Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2156955/mma-champion-brandon-vera-hurt-business-fighting
Post Magazine/ Long Reads

MMA champion Brandon Vera on the ‘hurt business’ – fighting prejudice, getting knocked down and rising to the top

The One Heavyweight World Champion talks about everyday violence, growing up brown in the black-and-white US South, and trying his hand at acting

One Championship Heavyweight World Champion Brandon Vera. Picture: One Championship

One in ten I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia. There were seven boys and three girls in our family – not all from the same mother and father. Even though our parents didn’t always get along, all the kids always got along.

My father is Filipino and my birth mother is Italian – she came back into our lives later on. I grew up in a different time, a racist time. Whenever I had to fill out a form for federal paperwork, I had a choice of two boxes to tick: “Asia-Pacific Islander” or “Other”. We were just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. “Other” describes how my life was growing up – I wasn’t the white kid, I wasn’t the black kid, I was something in-between. I learned to be polite at all times and understand that violence is part of everyday life. How to react to violence was something I learned as a brown person in a black-and-white world.