There’s ignorance and misinformation and fear,” he said. “Because that’s really where it comes from. I was faced with racism and bullies every single day growing up in Germany because I was different. Kids reaching out grabbing my hair, rubbing your skin to see if it’s real, asking if we live on trees in Africa. Just the most ignorant, dumb things based on, again, misinformation and fear.”
He continued,
“On top of it, my mother’s white. My father’s from Ghana. But my dad left when I was between three and four years old. So, it was just my mom and me and my brother. So, I always felt different and you know when you’re a child, all you want is to be just like everybody else. You want to belong. You want to fit in. And without my father there, it made it so much harder because I didn’t have anybody to relate to. I didn’t have somebody to protect me. I didn’t have somebody to explain to me what this was. I think my mother did an extremely admirable job in putting a sense of pride and a sense of confidence in us.”
He also chatted about how he felt when his father deserted their household and how it formed his method to both manhood and parenting.
“When I was in first grade, in maybe kindergarten, they tell you to paint a picture of what you want to be when you get old and become an adult,” he said. “Everybody wanted to be firefighters and athletes, I wrote down I wanted to be a father. So, that was my goal. I didn’t have one present and I knew what it felt like to be disappointed and to feel abandoned.”
He continued,
“When my father left, he told me ‘take care of your mom and your brother’, I used to be 5 years previous and I took that to coronary heart. And it f***ed me up for 30 years because I assumed if I do a good job, he’ll come back. And he never got here back. So, I assumed, ‘oh, this is my fault, I didn’t do a good job.’ I carried that with me for a long time. So, all of that had a big influence on me as a father because I knew how important it was to be current for the youngsters at all time and I wished them to really feel protected. I wished them to really feel beloved. I wished them to really feel validated. I wished them to really feel empowered. Thankfully, we acquired a second probability with my dad because my daughter had these points and he was a doctor. My mom called him and the next day he confirmed up to my home in LA.
Kodjoe went on to say that though he hadn’t seen his father since the day he left their household, that he would spend the ultimate 10 years of his life making up for the misplaced time and forging a relationship with his and Nicole Ari Parker’s kids.
Watch the touching episode below:
The post ‘Rubbing Your Skin To See If It’s Real’: Boris Kodjoe Talks Dealing With Racism As A Child In Germany appeared first on GWN.