I just realized I'm mixed.

I was thinking about how to make myself look better, and during that process, I asked ChatGPT using the image tool to analyze my facial hair by sending a picture of just my beard. It told me that my facial hair is above average for a 22-year-old. Curious, I asked why that might be the case.

ChatGPT explained it could be due to genetics and ancestry. That’s when I remembered: my grandfather is from a small French island called Île de la Réunion. I then asked why I have olive skin a term ChatGPT used to describe my complexion and it began talking about the island’s colonial history. I already knew about that history, but I didn’t expect the realization that came next.

I mentioned to ChatGPT that some members of my family have a skin tone somewhere between Black African and Black Indian, and that although I appear white where I live (in northern France), I tan very easily when I travel to the south. In fact, when I go there in summer, people often assume I’m from Morocco. Over the past ten years, I’ve met a dozen Arabs who were convinced I was Moroccan.

ChatGPT then referenced the fact that Île de la Réunion was a French colony and that enslaved Africans were brought there to work for white slave owners. It pointed out that my family members on the island who are Creole and dark-skinned are likely descendants of those enslaved people. That could explain why I have dark eyebrows, an above average amount of facial hair for my age, build muscle easily, and have olive-toned skin that’s when it hit me.

Even though I knew my whole life that the island was a former slave colony, I had never fully processed what that meant for me. The fact that my family has darker skin means that I’m technically a descendant of slaves.

Because I’m white-passing, I had always just seen myself as fully white. So whenever I heard discussions about slavery or anti-colonialism, I listened to them from the outside as if they were about something Europeans had done. More like: “Wow, my ancestors were part of colonialism and slavery.” But now, with this reflection, I realized that my ancestors weren’t just involved in that history they were the ones who were enslaved. They were the ones who fought for their freedom, in the spirit of men like Toussaint Louverture.

I know it might sound stupid or ridiculous because I do pass as white, and that hasn't changed. But what has changed is my entire perspective on myself, on my family, on my heritage. I don’t even know how to process the fact that I’m not “white-white” like I always thought, but actually technically mixed.