Inspired by Black History Month, Sydney Leroux, the multiracial rising star of US Women’s National Soccer Team, opened up about her own racial identity: “There is no more normal . . . we are all just people floating around the universe.”
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Sydney Leroux is your typical 20-something American. Her Twitter feed is a hodgepodge of comments about the latest season of The Bachelor and Scandal, updates on her day job and photos of her and her friends. The only difference between Leroux and the barista at your local Starbucks is Leroux is also one of the up-and-coming stars of the United States Women’s’ National Soccer Team.
“I want to shake up the norm, I want people to realize there is no more normal. That we are all just people, floating around the universe.”
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As the US prepares for the World Cup in Canada this summer, Leroux finds herself in a unique situation. The American striker was born and raised in Canada. Her mom is Canadian, her dad American. Although she has been playing in the United States since she was a teenager, Leroux still struggled finding herself as part of the growing multiracial class.
This month never really meant much to me. Growing up, I hated the color of my skin. I tried everything to be like my friends. Hell, I even wore blue eye contacts – as if I thought it was really going to change who I was. I grew up in a community where there weren’t people who really looked like me. I remember being so mad at my mom – why did I have to look like this? Why did I have to be so different from my family? Why was I the odd one out? Why was my hair like this? Why couldn’t I be like everyone else? I wanted to be what I thought was normal and looking back on those times, I want to shake myself awake.
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Leroux is not alone. About 2 million American children have parents of different races, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
In the United States, marriages between blacks and whites have increased by 400 percent in the last 30 years. Leroux now represents a growing class of multiracial children looking for acceptance in a world that has long discriminated against them:
No matter what color skin you have, or where you come from or how different you are you should be so proud of yourself. Who wants to be the same? I want to be different. I want to shake up the norm, I want people to realize there is no more normal. That we are all just people, floating around the universe.
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According to the American Psychological Association, multiracial children are also often subject to institutional discrimination from government, private and public organizations. Many schools do not permit multiracial students to choose more than one race on demographic forms. This lack of control in being able to properly self identify has been shown to affect one’s mental health:
I struggled with that a lot, maybe it was because I never really had a strong [A]frican American figure in my life. I didn’t know who that part of me was. All I knew was that my mom couldn’t do my hair – but she tried the best she could. We would sit in the tub when I was a little girl and she would braid my hair for hours. She did the best she could and it was always her and I, and it still is.
“To have people look at you as a woman of color and say, ‘I look like you, I want to be like you,’ and have them believe that it is possible. When I look down at my hands I am not angry. I am proud. I am empowered.”
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The Los Angeles County Department of Health Service conducted a study in 2002 to “examine the relationships between role model characteristics, psychosocial functioning and health-risk behaviors.”
The results showed that 56 percent of the adolescents identified with role models. Those who identified with role models they knew personally showed higher levels of self-esteem and stronger academics.
Research has long stressed the need for women, ethnic minorities, and other disempowered groups to have role models in organizations as exemplars of achievement, said a study by Donald E. Gibson and Diana I. Cordova of Yale University. That role model is what Leroux is now becoming:
What I’m really trying to get at though is this moment. I truly believe I had this defining moment in my life a few years ago when the USWNT was training in Fort Lauderdale. We must have had an open practice where a bunch of the kids were able to come and we took a picture with this girls team who must have played for the clubs fields we were using. So practice ended and it was time to take a picture with these girls. This one girl, ran through everyone. She was in tears, and she threw her arms around me and looked up at me and said, ‘I look like you and I want to be just like you’ with tears running down her face. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life because it changed me. It upset me for being mad at my mom for making me look different, it upset me because when I was her age I hated the way I looked.
Soccer is my love, but it is not my life. What happened that day – was my life. The ability to have people look at you as a woman of color and say, ‘I look like you, I want to be like you,’ and have them believe that it is possible – because that was not always the case. Here is a picture of her and I and if she ever sees this message I want her to know that she changed my life. When I look down at my hands I am not angry. I am proud. I am empowered.
Leroux no longer hides from her own image. In 2013, she was featured in ESPN’s Body Issue. Leroux, exposed for the world, proud and empowered. In her first full year on the team she averaged over 2 goals per 90 minutes. On the field, through 67 national team games Leroux has 33 goals.
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Children are constantly looking for role models. Their eyes, minds and hearts absorb everything. They long for someone to look up to, someone to mimic. Someone like them.
Too many times the innocence that makes children so unique is the same things that inflict pain. Children build role models up on a pedestal only to watch the legs get taken out from underneath their perch. Too many times the real stakes of life break our hearts as we witness true characters exposed. Too many times our role models fail to live up the expectations we set for them.
In the case of Leroux, sometimes, they’re even better.
For Leroux’s unfiltered words, click here.
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Photo Credit: Flickr/Monte Isom