My apolgies, I am not smart enough to respond to comments apparently. I really appreciate those who are reading and commenting. I can publish your comments but have had no real success responding. So, if your comment is published, please know that I have read and appreciated what you had to say!!!! I will keep trying to figure out how to respond... grrr...
More soon.
Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded
Friday, July 29, 2011
How I Became Mixed Race... A reflection
How I Became Mixed Race
• When I was three months old a white family adopted me. They had requested a hard to place child. When my mother asked what my disability was, they told her I was biracial.
• When I was one and a half my parents told me I was adopted. They didn’t tell me because they wanted me to know the truth about my adoption. They were telling me because we were different colors and they didn’t want OTHER people telling me I was adopted. I thought they were telling me I didn’t belong to them.
• When I was four the only black people on TV were the woman on Sesame Street, Wheezy on the Jeffersons, and the mother on Good Times. I didn’t look like any of them. I wanted to be a Charlie’s Angel.
• When I was five I went with my mother, who is white, to replace all of our fire extinguishers. The man at the store asked her if I was a fresh air child and when I was going back. My mother told him I was her daughter and I was filled with pride.
• When I was six they told my mother I was retarded. We later found out, I needed glasses.
• When I was seven they called me a Zebra. When I was eight they called me salt and pepper.
• When I was nine I went to Denny’s with my mother, stepfather, and sister – all of whom are white – when the waitress went to seat them, she physically blocked my path to keep me from following them into the restaurant.
• When I was ten I was chased across the playground by a classmate – a white boy from a reportedly poor and abusive family – who trapped my friend – a black boy from an affluent family and me against a fence and stoned us while calling us niggers. The principal made him apologize.
• When I was 11, I fell in love for the first time. I thought he didn’t like me because I was a tom boy. When we played wedding at school, I was always the priest.
• When I was 12, my nickname was dictionary breath.
• When I was 13, they called me nigger. I was tall, skinny, and ugly so I believed them. I didn’t know what a nigger was. We were in Catholic school.
• When I was 14, I got beat up by a black girl because she told me I was too white. That girl married a white man and has children who look just like me.
• When I was 15, I was told that I didn’t talk black.
• When I was 16, I was told that I was a very nice black girl and that we could be friends but that his grandmother would kill him if he ever dated a black girl.
• When I was 17, my boyfriend made me duck down on the floor of the car so no one would tell his mother he was dating a black girl. He assured me it would kill her. I wish it had.
• When I was 18, I went to prom alone.
• When I was 19, my nickname was white bitch.
• When I was 20, I had my first son out of wedlock with a mixed race boy who identified as white – not because he didn’t want to be black but because that is what his white grandparents told him he was.
• When I was 21, I was told that I didn’t act black. I was told “you think you white”.
• When I was 22, I stopped checking the black box and made my own
• When I was 23, my second son’s father abandoned me because I was pregnant with his child. His parents hated blacks and didn’t want any in the family. I had to go on welfare to support my children and myself. Then I went to college.
• When I was 24, a woman of color told me that if she had a child that light, she wouldn’t have kept him.
• When I was 25, I asked my boyfriend if he had warned his parents that I was black. He asked me why. Then he told me that it didn’t matter, his family was Irish. Four years later, he married me.
• When I was 26, I realized for the first time that I was beautiful.
• When I was 27, I started doing all of my shopping in a suit.
• When I was 28, I became a general manager. My store manager told me she liked me even though I was black. I didn’t like her and it had nothing to do with her being white.
• When I was 29, I got married to that Irish man. It was the year before that the last law banning mixed race marriages was repealed in the United States. I couldn’t have gotten married in Alabama… shucks.
• When I was 30, I got my hair braided for the first time. My employee told me she liked it better “the other way”.
• When I was 31, I had a daughter with blond hair and blue-green Irish eyes. I was accused of wet-nursing a white child.
• When I was 32, I stopped laughing at black jokes.
• When I was 33, our neighbor told my husband and me he didn’t mind that we were salt and pepper.
• When I was 34, I listened to my sons and their mixed race friends count how many mono-racial people were in the car based on all the 1/2s and 1/4s they occupied as mixed race children. They never got the count right.
• When I was 35, I tried to register my daughter for school. They wouldn’t let me register her without picking a race for her. The form didn’t offer a race that represented my daughter or our family. The school registered her as white.
• When I was 36, I found out that my sons had been racially re-categorized by the school district from other to black and Latino. No one asked us what our children were.
• When I was 37, I started graduate school and realized that the thing I was most passionate about was mixed race. I started identifying as mixed race. A student in one of my graduate school courses attacked me for saying I am ethnically biracial and have a white middle class culture. She told me my white mother never really love me nor could she because I was black.
• When I was 38 my teenage sons find it funny when going to Red Lobster to see how many of us the waitress tries to sit together. My oldest son told one waitress after she tried to seat them without me “yeah, the darkie is with us”. The waitress was appropriately mortified, my son was not.
• When I was 40 my daughter became obsessed with Zebra. Everything she owns is zebra. The irony is killing me.
• Today, I am 41 and I passed a confederate flag on the way to the college I work at as a diversity officer.
• Right now, I know it is my experiences of never fitting in any mono-racial/cultural space that makes me mixed race. The fact that I recognize myself as my white mother’s child, my father’s black daughter, my husband’s inter-racial wife, my beige and white children’s mother, is what makes me mixed race. What else could I possibly be? To be anything else would be to give up one of these things. Which would you have me caste away to fit in that mono-racial space?
• When I was three months old a white family adopted me. They had requested a hard to place child. When my mother asked what my disability was, they told her I was biracial.
• When I was one and a half my parents told me I was adopted. They didn’t tell me because they wanted me to know the truth about my adoption. They were telling me because we were different colors and they didn’t want OTHER people telling me I was adopted. I thought they were telling me I didn’t belong to them.
• When I was four the only black people on TV were the woman on Sesame Street, Wheezy on the Jeffersons, and the mother on Good Times. I didn’t look like any of them. I wanted to be a Charlie’s Angel.
• When I was five I went with my mother, who is white, to replace all of our fire extinguishers. The man at the store asked her if I was a fresh air child and when I was going back. My mother told him I was her daughter and I was filled with pride.
• When I was six they told my mother I was retarded. We later found out, I needed glasses.
• When I was seven they called me a Zebra. When I was eight they called me salt and pepper.
• When I was nine I went to Denny’s with my mother, stepfather, and sister – all of whom are white – when the waitress went to seat them, she physically blocked my path to keep me from following them into the restaurant.
• When I was ten I was chased across the playground by a classmate – a white boy from a reportedly poor and abusive family – who trapped my friend – a black boy from an affluent family and me against a fence and stoned us while calling us niggers. The principal made him apologize.
• When I was 11, I fell in love for the first time. I thought he didn’t like me because I was a tom boy. When we played wedding at school, I was always the priest.
• When I was 12, my nickname was dictionary breath.
• When I was 13, they called me nigger. I was tall, skinny, and ugly so I believed them. I didn’t know what a nigger was. We were in Catholic school.
• When I was 14, I got beat up by a black girl because she told me I was too white. That girl married a white man and has children who look just like me.
• When I was 15, I was told that I didn’t talk black.
• When I was 16, I was told that I was a very nice black girl and that we could be friends but that his grandmother would kill him if he ever dated a black girl.
• When I was 17, my boyfriend made me duck down on the floor of the car so no one would tell his mother he was dating a black girl. He assured me it would kill her. I wish it had.
• When I was 18, I went to prom alone.
• When I was 19, my nickname was white bitch.
• When I was 20, I had my first son out of wedlock with a mixed race boy who identified as white – not because he didn’t want to be black but because that is what his white grandparents told him he was.
• When I was 21, I was told that I didn’t act black. I was told “you think you white”.
• When I was 22, I stopped checking the black box and made my own
• When I was 23, my second son’s father abandoned me because I was pregnant with his child. His parents hated blacks and didn’t want any in the family. I had to go on welfare to support my children and myself. Then I went to college.
• When I was 24, a woman of color told me that if she had a child that light, she wouldn’t have kept him.
• When I was 25, I asked my boyfriend if he had warned his parents that I was black. He asked me why. Then he told me that it didn’t matter, his family was Irish. Four years later, he married me.
• When I was 26, I realized for the first time that I was beautiful.
• When I was 27, I started doing all of my shopping in a suit.
• When I was 28, I became a general manager. My store manager told me she liked me even though I was black. I didn’t like her and it had nothing to do with her being white.
• When I was 29, I got married to that Irish man. It was the year before that the last law banning mixed race marriages was repealed in the United States. I couldn’t have gotten married in Alabama… shucks.
• When I was 30, I got my hair braided for the first time. My employee told me she liked it better “the other way”.
• When I was 31, I had a daughter with blond hair and blue-green Irish eyes. I was accused of wet-nursing a white child.
• When I was 32, I stopped laughing at black jokes.
• When I was 33, our neighbor told my husband and me he didn’t mind that we were salt and pepper.
• When I was 34, I listened to my sons and their mixed race friends count how many mono-racial people were in the car based on all the 1/2s and 1/4s they occupied as mixed race children. They never got the count right.
• When I was 35, I tried to register my daughter for school. They wouldn’t let me register her without picking a race for her. The form didn’t offer a race that represented my daughter or our family. The school registered her as white.
• When I was 36, I found out that my sons had been racially re-categorized by the school district from other to black and Latino. No one asked us what our children were.
• When I was 37, I started graduate school and realized that the thing I was most passionate about was mixed race. I started identifying as mixed race. A student in one of my graduate school courses attacked me for saying I am ethnically biracial and have a white middle class culture. She told me my white mother never really love me nor could she because I was black.
• When I was 38 my teenage sons find it funny when going to Red Lobster to see how many of us the waitress tries to sit together. My oldest son told one waitress after she tried to seat them without me “yeah, the darkie is with us”. The waitress was appropriately mortified, my son was not.
• When I was 40 my daughter became obsessed with Zebra. Everything she owns is zebra. The irony is killing me.
• Today, I am 41 and I passed a confederate flag on the way to the college I work at as a diversity officer.
• Right now, I know it is my experiences of never fitting in any mono-racial/cultural space that makes me mixed race. The fact that I recognize myself as my white mother’s child, my father’s black daughter, my husband’s inter-racial wife, my beige and white children’s mother, is what makes me mixed race. What else could I possibly be? To be anything else would be to give up one of these things. Which would you have me caste away to fit in that mono-racial space?
Friday, June 10, 2011
Reflected Identities
I can remember as a young girl looking in the mirror and wondering who I looked like. There was not really a strong urge to find my biological parents. I simply wanted a picture of them so I could inventory my nose, mouth, lips, eyes…
I can also remember walking into the bathroom and being startled by my own reflection. It was like I had forgotten what I looked like because no one around me looked anything like me. It was not a desire to look different or to be white; I had simply misplaced myself. It is like when you cut your hair and are startled when you look in your review mirror to see someone totally different than the person who resides in your head, the person with the old haircut.
I also remember feeling sad. I felt sad because I didn’t look like my mother and that made me feel removed from her; it made me feel less hers. I worry about this with my daughter. She and I both get very excited when people tell us we look like each other even though we both know, or at least I do, that people are telling us that because they know there is a NEED there… Perhaps it is a human need to be able to visually relate yourself to your people, your tribe, and your clan. At nearly 21, my son still points out the things we have that he “got from me”.
I really started thinking about this because I am finishing that dissertation and came across some work I had done on reflected identity. Reflected identity has been located in some work as the way we know who we are…. Our gender, our faith, our race… Basically reflected identity speaks to understanding yourself through the reflections of yourself in others. This is how human beings understand where one body ends and another begins, this is how I understand that you are white and I am black and I must be black because I do not look like you… This is way over simplified, but it triggered these memories for me.
I remember feeling so very excited about having my first son and for the first time in my life at 20 years of age I would have someone in my life who LOOKED like me. I don’t think I was disappointed when I held my son for the first time….I do remember noting that I was still the only black person in the family.
My niece is getting married tomorrow. As we parted company the last time I saw her and her fiancé, I joked … Hey now I am not going to be the only black person in this family. It has been a running joke for four years. My niece has a son that her finance is raising and one day my nephew said… I am going to grow up just like Daddy… well… except I won’t be brown. I feel you kid.
More soon….
I can also remember walking into the bathroom and being startled by my own reflection. It was like I had forgotten what I looked like because no one around me looked anything like me. It was not a desire to look different or to be white; I had simply misplaced myself. It is like when you cut your hair and are startled when you look in your review mirror to see someone totally different than the person who resides in your head, the person with the old haircut.
I also remember feeling sad. I felt sad because I didn’t look like my mother and that made me feel removed from her; it made me feel less hers. I worry about this with my daughter. She and I both get very excited when people tell us we look like each other even though we both know, or at least I do, that people are telling us that because they know there is a NEED there… Perhaps it is a human need to be able to visually relate yourself to your people, your tribe, and your clan. At nearly 21, my son still points out the things we have that he “got from me”.
I really started thinking about this because I am finishing that dissertation and came across some work I had done on reflected identity. Reflected identity has been located in some work as the way we know who we are…. Our gender, our faith, our race… Basically reflected identity speaks to understanding yourself through the reflections of yourself in others. This is how human beings understand where one body ends and another begins, this is how I understand that you are white and I am black and I must be black because I do not look like you… This is way over simplified, but it triggered these memories for me.
I remember feeling so very excited about having my first son and for the first time in my life at 20 years of age I would have someone in my life who LOOKED like me. I don’t think I was disappointed when I held my son for the first time….I do remember noting that I was still the only black person in the family.
My niece is getting married tomorrow. As we parted company the last time I saw her and her fiancé, I joked … Hey now I am not going to be the only black person in this family. It has been a running joke for four years. My niece has a son that her finance is raising and one day my nephew said… I am going to grow up just like Daddy… well… except I won’t be brown. I feel you kid.
More soon….
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Illusions
Happy Holidays! My family celebrates Christmas, and it has been a Christmas full of joy and family. I am writing today from our oldest son's tattoo shop. Uncle Tom, Dad, the 20 year old and the 18 year old all got tattoos from me for Christmas. Today I am thinking about the occurrences of family and community. It is weird where you find family and community. But the sense of togetherness and love that is in this shop today ... we can add tattoo shops to the list of shops where people come together to create community.
I really appreciate the culture of the hair shop/barber shop. I grew up in an Italian community where the old Italian men would go each week to get their hair done. What that really was about was building, nurturing and maintaining community. I remember the first time my Irish husband went to the barber shop, he said he felt really out of place and they all started speaking Italian. "They got me in a chair, got me done, and got me out of there" was his account. "I was clearly a customer, not part of their community". At the time I thought he was just being oversensitive. It was, after all, only a barber shop.
My memories of hair shop culture were buried deep. They were painful and unpacking them for this blog has been difficult. The hair shop was one of the places where the intersection of my physiology and the reality of my race/culture/ethnicity not only intersected, but created painful dissonance in my identity development.
I remember my first hair shop experience. My mother was not inclined towards community or beauty, so I had never been to a hair shop. My mother struggled with the nappy mess herself. Having no experience in black hair, and being convinced there was no differences in people, therefore no differences in hair, I usually looked like a misplaced version of buckwheat from the little rascals. I know now that this was a discussion amongst the few black people who were in our community, how "this is why white women should not have black children". I still would take bad hair over being an orphan... just sayin' Anyway. My mother worked with a woman at the hospital who finally had "the talk" with her about how my skin and hair needed special care. So, at 12, we went off to the hair shop.
There was no community there, not for myself and my mother. I remember feeling very out of place and no one spoke to myself or my mother except the woman who did my hair. I didn't understand it then, I do now. People like my mother and myself did not belong in an African American hair shop any more than we did a white hair shop. Dissonance. My hair came out terrible, by the way. Because my hair was mixed, the softer hair burned and I had stubble. The hair dresser covered up the damaged hair by styling this big quasi bee hive. When we got home my mother had to shave my head. My mother cried the whole time and then held me, apologizing for not being the right kind of mother. She was the right kind of mother, she was MY mother.
I didn't attempt to do anything with my hair again until high school. I was in a fashion show. The choreographer took me to her house and straightened my hair. It looked AMAZING. When I returned home, my mother was so upset that someone would do my hair and not ask her permission. It wasn't that she didn't my hair done or that she did not want me happy; it was yet again being disregarded as my mother. I remember as the choreographer was doing my hair, she was saying something like "this is why white woman should not have black children". I wish I had been able to articulate to my mother that this was not how I felt. Instead, I never had curly hair again.
When I was 28, I was making good money and wanted to get my hair professionally done. I had learned, quite by accident, that the BET girls had fake hair. Yes, I was 28 before I realized that I could have THAT hair and that African American women had been getting weaves and wearing wigs for generations. Black hair care is an epistemological knowledge, I had no access to this knowledge. Communally, people have genealogical understandings of who and how they are. That includes things like traditions, rituals, food, language, and I now know, hair. What was not lost on me however is an appreciation for the hypocrisy that weaves and wigs signal in my lived experience. If a white woman should not have a black child, why do black women pay for white looking hair? (really it is Asian and south Asian hair, but we don't have time for THAT conversation right now).
In my sales district there was a black hair shop. Clearly forgetting my earlier experiences, I eagerly stopped in one day to see if I could get my hair done. The owner was lovely and stopped what she was doing to schedule my transformation... The woman in the chair was much less impressed. She yelled at the owner "don't you leave my head to go wait on that little white bitch". My illusion of blackness and black communal membership was shattered. I left the shop and never returned. Later that afternoon, I asked our tenant if she would help me negotiate this space. She informed me that she was not going to talk "nigger" for me and that just because I was "high yellow" (which I am not) and married to a white man (which I am) I thought that people needed to bow down to me, and then she slammed her door in my face. Sometimes learning really hurts. It took me a very long time to understand that I had asked for access to a community that I was not welcome in. I didn't know the codes. Many of the mixed race individuals I have interviewed, especially women, have shared this or a similar moment in their identity development. This is the moment when you realize you don't fit, you don't belong to either of the binary possibilities; and you are left drifting in between.
One of the realities of my mixed raceness and my inter-racial family is that my racial identity has been subject to manipulation, interpretation and shifting boarders that I do not control. I am well aware that my scholarship and the dissertation are my attempt to grab a hold of something, to develop the translation tools needed, to be in my own racial skin. The hair story, which has rectified itself now that I have found a shop where my intellect and humanity is appreciated, is one of the biggest pieces of my racial evolution. While J, the best hair artist ever, was putting in my most recent illusion (they don't call them weaves anymore?) I thought about this journey. Mostly, I thought about the rejection, how I did not have access to the racial and communal codes that would gain me access to "my people". I started to rethink who "my people" were supposed to be. My first trip to this hair shop, full of warm, loud, gorgeous women of color, women of every possible shape, size, and color; I remember the "what color is your husband?" question. I almost lied. I had been passing for about an hour and a half. I had been black. I had been a well off black woman, and no one had questioned it.
When I admitted that my husband was white, J said, I thought so, your mixed aren't you. I didn't understand the correlation, but then she said, Your hair has such a great texture, I knew you were mixed. And then the conversation moved on. It just moved on. My husband, my racial identity, my children, my upbringing; they were all just part of me, not all of me. I have made myself very unpopular by sharing honest accounts of the racism that I experience inside the black community. I often don't share because the backlash has been fierce. The reason sharing these experiences is so important is because it creates a space to think about what really shapes race, community, and communal membership. I liken it to a rulebook that we don't all have access too. These codes are the birthplace of our multiplicity, this is our illusion.
More soon...
I really appreciate the culture of the hair shop/barber shop. I grew up in an Italian community where the old Italian men would go each week to get their hair done. What that really was about was building, nurturing and maintaining community. I remember the first time my Irish husband went to the barber shop, he said he felt really out of place and they all started speaking Italian. "They got me in a chair, got me done, and got me out of there" was his account. "I was clearly a customer, not part of their community". At the time I thought he was just being oversensitive. It was, after all, only a barber shop.
My memories of hair shop culture were buried deep. They were painful and unpacking them for this blog has been difficult. The hair shop was one of the places where the intersection of my physiology and the reality of my race/culture/ethnicity not only intersected, but created painful dissonance in my identity development.
I remember my first hair shop experience. My mother was not inclined towards community or beauty, so I had never been to a hair shop. My mother struggled with the nappy mess herself. Having no experience in black hair, and being convinced there was no differences in people, therefore no differences in hair, I usually looked like a misplaced version of buckwheat from the little rascals. I know now that this was a discussion amongst the few black people who were in our community, how "this is why white women should not have black children". I still would take bad hair over being an orphan... just sayin' Anyway. My mother worked with a woman at the hospital who finally had "the talk" with her about how my skin and hair needed special care. So, at 12, we went off to the hair shop.
There was no community there, not for myself and my mother. I remember feeling very out of place and no one spoke to myself or my mother except the woman who did my hair. I didn't understand it then, I do now. People like my mother and myself did not belong in an African American hair shop any more than we did a white hair shop. Dissonance. My hair came out terrible, by the way. Because my hair was mixed, the softer hair burned and I had stubble. The hair dresser covered up the damaged hair by styling this big quasi bee hive. When we got home my mother had to shave my head. My mother cried the whole time and then held me, apologizing for not being the right kind of mother. She was the right kind of mother, she was MY mother.
I didn't attempt to do anything with my hair again until high school. I was in a fashion show. The choreographer took me to her house and straightened my hair. It looked AMAZING. When I returned home, my mother was so upset that someone would do my hair and not ask her permission. It wasn't that she didn't my hair done or that she did not want me happy; it was yet again being disregarded as my mother. I remember as the choreographer was doing my hair, she was saying something like "this is why white woman should not have black children". I wish I had been able to articulate to my mother that this was not how I felt. Instead, I never had curly hair again.
When I was 28, I was making good money and wanted to get my hair professionally done. I had learned, quite by accident, that the BET girls had fake hair. Yes, I was 28 before I realized that I could have THAT hair and that African American women had been getting weaves and wearing wigs for generations. Black hair care is an epistemological knowledge, I had no access to this knowledge. Communally, people have genealogical understandings of who and how they are. That includes things like traditions, rituals, food, language, and I now know, hair. What was not lost on me however is an appreciation for the hypocrisy that weaves and wigs signal in my lived experience. If a white woman should not have a black child, why do black women pay for white looking hair? (really it is Asian and south Asian hair, but we don't have time for THAT conversation right now).
In my sales district there was a black hair shop. Clearly forgetting my earlier experiences, I eagerly stopped in one day to see if I could get my hair done. The owner was lovely and stopped what she was doing to schedule my transformation... The woman in the chair was much less impressed. She yelled at the owner "don't you leave my head to go wait on that little white bitch". My illusion of blackness and black communal membership was shattered. I left the shop and never returned. Later that afternoon, I asked our tenant if she would help me negotiate this space. She informed me that she was not going to talk "nigger" for me and that just because I was "high yellow" (which I am not) and married to a white man (which I am) I thought that people needed to bow down to me, and then she slammed her door in my face. Sometimes learning really hurts. It took me a very long time to understand that I had asked for access to a community that I was not welcome in. I didn't know the codes. Many of the mixed race individuals I have interviewed, especially women, have shared this or a similar moment in their identity development. This is the moment when you realize you don't fit, you don't belong to either of the binary possibilities; and you are left drifting in between.
One of the realities of my mixed raceness and my inter-racial family is that my racial identity has been subject to manipulation, interpretation and shifting boarders that I do not control. I am well aware that my scholarship and the dissertation are my attempt to grab a hold of something, to develop the translation tools needed, to be in my own racial skin. The hair story, which has rectified itself now that I have found a shop where my intellect and humanity is appreciated, is one of the biggest pieces of my racial evolution. While J, the best hair artist ever, was putting in my most recent illusion (they don't call them weaves anymore?) I thought about this journey. Mostly, I thought about the rejection, how I did not have access to the racial and communal codes that would gain me access to "my people". I started to rethink who "my people" were supposed to be. My first trip to this hair shop, full of warm, loud, gorgeous women of color, women of every possible shape, size, and color; I remember the "what color is your husband?" question. I almost lied. I had been passing for about an hour and a half. I had been black. I had been a well off black woman, and no one had questioned it.
When I admitted that my husband was white, J said, I thought so, your mixed aren't you. I didn't understand the correlation, but then she said, Your hair has such a great texture, I knew you were mixed. And then the conversation moved on. It just moved on. My husband, my racial identity, my children, my upbringing; they were all just part of me, not all of me. I have made myself very unpopular by sharing honest accounts of the racism that I experience inside the black community. I often don't share because the backlash has been fierce. The reason sharing these experiences is so important is because it creates a space to think about what really shapes race, community, and communal membership. I liken it to a rulebook that we don't all have access too. These codes are the birthplace of our multiplicity, this is our illusion.
More soon...
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...
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...
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...
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Re-Emerging, Re-Creating and Re-framing
Well Hello! I have been away since April 2010. In that time I turned 40, had a hysterectomy, lost a committee member, gained a committee member, applied for a career job, and have been dragging along this dissertation. I am sure I might have missed a few things in there somewhere. It was a neat experience to come back and read what I had written, and really like it. I came back for the purpose of cutting and pasting the work here into the final draft of my dissertation. I have decided to revive the blog instead. Thank you so much for your patience these last couple years. On ward we go...
I was working on one of my chapters for a conference presentation in October. I was presenting with faculty from the department, all faculty of color, and I had that familiar fear... All black faculty...this isn't going to fly. My fears were unrealized and there were even two classmates from my program there, who are often quite ferocious, that gave loving attention and feedback. I walked away from the experience feeling like a scholar! I also walked away feeling like my work is at a point where it has a shape of its own that is no longer reliant on my own identity. I also feel like I have stepped out of the defensive posture that I went into the dissertation with. The audience was deeply engaged and I was able to handle questions with ease. I really understood the questions this time and I was not startled or upset by the ones I didn't have full answers for.
Two questions stand out the most to me: first, from a woman who appeared to be in her 70's, "well if you are light you white, right?" (Wrong) and the second from a classmate which was something like "what IS mixed race? Aren't we all mixed race in some way or another" (Yes...but). The first question was easy to answer and just validated my own sense of myself as an academic. My response was "this is a contextual and generational understanding of mixed race as being tied to aesthetic and social location rather than identity and lived experience". My research focuses on the millenial generations understanding of race and there are significant differences between how they understand and engage race and identity politics compared to their parents and their grandparents. The second question was more helpful to what I am currently grappling with in my work. If we want to invoke biology, genetics and psuedo-scientific engagements of race then yes, we are all mixed race. But we have seen how this notion has played out, or not, with the "new found" information about genetic sameness between racial groups. Race remains a major performer in social heiarchy and identity formation. What is most important to my work is not this understanding of mixed race as a biological or genetic reality, rather the lived experience and identity formation of mixed race individuals and families that have particular characteristics that are shared with other individuals and families that identify as mixed race. My qualitative research suggests that these similarities occur regardless of which foundational mono-races a mixed race individual or family claim. Often, my research participants report that they "have more in common with her than I do my black cousins, and she's asian, but we experience the same things because we are mixed race."
Up until this conversation I had been talking about mixed race identity in my work as an emerging identity. What I realized was that, at best, mixed race is re-emerging; and that re-emergence is in discourse and political location mainly. What I am suggessting is that mixed race, espeically as a co-mediated socio-racial location, has existed as long as race has. Really, mixed race didn't come along "after" or "because of", it was there at the inception of the hierarchy that is race. There has always been us, them and the mix of the two. That said, what might be emerging, and perhaps better talked about as re-emerging, re-creating, or re-framing, is the political and politics of a mixed race identity. While mixed race people have always existed, I have been able to loosely track the emergence, suppression, and re-emergence of the naming of mixed race people as mixed race. I am trying to be careful to not locate mixed race people or identity as this new thing that I discovered. I don't want my work to be a tool that allows people to ignore the history of mixed race people and identity, and most importantly, families. The mixed race identity I am framing or re-framing, is from the millenial generation's lived experience of mixed race as a relational, familial, and intimate choices.
More soon....
I was working on one of my chapters for a conference presentation in October. I was presenting with faculty from the department, all faculty of color, and I had that familiar fear... All black faculty...this isn't going to fly. My fears were unrealized and there were even two classmates from my program there, who are often quite ferocious, that gave loving attention and feedback. I walked away from the experience feeling like a scholar! I also walked away feeling like my work is at a point where it has a shape of its own that is no longer reliant on my own identity. I also feel like I have stepped out of the defensive posture that I went into the dissertation with. The audience was deeply engaged and I was able to handle questions with ease. I really understood the questions this time and I was not startled or upset by the ones I didn't have full answers for.
Two questions stand out the most to me: first, from a woman who appeared to be in her 70's, "well if you are light you white, right?" (Wrong) and the second from a classmate which was something like "what IS mixed race? Aren't we all mixed race in some way or another" (Yes...but). The first question was easy to answer and just validated my own sense of myself as an academic. My response was "this is a contextual and generational understanding of mixed race as being tied to aesthetic and social location rather than identity and lived experience". My research focuses on the millenial generations understanding of race and there are significant differences between how they understand and engage race and identity politics compared to their parents and their grandparents. The second question was more helpful to what I am currently grappling with in my work. If we want to invoke biology, genetics and psuedo-scientific engagements of race then yes, we are all mixed race. But we have seen how this notion has played out, or not, with the "new found" information about genetic sameness between racial groups. Race remains a major performer in social heiarchy and identity formation. What is most important to my work is not this understanding of mixed race as a biological or genetic reality, rather the lived experience and identity formation of mixed race individuals and families that have particular characteristics that are shared with other individuals and families that identify as mixed race. My qualitative research suggests that these similarities occur regardless of which foundational mono-races a mixed race individual or family claim. Often, my research participants report that they "have more in common with her than I do my black cousins, and she's asian, but we experience the same things because we are mixed race."
Up until this conversation I had been talking about mixed race identity in my work as an emerging identity. What I realized was that, at best, mixed race is re-emerging; and that re-emergence is in discourse and political location mainly. What I am suggessting is that mixed race, espeically as a co-mediated socio-racial location, has existed as long as race has. Really, mixed race didn't come along "after" or "because of", it was there at the inception of the hierarchy that is race. There has always been us, them and the mix of the two. That said, what might be emerging, and perhaps better talked about as re-emerging, re-creating, or re-framing, is the political and politics of a mixed race identity. While mixed race people have always existed, I have been able to loosely track the emergence, suppression, and re-emergence of the naming of mixed race people as mixed race. I am trying to be careful to not locate mixed race people or identity as this new thing that I discovered. I don't want my work to be a tool that allows people to ignore the history of mixed race people and identity, and most importantly, families. The mixed race identity I am framing or re-framing, is from the millenial generation's lived experience of mixed race as a relational, familial, and intimate choices.
More soon....
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