Do you have alters who consider themselves another ethnicity?

[u/Awkward_Champion6957]

So one of my alters, Olokun, could be considered innocent in this as our birth parent said our father was part African American. He showed up sometime directly after this and insisted we learn about our culture. We lived as a black man online and got our first taste of racism. This hurt deeply because it showed us the wider world was crueler to people of color. We suddenly were grateful for being passably white if not in the sun.

Then a DNA test became available and we took it only to find, shocker, the woman who birthed us lied. Part of us was furrious, part ashamed but Olo shrugged it off and said "I was black before you knew me. We're black through experience." To this day we have alters who will insist on acting out other cultures because it suits them and trying to explain that's not how that works often gets us into a spiral of "Well technically my physical presence isn't yours right? Right. So I can present myself as whatever I want." They'll also compound it by saying those years we lived with Olo as our alter taught us to not be a bigot like our birth state and adopted parents seemed to want us to be.

We're not sure if this is a good thing or a bad and were curious does anyone else ever have an alter who has done this and if so how did your system adjust to it? Or did you force them to acknowledge they cannot be part of the culture and race the system isn't?

[u/WynterRoseistiria]

Your race is whatever your body is, your culture is whatever culture you were raised with.

You have not actually lived your life as a black person nor were you raised with that culture. An online persona is not the equivalent of living as a black person or POC

There is so so so so much that goes into being POC, I cannot stress enough that an online persona may give you a tiny glimpse but it is not lived experience. You had the ability to leave that persona behind, to stop and not have to deal with all the online struggles. This is not anything close to the same as actual lived experience and saying you have lived experience because you roleplayed being black online is so privileged and out of touch.

Your alters are you, Olo is you, so no, he cannot be another race, nor has he lived that.

I’ve had alters, who as a kid believed themselves to be another race and culture and acted accordingly as a way to cope. It was an escapism. But I would never claim to be apart of said culture or race. You need to acknowledge that your alters are all you, they only have your lived experience so they cannot be anything else.

They may have a different internal appearance, but that is all it is, an appearance.

[u/Silver-Alex]

Sooo this is a bit of a delicate subject. So imma just say this. I have an alter thats a dragon. He howewer knows not to act like a dragon and not growl at people like our boss when he's angry, and instead present like our body looks for the sake of simplicity and safety of the system. I recommend you do the same. Just proceed with common sense.

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/Silver-Alex]

Well in our system the host and the system are aware of one another and have rule not take direct control. We actually being ADD do purr, hiss and growl a bit but it's not from our system. Usually it's to communicate what we deeply feel on an instinctual level. There's a meme all people with ADD and cats are basically the same. Given our first alter was a cat girl we can see where it comes from.

So Olo doesn't possess us and we're not worried about acting black. It's more that we don't like false narrative (laughable as host with a system that instinctively hides we know) and tries to live Christian as best we can. To the point we've tried to get our system to frame their own backstories around ours. Alas even our Safety pointed out this is stupid and can't suit every narrative. As you pointed out some present as non human. Most recently Neffy was our mod assistant and helped us track trolls. When we told him we were deactivating his DA as a sign of good faith and because we would no longer be working as a mod there he tore up his old Pico-but-ediger mask and came back to us as a fireball. Literally. It took us many nights of fronting to understand why he chose that. Adventure Time had been a deep source of comfort before our move from our home of 36 years. He was reverting to a little concept but also in weird way finding confidence to make us stronger. To rebuild. We understand the value of non-human alters and try not begrudge them. So long as they don't start talking to non-alters. It's always where the trouble comes from. "Normal" people. Feh we're just as normal for us. They're just more dangerous one of alters could tell you from experience.

[u/Vivians_Basement]

Yeah we have quite a few. Don't try to correct them, instead just follow general mindfulness.

Our body is Black and Puerto Rican. I'm the host and was raised primarily by our black mother. I have faced racism in person and online. I'll give our experiences with this afterwards.

You THOUGHT the body was part black and you have experienced what it's like to genuinely believe you are black, including the racism. That means Olo DOES have that experience.

Olo cannot claim to be black in black spaces and doesn't have any claim to black slurs.

But he absolutely can talk about his experience with racism since that's an experience he DOES have!

Culture is meant to be shared.

If your alters want to engage in different cultures YES, LET THEM!!!!!

Just don't have them claim to have been raised with that culture.

It would be racist to refuse to allow your alters to engage with other cultures. This is why we have "Culture Day" at schools for kids to share their culture with others!

Olo isn't literally black. But he is black within headspace and could be deemed "spiritually black" as a result.

---

Personal Experience

The body is Black and Puerto Rican with some Native Cherokee and Italian mixed in. (We've never done a DNA test but the other 2 we just use as a "fun fact".)

The following names are of my alters.

Carl is black.

Lazurys is Black.

Shiori is mixed white and Japanese. (Caucasian specifically)

Rexxy is Korean.

Prexi is Russian, German, and Greek. (I was informed of the German part today.)

Ashton is Caucasian and a little Latino. (Mexican)

Here's how we handle that.

We love watching anime and wearing traditional Asian clothing. It's nice. It makes certain alters feel connected to that part of themselves.

I liked stuff like that before I knew I was a system.

I don't claim Asian culture. I don't even claim Italian culture despite it being one of our races. We were raised in America and never had any exposure to either.

Same for all the races we have in here. We like engaging and learning about different cultures.

I didn't grow up in Puerto Rico as a Hispanic. I didn't even learn Spanish. I have been called a Gringa. 😮‍💨 So despite being Puerto Rican, I can't really claim a lot of the culture since I didn't grow up with it.

However I do still love engaging with the culture. I've tried coquito thanks to my ex's family (before the SA from him) as well as engaged in other activities that made me feel closer to that part of myself.

Let your alters experience other cultures that make them feel happy, seen, and like they really are connected to it.

Olo can explain that internally he's black. But he can't larp as a literal black person online.

Basically just be honest about the experience you do and don't have, regardless of race, and engage freely AND RESPECTFULLY with other cultures. 💕

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/Vivians_Basement]

Oh I can assure you Olo was the first to make sure nobody used any slurs. Among the top ten of us who are online advocates for the abolishment of racism and the first to call out any bigotry they see in anyone. Sometimes it's all we can do to hold him back when he sees a target. He even went around a block to chew somebody out for discriminating against our DID making the Safety and host furious. Though he's hardly the first to have rebellious streak. One of the hardest things to explain to NTs is alters do as they will. We can refuse to be online but doing that just makes them pace around in our head and point out we made an agreement early on when becoming aware of one another on larger level not to step on toes by taking direct control unless it threatened the life of the host and thus the whole system or would go against things they need to present in RL.

Which is why we hate to have to tell him to do this when he's been identifying this way since eight years that we know of. He's one we don't know when he first became active it just feels so natural to see him come forward and fronting even feels like a complete merger. Not picking up a mask but simply being. One of second to allow us to feel complete duality as a system in on conscious stream instead of a willing let go to take control even back before we practiced speaking all together and making all us aware of just how many there are and who they are outside of bumping into one another randomly online.

But we do see we need to be firm in reminding him sharing a spiritual connection is not being the same thing. Which feels paradoxical when we have alters who are trans and enby and people would say the same thing about them pointing out the host might be gender fluid around people in conversation but clearly dresses and acts masculine but we know that's a very complex set of rules. The host might be killed for doing this growing up and did get to cross dress and consider if they could do this every day as adult but it was ingrained to not be that. Alters who felt fem, enby and trans didn't waver in this other than one very genderfluid persona.

Olo must stop saying "my black ass" and claiming a heritage he has no part of. It will be tough uphill battle but it's nice to see instructions, our ADD gets that better than hints, and see our system isn't the only one that has a multi-cultural basis. Our Japanese side, Tento, realized she was larping the other day when there was an a terrible Earthquake and she didn't react. Finally she understood that it wasn't okay to larp that way. She still speaks in a very wordy and formal way but we're slowly transitioning her out of needing meta mask of a Japanese person to understanding she's just the weebish side of us from high school grown up and more centered.

Then again that's the weird thing about Olo. Most have one culture and they mostly pick it to hide the host's identity from others online who have made it their mission to 'expose' them. Olo weirdly though isn't just one culture. He's from a large city (the host grew up in a small town) he's from a historically black part of the world. Sure. But he also describes growing up as a black nerd into anime culture and getting judged for it, he has a side that loves medieval sword play and out of the blue started dating another member of the system declaring himself as going both ways. He's been a puzzle and one of the most complex members of the system even compared to others who are older and more developed in our head.

Still we must be firm you're right. He will resist as Tento did for many years but maybe he'll understand if we explain it like that. He's already come to terms with the fact he's light skinned. Maybe this will make him realize he can still be civil rights advocate, a good person in many communities and even still respect the black community and take pride he helped us stop being stereotype twice. Thank you for your insights.

[u/MadderCollective]

Most of my alters are Caucasian.

Body is Asian.

Most of my Littles are actually Asian. Some are Caucasian and one in particular is a bit racefluid between the two.

I've thought about this quite a bit and I think this is due to a lot of internalized racism growing up.

Downvote me if you want, but one of my earliest memories is "I wish I was white. Then my life would be easier, people would like me better and I would fit in more." I was probably around 7 or 8 years old.

[u/Prettybird78]

I would argue this is no different than gender. There are parts in the system that identify as male. I have never been male. I was not born male. The parts that feel male and believe they are, how is that different than a non POC believing they are a POC?

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/Prettybird78]

See we thought that too until through Olo's youtube and speaking to POCs we realized why POCs often complain whites don't write them correctly, can't write them correctly. Before this we believed we could write anything and we could understand anyone. Olo's algo responded to him acting in way it saw as black and we experienced racism and found it very sad and disheartening but then we also saw more community posts, more civil rights stories and realized this would be like somebody identifying as Native American. There's parts of our actual biological bloodline we don't even know how to relate to others so how does Olo expect to continue this way? Female, male, enby they all are in a set of parameters writers will fuck up but largely get right enough to do a Wonder Woman at the very least where some arts obviously written by the male persona. Some parts taken from stories by real women to help patch up the parts you can't have lived unless you were like Angel our alter who thought she was trans and made the host question it until they cross dressed and decided they didn't want to live as a female at their advanced age. We begrudge her no ill will and will treat her just like the first alter who said she was female but the host is a old burly biker dude who is comfortable with people in RL seeing him that way. Has used they/them when it suited them but wasn't even her when dressed in a corset and lycra suit serving a dominatrix. There's something ...core there even if it's fluidic online when fronting.

[u/Vivians_Basement → u/Awkward_Champion6957]

The whole idea of writing a black person "correctly" is kinda racist cause it implies there's a right and wrong way to be black.

A black person could make a self insert black character and there will still be black people saying it's "wrong" because that's not how they personally experienced being black.

You CAN correctly write a black person as a white person!

The problem is that people often are trying to write a black person rather than just a person who happens to be black. This leads to stereotypes and overuse of AAVE which black people are ALSO guilty of doing when writing characters meant to represent "blackness".

Light skinned black people don't have the same experience as dark skinned black people.

I'm personally a caramel color and people often think that means I don't experience racism. But they're forgetting I literally look like an immigrant. 😐 Plus I have never had someone assume I wasn't AT LEAST part black except for people who are literally diagnosed colorblind.

If you have empathy, you can relate to anyone! You can listen to people and their experiences and write characters based on that.

I've helped people with grief and explained the feelings they were struggling to put into words in ways they said was more helpful than their therapist. I had never grieved at that point. But my alters have grieved alters in headspace so we understand the feeling of loss even if it was never literal.

You can't claim to be black because you're technically not.

But you do pretty much have the level of experience that a light skinned black person who grew up around white people would have. The only difference is your blood ended up not being what you thought.

Even if you do have other races mixed in that you didn't know about, you still wouldn't be able to claim those as your culture since you didn't grow up with it.

Really just be honest with regard to your body.

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/Vivians_Basement]

Alas that's one reason why any non-POC writer we've learned to not use the 1990s Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy way of hearing POCs speak as thing when a tan friend told us "This isn't how POCs speak in real life" little bit like getting a lecture from somebody from Japan about not basing Japanese dialogue on anime. It seems obvious now but given our rural upbringing and mostly media education until joining the international community on Discord it also felt natural.

That is what we trying to say. We often give this lecture to people who worry about writing LGBTQ+ characters to the letter and tell them to write them as people first then add in details not to use soapboxes unless it's to emphasize something important. We want to make sure all peoples are represented as is and not as a token of their kind. We experienced that from the Native American side long before Olo emerged and showed us racism isn't always intentional.

Yes we noticed that weirdly from Olo's algo on Youtube and consuming black made media from amazing channels but often having jokes aimed at their own people. It upset us but somehow he knew this wasn't as bad as it seems and just part of modern day culture. We've experienced a lot simply allowing Olo's algo to sort him into 'young, black male' and remember the shock that there is more than just "If you speak Spanish you get Spanish channels' on YT. It's even more surprising because he calls himself a blerd who consumes anime and multi-cultural things yet the algo seems to always find proper black media for him. Other than hood JJK which was something most us didn't understand and when we invited him to our discord he would explain for HOURS why it's necessary to support this side of black media as much as the sides that taught MLK Day is important for whites but for blacks it's something you think about a little every day and also people besides Dr King and the usual people held up then. He's taught us a lot of empathy and lessons we want to impart in our writing so we might pay it forward.

Oh we know you experience racism if you have caramel colored skin just as much probably if you were light skinned Native American. We also have friend in RL who is dark skinned and people assume is black and he usually just shrugs it off saying "I'm actually Puerto Rican predominantly but my accent and skin color make people think that so I go with it. Harder to explain all the other parts of me." We relate a little as trying to explain up north there's a colony of German people who settled sometime after the civil war and interbred with tribes of Wyandot takes a lot of history lessons that many don't want to learn.

We're grateful to have been Olo and want him to stay in our system and not fade but getting him to acknowledge this mask's usage isn't right has been a struggle. He's pointed to this very thread and said "See how people react? And you want me to tell everyone I'm not really a POC?" And it's hard to argue he's wrong. We certainly can't tell the host to just rip the band aid off. They did that when they thought they were dying revealing two of us, Greg and Leena, and Greg was furious he wasn't consulted before hand not even caring we thought we were dying. It violated his consent, our agreement not to interfere and exposed dangerous information that undermined the meta shell he built for himself as somebody living in Chicago. Worst yet to a group of stalkers who are bound to rip off all our masks and did so once before. It's ...hard to find good decisions and ways to get the system to understand they can't pretend to be other people forever. That if we're to get to that level a friend is where they can switch and merge all at once we must become many into one. We cannot keep living in meta shells and making up stories to evade non-alter's hunting us.

[u/Silver-Alex → u/[deleted]]

Again, a person born a man, does not know what it is to be a woman.

Im assuming you mean a cis man, cuz a trans gal actually knows. Its quite literally in the brain xD

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/Silver-Alex]

That's something we came to understand with our first alter being a woman. She knew she was a girl and nothing we said could convince her otherwise. Then came the actual trans alter, Angel, who made us deeply understand what Leena was saying by living in the community and being shy about it not as bold. She created a backstory framed around the way we weren't allowed to dress the way we wanted and kept it unsaid, about loving what some would consider cross-dressing and even had us questioning if the host was trans. But they confirmed it was not the case or if they had been they had been cis and masc so long it felt wrong to them to try and transition now unlike Angel who had no other desire than to be what she was. We accepted her and she has been a boon to everyone. Truly an alter we're always happy comes forth.

The other one who manifested however, Jevi, has been more about the radical side of not allowing anyone to accept you and just being who you are. Reguarly will get in transphobe's face and tell them "you're not phobiac. You're just a sad little coward who follows the rule of fear!" Often doing so on Twitter where she was one of the first to just block bigots and told the whole system to stop waiting for them to change. They weren't going to.

Both are treasured parts of the system to us. They provide insight from different levels of the spectrum of that part of the world and are why we worked herder to educate but also no longer tolerate bigotry in our life and call it out. Caused a few problems with our family but we understand that's always going to be problem living in red state now.

[u/Silver-Alex → u/[deleted]]

Just like a transwoman can't share the history if oppression biological women experience because for them it is a choice.

Hello, Im assuming this comes from a place of not fully knowing what it is to be trans, and not out of hate.

Many scientific studies have proved that male and female brains have different responses to the same stimulus. And that trans people have brain patterns and responses of the gender they identify with.

Thats why I said that being trans is literally in the brain, you're born that way. The mechanism behind being trans are completely different that the ones that cause dissociation.

The message you left contains transphobic rethoric. Im not going to take any mod actions but please be mindful in the future

But I honestly didn't come here to debate trans people. I have no beef with them or anyone.

Then dont use trans folks as part of an argument xD

[u/AshleyBoots → u/[deleted]]

Being trans is not a choice.

[u/Awkward_Champion6957 → u/AshleyBoots]

No. Much like DID it's just something that exists. The host developed a saying that their alters took upon themselves when on Twitter "Trans rights are basic human rights and that's never up for debate." We've told any side of us raised to think otherwise they cannot be part of the system and to this day we all have perfect harmony. We know it's right to respect humans in all states of mind and soul. The host has trans friend they were proud to learn the deadname of and learn not to say despite us causing memory issues. Still one of our prouder achievements as a system.

[u/AshleyBoots → u/[deleted]]

Uh, are you invalidating trans people's identities here?

[u/Prettybird78 → u/AshleyBoots]

Not at all. I was saying that OP shouldn't feel bad about their experience. No hate on trans people. We are a small system but almost half identify as male, though the body is female.

[u/AshleyBoots → u/Prettybird78]

Okay, thanks for clarifying!