Newly Minted

Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded

Saturday, February 25, 2012

The fine art of culture switching...

If you are hoping to get a lesson or some insight on culture switching, if there were such a thing, you can stop reading here...

I gave a talk at the institution of higher education that employs me on Thursday. I read a bit of my dissertation. I was scared to death. I had forced my class to come and several colleagues were in attendance. It was actually a nicely filled room.

I read, shared a Kip Fulbeck clip, and opened the floor to questions. Our research librarian asked a lovely and thoughtful question about my research and findings. and then... well...

From my left comes a question that made time freeze. I had just spent 20 minutes talking about the unique location and identity of mixed race millenials in the United States. My colleague asks, with a deep and thoughtful expression on her face as she rises from her chair, "did you find that the participants in your project struggled with the code switching?" She prefaced this question with a long narrative on how she "was listening to, what I thought was, a black preacher on the radio. Only in the last few sentences was I able to recognize the speaker as President Obama". Really?

Blank stare....which always elicits further explanation and no self-reflection....

"You know African Americans speak (air quotes) black English (end air quotes) and not (more fricking air quotes) so called white English..."

Blank stare... (seriously???)

awkward silence...

Finally I was able to speak. I let my colleague know that this never came up in my work and that the participants were more concerned with being recognized in multiple contexts as the children of their parents and family. I went on to say that language and code switching, while a very important conversation, were not part of this projects' question...I also took the time to mention that the beauty and utility of the mixed race conversation is at a minimum a deconstruction of abstractionist views on race, racial identity, and stereotypes. I also stated that I felt like this was a very weird space to be assuming that all African Americans spoke any particular language or that they all code switched. I also pointed out that my own experience was one where I had a singular cultural language and thus had no other code to switch to.

Blank stare...

My (really quite brilliant) response was lost in the fervor of figuring out how mixed race kids handled code switching (which I imagine is like how any other bilingual person switches languages...by the way). Person after person reasked the question and it was clear that they were trying to get me to take a position on code-switching in African Americans. I did not. Perhaps they felt that I could code-switch and was hiding it from them trying to fool them into believing that African Americans can speak "so called white English".

The whole time I was thinking what is it about my body that causes people to think I code switch. I know the answer but what I am confused about in this particular situation is a) these folks know me; b) they just suffered through 20 minutes of a talk that went into detail about my family background and upbringing - none of which included living in a community where African American Vernacular English might have been used - my parents would have had to buy me tapes; and c) I have been working with this community for three years on assumptions of sameness and abstractionist thinking... wth?

I was relieved when I returned to my office that my boss and colleagues had experienced the moment like I did. Of course now I have to endure jokes about "what code should we have our meeting in". But we are all baffled at what happened.

Of course it did make me wonder. I never asked a question about "code-switching" but there were strong themes of culture switching and racial identity fluidity. Many participants talked about being "white with my white family and black with my black family and mixed race in my house. This isn't passing... these are the spaces I have a natural right to. This is who I am." One person at the talk offered "is it like when a Spanish person goes back to the Caribbean and speaks a different kind of Spanish"? Again, not my question but it is a closer representation of what the participants in my project talk about when going from one side of the family to the other.

The only language conversation my participants and I had was about naming... creating a lexicon that framed mixed race lived experience and intimate reality accurately. But there was never a sense of code switching... which for me is moving from ones organic language to a language that has to be learned and cultivated. For my participants, that was not the case. If there was a difference in language between one familial space to another, my sense of the experience of shifting from one language to another was a) about shifting from one space to another - which may or may not have a different language; and b) the language in both spaces BELONGED to the mixed race individual. In my mind that is about being bilingual and bicultural not about switching codes to access education and capital.

The direction my colleagues took during my talk was really useful for me (now three days later when I am no longer mortified) because I have been able to recognize the power of the binary here. Unconsciously (I am certain) my colleague was trying to re-polarize mixed race back into diametrically opposed positions, positions that we in the United States are comfortable with. This was more about keeping black and white separate, moving against my work and my claims that mixed race - while connected and intersecting with monorace - is a unique and separate identity, lived experience, and intimate reality.


...more soon...

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Burnt Orange Giraffes

Every picture I created as a child was burnt orange in color. The only one my mother kept was the burnt orange giraffe. She drags it out every holiday, on its old hardened kindergarten paper, as a testament to my unruliness. She tells the story of how I never colored in the lines and ate paste, which tasted like peppermint by the way. And then she turns to her strongest piece of evidence, the burnt orange giraffe. My mother pronounces it ‘non-art’ which translates for me as ‘non-person’, and says “it wouldn’t have been this color if she hadn’t tried to use all the paints at the same time and mixed them all together.” What is truly striking about the repeated assault on my five year old visual artistic abilities is that its designation as ‘non-art’ has nothing to do with the fact that the figure looks nothing like a giraffe, which it certainly does not, but because of its COLOR. As I finish my dissertation, I have come to appreciate this story as a great metaphor for my journey towards a mixed race identity.
If you are an ordered individual you may not know about the phenomenon that occurs when compulsive kindergartners feverishly apply every single color in the finger paint tray to their artwork. The politically correct term is burnt orange; my mother called it baby poop brown. The deeper conversation is that it was not the RIGHT color. This speaks to the inflexibility in the aesthetic expectation and order of color. As a mixed race person, I am the baby poop brown giraffe. Non-conforming, unidentifiable, uncategorical, I am a burnt orange giraffe.
This metaphor was one that helped me create the framework through which I define my own racial identity or at least that space that allows identities like mine, non-binary and fluid, to take shape. As my research continued, the more paint colors were applied to the socio-racial canvas. Like my art, socio-racial identity started to become very messy and disordered and very opposite the clean orderly structure that race seemed to be before I started. I have no objection to the direction this artwork has taken. I am only concerned that I will be left with something unrecognizable like my giraffe. I am concerned that the narratives of people of mixed race will like my artwork be misinterpreted as unintentional, and compulsively created.
What I can tell you is that I painted those pictures on purpose. It wasn’t impulse; I simply wanted to use all the colors because I thought the use of all the colors produced an exceptional result. When I used every single color, it didn’t produce a rainbow like I had been lead to believe, it produced an exceptional color. The color produced ended up being the exact same color as me.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Dumb things people say day...rant...no educational value at all... :)

Hey! It is dumb things people say day!!!! Yay!

My karma must be off. I apparently am attracting, again, people who have dumb things to say about mixed race. These are well meaning people who, under the guise of education, have decided to put my family on trial for "mixed race authenticity". There is a little twist, mixed race is not being contested, our membership to the mixed race club is...

We have moved, and we love where we live. I have a great job as a professor and diversity professional. I somehow imagined that the people I worked with would have a better sense of what you might say to a diversity professional ... diversity etiquette if you will... Nah.

In the past week I have been told: you are too dark to be mixed... you are soooooo dark... your daughter couldn't have "white hair" it has to be nappy like yours (paws through my child's hair to find a nap). Sigh...

It has been a long time but I am starting to feel like a zoo animal, my skin, my children's skin, and our hair has been touched, felt, pawed...while people who know perfectly well this is unacceptable look on.

I know I am whining but COME ON PEOPLE... turn on a television, read a BOOK... Ask before touching. And yes, my child IS blond... nature is a beautiful thing....

I don't think I have anything educational to say about this. I will say that when we engage in these behaviors, asking questions that are founded in no research of our own first, we are performing or re-performing a racialized harm. Should we learn from each other? Yes. Should we make people feel like I feel right now, like not wanting to teach anyone a blessed thing; well that might be counterproductive.

Three different people this week challenged my mixed race identity based on how dark I am. I realized that they had never really bothered to SEE the differences in skin tone amongst people of color. We aren't ALL THE SAME COLOR. Stupidly I tried to redirect these folks attention by telling them that my students of color always know that I am mixed race because they see me in a different context. THESE PEOPLE REFUSED TO STOP TALKING AND ARGUED WITH ME ABOUT MY OWN GENEOLOGY. "my biological father is white"... "HE CAN'T BE" "my children are light because I am mixed, they are second generation, really third because my biological mother was mixed too" "you aren't mixed you are too dark"... Actually, I am tooooooo pissed.

I am upset because I erred on the side of diplomacy and preserved relationships and really I just wanted to hit someone. I wanted to ask why they were so obsessed with my genealogy. I wanted to ask if they had ever heard of Google. I am saddest about the fact that my daughter had to experience this. She had her hair picked through (did I mention that I got asked this week if I got things lost in my afro?) and her arms compared for color (she was lighter). I had one young woman looking at family pictures proclaim "oh see, your boys get dark, I KNEW they had to get dark". WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!!!!

Folks: If you are curious, do some research, Google, READ A BOOK... Then approach someone with a specific conversation in mind that will advance your relationship, and the topic as a whole, forward. We are not freak shows... we are people with rich histories, genealogies, and lived experiences to share. Believe that we know who and what we are and where we are from. If you don't understand it... that is on you. And while we are at it... your sense that you can negate what I tell you about myself is the epitome of PRIVILEGE and POWER unchecked.

The best part of this week was when my 10 year old daughter looked at me and said "seriously? That girl is obsessed with color? What is UP with THAT?" What IS up with that?

more soon...

Monday, January 2, 2012

Black like me...

The articulation of identity, for me, is the product of individual, familial and communal intention and cultural will. The expression of mixed race identity in its purest form was provided for me by my sons in the back seat of my Dodge Durango in 2005. In 2005 my oldest son was 15 and it was the last year that I drove him and his friends to football summer session. Every morning at 6am, I would get in the car with four or five smelly little boys. I am not sure at what point I realized that most of my son’s friends were mixed race children with intact mixed race families and households. So, in the back seat I had: Brian, mom was black Caribbean, dad was white, and stepmom was white; Michael, mom was white and dad and step dad were black African American; Terry mom was white, dad was black, orphaned Terrance now lived with his white aunt and uncle. Also along for the ride were my sons 15 and 13 at the time, and my daughter who was five.

The boys had what I would call a morning dialogue; it rarely varied. Once everyone was in the car, Brian would start counting. I am not sure he was counting people per se but he had a compulsive need to count races. I now believe it was a response to often, if not always, being the only person of color in almost any situation he was in. I see it in my lived experience more than that of my children as Brian and I were both the “first” mixed race person in our families. Anyway, the counting would go like this. “There are three black people, and three white people in the car. We are even.” “No man that is not right” someone would offer, usually my son. Then all hell would break loose as the boys tried to ferret out who was how much of what and how many “wholes” that made. They never got it right nor did they ever get the same answer day to day. The important point here is that they kept trying every day for four weeks.

I was more aware than usual of my children’s identity development around race as I was fully engaged in my critical race work at that time. The conversation that was taking place behind me was not only fascinating but really useful. Several things still stand out to me this many years later. First that the boys had a language and a contextual understanding of what race was what mixed race meant, and how to talk about it. For instance, bi-racial and mixed race were acceptable names for their socio-racial identities but mulatto wasn’t. The boys would talk about being part white and part black, but would never say they were white but would accept being called black. However, all of the boys were not comfortable with my daughter being called black as she, to them, was clearly white. What is exceptional here is the level of agreement on these things as they were never argued against. The race counting wouldn’t be the exact language, activity or framework I would chose as I don’t really like the baker’s method to race, but I don’t remember them deciding or having a conversation where they negotiated these terms either. I do remember the boys sharing stories about experiences they had in the community or at school where they agreed that these experiences were what made them mixed raced together. For instance around mulatto as a term, my younger son had a little friend named Jenna who called him mulatto at school and all the boys agreed that this was a racist behavior on this little girl’s part. “She should know better, we have all told her not to use that word a million times.” But when I asked them why this was a bad word they were not able to tell me except that my son said “it makes my stomach hurt when she says it. She means it mean.” and the older boys agreed.

Second, the boys agreed that race could be counted and that mixed race people could be counted in parts in such a way as to reinforce membership in both monoracial spaces. Each boy understood that they belonged to two or three different races and, for them; the “amount” of each race could be counted but did not restrict them from membership in one or another of those races. This particular attribute of these conversations stood out to me because it pushed against how race was being presented to me in the academy while it resonated with how I experienced my socio-racial location in my own intimate reality. One day Brian was talking about his step mother’s family and said “yeah they know I am black and they don’t like black people but my dad says I am his son and I belong with him in our [white] family.” All of the boys this sense that anyone could have multiple socio-racial memberships that the boys viewed the world and they were not to be swayed from that sense. One day my husband was in the car with us and Brian started counting. When he went to include my husband, who is Irish and English and whom my children suggest is the whitest man in the world, in the calculation Brian leaned his head up between the front seats and said “hey, Mr. P, what are you…half or a quarter black?” Despite the fact that all of the children in the car had a parent who was white, all of the boys wanted to know how much black my husband had in him including our own children. My husband remembers not wanting to break their hearts as they had these hopeful and excited expressions on their faces and because it was the first time the possibility of anything other than whiteness had been extended to him.

Finally, the boy’s assertion of their mixed race identities was strong. I believe that is because they had each other. With a community to think and process with, they boys were able to stand up to the pressure of identifying with a monoracial identity easier than mixed race people who are isolated from other mixed race identities. In high school I had two best friends one was Thai and United States white and the other was German and Greek. Our sense of having multiple racial and ethnic identities created the same space for our assertion of multiplicitous identities as the boys had with each other.

I also saw a reflection of what the boys did that summer in our community, especially at school. The students around them, through graduation, always spoke about race with context. The deeper learning here for me is that socio-racial identity and identity development is about context and that context is impacted by access to other people who share your identity experiences and intimate realities. I remember being none too pleased the first time I heard the phrase “black like [my son]” until my child explained to me that this was how other students differentiated between him and other students with various non-white identities. While there were deeper implications to the phrase that I won’t get into here, the innocence with which my son received this declaration was founded in being accepted as a mixed race person and not feeling like he was being forced into a box that didn’t fit.

When my husband and I realized we could not register our daughter as mixed race in school as the No Child Left Behind act had removed the possiblity of other or multiple boxes, we approached our sons who were registered as other about it. That is when they shared stories of having taken the standardized tests for years and being very aware that the teacher was marking the race box a) for them; and b) incorrectly. “But you don’t correct teachers” my eldest son said “and I knew you would freak out so I didn’t say anything”. My youngest son said, “I told them I was Italian and they believed me. I thought that was funny so I kept doing it.” I remember the shout of joy when my eldest son applied to college and there was a box for mixed race people. “Whew! Mom, I finally got a box!!!!” During the Obama election the boy’s taught their sister to chant with them “Obama is black like me”.

Most recently my daughter came home and told her brother, interestingly not me, that “there are no boxes on those dumb tests for me, its racist.”

I agree...

...more soon