Newly Minted

Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

How racist is that?!

This post is being resurrected from July 2009:

The aethetics of race are a necessary reality, but they are also proof that race is at a minimum fluid at a maximum completely arbitrary. This morning, walking from my car to my office I noticed several students of color. Some may have been african american, some latina, some mixed race. I had noticed several similar students the day before but they had been to far off for me to engage, but I saw them. I saw them in a way that I do not necessarily see the rest of our student body. This morning I decided to speak to the students. I had to think about it, not because I don't speak to students; rather, my hesitation was due to my awareness of how and why I was speaking to them.

When I presented at an October conference on Race, Ethnicity, and Place, I presented my own work on mixed race identity formation in United States millenials. I am always nervous presenting mixed race scholarship in front of race scholars. Often the feed back, if not lash back, has been ferocious. This conference was different, I am different - more confident in my scholarship and in the reality of mixed race. The conference participants were not only engaged but nodding their head affirmatively. A very big deal for me. I even had classmates there who were not antagonistic to the conversation as they often are. I had several good questions that allowed me to think out loud about what mixed race IS. But the question that really made me feel like I had really settled in to THIS mixed race scholar was the one from a woman in her 60s. She asked THE question. "Well, this is very nice but if you light you white, right?" WRONG.

I may have blogged about this moment before, but what it leads me to is our thanksgiving this year. I married into an irish family and my irish niece is marrying out. At some point, after several vanilla appletinis, I decided we would get all the brown people in the family together for our own photo. My two sons and nephew to be thought this was a great idea. My daughter REFUSED to join us. Her brothers physically lifted her up and made her join the picture. You can see the pained expression on her little face. If I had let this go, as if I let ANYTHING go, this would have looked like a bad case of nine year old passing.

That night as my daughter and I lay snuggled together, I asked her about the picture. My daughter burst into tears and said "I want to be browner, I am too light to be in the picture". Are we kidding? It is so very hard for me to wrap my head around her aesthetic location. I think some of my own self-image issues keep me from EVER understanding why such a beautiful child would feel bad about how she looks. I do know her brothers tease her mercilessly about being white and she defends her mixed raceness until she cries. My child had NEVER identified as white.

So, in some weird reverse example, I am experiencing the power of aesthetic in race and identity formation. My daughter's reflected identity is not the same as her political and familial identity, just like my own. My daughter identifies as mixed race and the world keeps insisting, including her brothers, that she is white.

The last thing I want to say about this is, I wonder how much worse this would be for my daughter if mixed race identity was not an option in our family. People do accept mixed race and can reflect that back to her in an affirming way, so even though she may lose her location once in a while, she can find her center quite easily. Even at nine my daughter appreciates the importance of being able to identify as mixed race which is not only her racial identity but it is her socio-racial familial identity as well. As she was drifting off to sleep Thanksgiving night, reassured that she does belong in the brown family picture, she said "my school is so racist, they only let you pick black or white and over half the kids in my school are bi-racial, how racist is THAT?!" Very.

More soon...

Sunday, November 28, 2010

There are always gifts in the things I do not finish. I was going through unpublished posts and found this entry from January 2010:

I walk into a grant writing meeting today and an esteemed colleague (and I mean that I adore and respect this woman) says to me: "Oh, you looks so beautiful with your hair up. You have cheek bones and eyes. And it is not a big fizzy mess." For those of you who are not following the subtext of this conversation, here is what I heard: You are normally a hideous black mess when you wear your hair natural. I am so distracted by your natural hair that I just realized you have the same basic bone structure every other human being has. Afros are unkempt hot messes that are not appropriate nor attractive. Thank you for doing something with your self.

Sigh... I went to the bathroom where all good brown girls go to cry. I think at times I forget what I look like to other people. Frankly, I don't look at myself very often. Maybe I am avoiding seeing myself in the mirror.

One thing did happen THIS TIME that was different. Before I left the bathroom to go cry I said something like "I just started being comfortable enough to wear my hair natural and down. It is new for me and I am very happy with it." I was happy with it.


Interestingly enough, this is the key to the anxiety I have been having since before Thanksgiving thursday. I got my hair done. I got a fun, flippy weave because I decided to have my braids cut out of my hair. I had dreads because my hair grew like crazy after my surgery... Anyway... I should be able to make choices like this without feeling bad. But, I FEEL bad.

Before I got my hair done I asked a favorite colleague what I should have done. My colleague said "I have NO idea, but I am really tired of those braids, if I am being honest". Thank you for being honest, now. And did anyone think I didn't know the braids were grown out? OK....

Then of course, I am overwhelmed by the change in my hair and feeling very self concious. My husband keeps telling me I don't look like myself. My daughter's little friend says I look like Beyonce and my mother in law wants to know "what I did to my hair". Funny thing is, except for my husband, they all thought it was MY hair, and it still wasn't right.

I had gotten my hair done because I have a job interview tomorrow and what I realize is that I have created a situation where my colleagues (I am interviewing for my own job... state regulations... blah blah) will be so damn distracted by my hair that they won't hear a thing I have to say. One could argue that anyone who had their hair changed the day before an interview would have these fears or that anyone who changes their hair would experience this kind of feedback. My colleague changed her hair and everyone told her it was stunning, no one tried to touch it, and life went on. I promise you that will not be the case here.

So not only do I have interview anxiety, I have black hair anxiety as well. I have to sign off now as I am off to the theatre... Where NO ONE cares what my hair looks like. Thank god for performers egos that dwarf my own, it keeps me sane.

More soon...