In Spokane, where conversations about race are often minimized or misunderstood, Shakayla Delcambre is creating space for truth through her podcast Blackish in Spokane. Centering the lived experiences of biracial individuals, her work challenges the idea that race is no longer relevant and instead highlights how identity continues to shape everyday life. Through candid dialogue, Delcambre brings visibility to the complexities of belonging, navigating the tension of existing between worlds, and confronting racism, colorism, and exclusion both within and beyond the community. Read more below.
Q: Can you introduce yourself and share your connection to Spokane?
A: My name is Shakayla Delcambre. I’m a lifelong resident of Spokane, born and raised here.
Q: Can you tell me a little about yourself and the work you’re doing?
A: Of course. Blackish in Spokane is a community-centered podcast I created to make space for honest conversations about race, identity, belonging, and representation here in Spokane. One of the biggest reasons I started it is because there’s been this long-standing narrative that racism doesn’t really exist here, and I want to challenge that head on.
I get comments on my page all the time from people saying that they’re tired of hearing about race and racism, or asking why everything has to be about race. My answer is because it’s still painfully clear that not all people are treated equally or even given the same understanding xand grace.
For some people, race is something they get to ignore. For others, it shapes how they move through the world every single day. With my podcast, I really want to center the experiences of biracial people, because so many of us grow up feeling like we exist between worlds. We’re sometimes not fully accepted by either side of our heritage, and that can come with a lot of confusion, pain, racism, and colorism, not just in the community but sometimes within our own families. Those are real experiences, and I think they deserve to be talked about openly and honestly.
Through my podcast, I’m talking with children, teens, parents, and adults right here in Spokane.
Q: How do you define your identity as a biracial woman, and has that evolved over time?
A: Absolutely. I’d say I didn’t even really consider my own race until things started happening to me. As a kid, you don’t know that anything is different between you and other people until somebody points it out.
I’d say I was maybe in the sixth grade before things started going awry, where I started experiencing racism for the first time and really questioning where I belonged. I had biracial friends, Black friends, and white friends, and I was in a weird place with my white friends sometimes because of them being comfortable saying the N-word and thinking that because I’m only half Black, it was okay and I shouldn’t be offended because I’m not really Black.
Then there was pressure from Black friends to do something about it, like, “They’re not allowed to say that to you. You’re Black. They shouldn’t be saying that.” So it was pressure from both sides, and you don’t really know what to do about it.
Q: How did your upbringing shape the way you understand your identity?
A: My mom is white, and I grew up with her. She raised me. I had participation from my dad, and I was around my Black cousins. I do identify as a Black woman, and that is because I felt at a young age that I had no place in a white person’s world. There was never any space created for me to be a part of that world.
Q: What made you feel that way, especially with a white mother?
A: I experienced racism in my own family. My mother’s mother and some of her siblings, not all of them, would make jokes when I was younger. They would put a bandana on my head and call me Aunt Jemima, or just do things like that.
When I got older, I realized those things were wrong. They didn’t see anything wrong with it because I’m their family, and they felt like they could make those kinds of jokes with me because I wasn’t going outside telling everybody what they were doing.
Q: How did that affect you emotionally as a child?
A: I honestly used to laugh at it too, because they thought it was funny and I was younger, so I didn’t realize it was wrong until I was older. But thinking about it now, I felt like I was brainwashed.
Q: When did you begin to understand the history behind racism and those stereotypes?
A: My dad played a really pivotal role in me understanding what racism was, not accepting it, and basically standing up for myself, because I’m a person before I’m a color.
My dad recently passed away, and he died with a lot of pain inside of him. He was born and raised here in Spokane in 1954, and he experienced a Spokane that was very dangerous for Black men. A place where the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan were in positions of power and not really held back by the law. He experienced a lot of joblessness. He experienced a lot of things that he shared with me that shaped my view of what Spokane is at its core.
Despite me being biracial, I have experienced that myself in Spokane as well. It shaped my self-confidence and my self-worth. I have a lot of trauma behind trying to figure out where I belong in this world, especially being surrounded by white people all the time and not seeing anybody that looked like me doing anything important, at least back then.
Q: Do you feel that biracial or multiracial children should have to choose a side?
A: Not at all. I think they should be comfortable being themselves, no matter what that means to them.
Now as an adult, I feel like colorism has more of an effect on kids than the white aspect of it, because I feel like a lot of biracial children and adults are sometimes punished for being half white or for “acting white.” It comes out as jokes and harmless fun, but it really affects your self-worth as a person. Why is one part of myself bad to another person? Why does me acting white have to be a bad thing? Why can’t I just be intelligent? Why does it have to be “acting white”? Because I’m half white.
Q: What would you say to young people navigating their identity in Spokane?
A: That you are perfect just the way that you are, and you don’t have to change in order to be more acceptable. We shouldn’t have to code switch to be more palatable to people. Just be yourself, and the right people will love you.
Q: Where can people find your podcast?
A: My Facebook page is Blackish in Spokane, and I post on YouTube under my full name, Shakayla Delcambre. I also post on Facebook and Instagram, and I’m always doing questionnaires and ways to get people engaged as far as learning what they want to hear about and what is needed in the biracial community.