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...
Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
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
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
Thursday, December 29, 2011
It really is that simple...
I wrote this over a year and a half ago:
It would appear that the mixed race identity expresses itself in multiplicitous narratives that are articulated from the intersections of more recognizable narratives. That is to suggest that the reason mixed race identity is so easy to suppress, or worse dismiss, is because it is not locateable as a singular voice. Mixed Race does not speak as one identity, rather, mixed race is the voice of multiplicitous identities that are expressed all at once and are expressed in and as a "this and" experience.
I have been working on my dissertation this week. I aim to be done and turn in a final draft on the 18th of January. That said, I have been trying to articulate the characteristics of mixed race along with a frustration around the dislocation of mixed race people in socio-cultural histories. My assertion is that mixed race has, and must have, existed at the inception of race itself. If we understand race to have been a concept or construct that was placed on existing bodies rather than illicited from those bodies and lived experiences, then we must accept that even in the moment when africans were named less than human and raced as black there had to be bodies/people/lived realities that didn't fit within racial categories even then. They weren't supposed to. Race was meant to seperate and thus any socio-racial location that is not distinctly seperate from other socio-racial identities simply don't make sense. Worse, these identities serve to prove the social construct of race incorrect. And THAT is a problem.
Anthropologists have a lot to offer when they locate africans in the Americas and Native Americans in Africa long before the advant of african chattle slavery. Biologists offer us similar DNA in populations who seem to be completedly geographically inaccessible to each other... As populations migrated across the globe, and lived experiences culturally intersected through trade and war, there are children... I have spent six years talking to this century's version of those children and listening to the journey and development of their socio-racial identities.
It troubles me that it seems acceptable to be proud of ethnic mixing "I am italian and irish" and not race mixing. Why can't it be as wonderful to be "Chinese and Irish"? This is a very simple snapshot of what I have been doing for the last six years. But at times, for me, it is just that simple. I am certain I have said it many many times... When my children wake up they have a parent who is brown skinned and a parent who is white skinned. They understand that to be a black parent and a white parent. They also understand that mommy is mixed race because her parents are different colors. They also understand that daddy is irish, german, english, and welsh. Even more interesting is that this all makes perfect sense to children, yet academics call it research and scholarship.
So many times I have been reading history, sociology, anthropoloy articles and found strong articulations of mixed race individuals not just because I understand it as mixed race but because the individuals in their own narratives (pre-critical race theory's exploration of mixed race) understand themselves as mixed race. Also, almost always, they understand that they are not allowed to name themselves mixed race and must then find a way to articulate their socio-racial being. Yet every academic conversation about mixed race acts like it is a new conversation....
Mixed race is not new...really progeny of different people from different cultures is not new...I have really enjoyed exploring why allowing this reality to have a shape of its own is such a threat to who and how socio-racial identity is understood and allowed to be expressed.
More soon...
It would appear that the mixed race identity expresses itself in multiplicitous narratives that are articulated from the intersections of more recognizable narratives. That is to suggest that the reason mixed race identity is so easy to suppress, or worse dismiss, is because it is not locateable as a singular voice. Mixed Race does not speak as one identity, rather, mixed race is the voice of multiplicitous identities that are expressed all at once and are expressed in and as a "this and" experience.
I have been working on my dissertation this week. I aim to be done and turn in a final draft on the 18th of January. That said, I have been trying to articulate the characteristics of mixed race along with a frustration around the dislocation of mixed race people in socio-cultural histories. My assertion is that mixed race has, and must have, existed at the inception of race itself. If we understand race to have been a concept or construct that was placed on existing bodies rather than illicited from those bodies and lived experiences, then we must accept that even in the moment when africans were named less than human and raced as black there had to be bodies/people/lived realities that didn't fit within racial categories even then. They weren't supposed to. Race was meant to seperate and thus any socio-racial location that is not distinctly seperate from other socio-racial identities simply don't make sense. Worse, these identities serve to prove the social construct of race incorrect. And THAT is a problem.
Anthropologists have a lot to offer when they locate africans in the Americas and Native Americans in Africa long before the advant of african chattle slavery. Biologists offer us similar DNA in populations who seem to be completedly geographically inaccessible to each other... As populations migrated across the globe, and lived experiences culturally intersected through trade and war, there are children... I have spent six years talking to this century's version of those children and listening to the journey and development of their socio-racial identities.
It troubles me that it seems acceptable to be proud of ethnic mixing "I am italian and irish" and not race mixing. Why can't it be as wonderful to be "Chinese and Irish"? This is a very simple snapshot of what I have been doing for the last six years. But at times, for me, it is just that simple. I am certain I have said it many many times... When my children wake up they have a parent who is brown skinned and a parent who is white skinned. They understand that to be a black parent and a white parent. They also understand that mommy is mixed race because her parents are different colors. They also understand that daddy is irish, german, english, and welsh. Even more interesting is that this all makes perfect sense to children, yet academics call it research and scholarship.
So many times I have been reading history, sociology, anthropoloy articles and found strong articulations of mixed race individuals not just because I understand it as mixed race but because the individuals in their own narratives (pre-critical race theory's exploration of mixed race) understand themselves as mixed race. Also, almost always, they understand that they are not allowed to name themselves mixed race and must then find a way to articulate their socio-racial being. Yet every academic conversation about mixed race acts like it is a new conversation....
Mixed race is not new...really progeny of different people from different cultures is not new...I have really enjoyed exploring why allowing this reality to have a shape of its own is such a threat to who and how socio-racial identity is understood and allowed to be expressed.
More soon...
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The cup runith over...
Again I assert that if identity, affinity, and racial memberships are constituted by the spaces you have access to and the spaces that you are restricted from, how can I, or anyone like me, be anything other than mixed race? I just finished a train the trainer diversity workshop with an international organization. The facilitators were a CEO of Jewish heritage and a woman who self-identified as being “of black African heritage. I am the descendent of kidnapped and enslaved people.” I immediately got a pit in the bottom of my stomach. I knew, three minutes in, that I was going to struggle. I knew I was not going to fit here.
We started an exercise where we were to stand up for the affinity groups we identified with. I stood for the “white race European heritage” and I stood for the “black African heritage” and then I demanded space for myself. I felt that in a place where we are talking about racism willingly, having paid for the privilege to do so, to not challenge this and many other systemically binary moments would have been a critical mistake. Joining my mixed race resistance group was another woman of English and Ghanaian decent from England. Another participant and I demanded the transracial black/white adoptee group. Grudgingly the facilitators put the two new groups on the board and “allowed” them to happen. Those caucuses were the best, most authentic conversations I had the whole conference.
I was very aware of how lucky I was in that moment, to have another person to fight the fight with. My colleague Lee was not so lucky. Lee self-identified as a transgender masculine queer dyke and there was no space allowed, created, or acknowledged around Lee’s non-binary identity. Non-binary, fluid identities that resist binary categorization are often if not always framed as resistant. In this training, resistant translated directly into antagonistic if not irritating and unnecessary. I also am more deeply aware than ever that non-binary identities are also disruptive. The amount of energy that the facilitators put into dismissing, ignoring, and disenfranchising those of us who were invoking non-binary identities was telling.
During the mixed race caucus we were invited to share a list of things we never wanted to hear again. The top two in that list were “Is that your mother/child/father, etc.” and “You just don’t want to be black”. After the first day, mixed race identity was never talked about again. Many of us took strong ally positions for Lee and non-binary identity, but I had run out of energy around fighting for the mixed race identity. I allowed myself, yet again, to be quietly folded back into the black identity – which I carry, but is only part of who I am – simply because it was easier. Simply because I wanted to belong and that was the only space I COULD belong to. From my outside observance Lee didn’t fare as well; although at one point I did see Lee move off to the LGBTQ caucus, but it was clear that it wasn’t enough. It made me wonder about what someone like my daughter – mixed race white affect - might do, as she cannot pass for black and it was clear that white people were not welcome in the black African heritage group. It was clear that I was not welcome.
For me, the beginning of a non-binary racial identity – that I am calling mixed race - is clearly defined and shaped in these moments when the intimate reality of mixed race and the systemic refusal to allow space for that intimate reality are pushing against each other. The other woman who claimed a mixed race identity said “I could have been raised by a white family if my Dad had died and a Ghanaian family if my Mum had died. I was lucky and I wasn’t, I was raised by both. Race in the United States is crazy.” I concur.
Finally, on the last day, I sat with the Black African Heritage caucus which meets annually. My mixed race colleague had left training the day before and never returned. I had sat at the “not identified” affinity table the day before during the gender caucuses – male and female – in support of Lee’s identity. I think people were upset not to see me there again the day of the Black, Latino, and Jewish Caucuses; which left all the white race heritage people sitting at the “not identified” table. I just remember the moment when I had to choose. I was acutely aware of the fact that I HAD to choose. I chose the Black African Heritage table because I WANTED a community that was identified. But I also wanted the black people around that table, especially the black women, to like me…to want me. It brought up a lot of stuff for me around the dissonance between my black birth mother who gave me away and my white mother who raised me to be this person…strong, proud, resistant, and sure of who I am.
At lunch, the leader of the black African heritage caucus would not look me in the eye; and I knew the invitations to community were truly not for me. I hung in there. It actually took a lot for me to not flee to the “not identified” table where I would have been more comfortable. Imagine, being more comfortable being “not identified”. Although, what are the other choices...misidentified? During that lunch a woman who framed mixed race as a self-identity; although she had not done so before this which was curious to me and made me feel more targeted, said “we with mixed race families will learn to see how we are confused in our relationships”. The leader then looked directly at me and said “we will learn to choose rather than to be chosen, we will learn to see what they have done to us”. And in that moment, the facilitator reached over to the door in between us, a door that was never really open, and turned the key. I am unwilling to have anyone deconstruct my intimate realities.
So I returned to my office... wrote about it in my disseration... cleansed myself of other people's "stuff" and am left with this... Cups are built to keep the fluid in...
More soon...
We started an exercise where we were to stand up for the affinity groups we identified with. I stood for the “white race European heritage” and I stood for the “black African heritage” and then I demanded space for myself. I felt that in a place where we are talking about racism willingly, having paid for the privilege to do so, to not challenge this and many other systemically binary moments would have been a critical mistake. Joining my mixed race resistance group was another woman of English and Ghanaian decent from England. Another participant and I demanded the transracial black/white adoptee group. Grudgingly the facilitators put the two new groups on the board and “allowed” them to happen. Those caucuses were the best, most authentic conversations I had the whole conference.
I was very aware of how lucky I was in that moment, to have another person to fight the fight with. My colleague Lee was not so lucky. Lee self-identified as a transgender masculine queer dyke and there was no space allowed, created, or acknowledged around Lee’s non-binary identity. Non-binary, fluid identities that resist binary categorization are often if not always framed as resistant. In this training, resistant translated directly into antagonistic if not irritating and unnecessary. I also am more deeply aware than ever that non-binary identities are also disruptive. The amount of energy that the facilitators put into dismissing, ignoring, and disenfranchising those of us who were invoking non-binary identities was telling.
During the mixed race caucus we were invited to share a list of things we never wanted to hear again. The top two in that list were “Is that your mother/child/father, etc.” and “You just don’t want to be black”. After the first day, mixed race identity was never talked about again. Many of us took strong ally positions for Lee and non-binary identity, but I had run out of energy around fighting for the mixed race identity. I allowed myself, yet again, to be quietly folded back into the black identity – which I carry, but is only part of who I am – simply because it was easier. Simply because I wanted to belong and that was the only space I COULD belong to. From my outside observance Lee didn’t fare as well; although at one point I did see Lee move off to the LGBTQ caucus, but it was clear that it wasn’t enough. It made me wonder about what someone like my daughter – mixed race white affect - might do, as she cannot pass for black and it was clear that white people were not welcome in the black African heritage group. It was clear that I was not welcome.
For me, the beginning of a non-binary racial identity – that I am calling mixed race - is clearly defined and shaped in these moments when the intimate reality of mixed race and the systemic refusal to allow space for that intimate reality are pushing against each other. The other woman who claimed a mixed race identity said “I could have been raised by a white family if my Dad had died and a Ghanaian family if my Mum had died. I was lucky and I wasn’t, I was raised by both. Race in the United States is crazy.” I concur.
Finally, on the last day, I sat with the Black African Heritage caucus which meets annually. My mixed race colleague had left training the day before and never returned. I had sat at the “not identified” affinity table the day before during the gender caucuses – male and female – in support of Lee’s identity. I think people were upset not to see me there again the day of the Black, Latino, and Jewish Caucuses; which left all the white race heritage people sitting at the “not identified” table. I just remember the moment when I had to choose. I was acutely aware of the fact that I HAD to choose. I chose the Black African Heritage table because I WANTED a community that was identified. But I also wanted the black people around that table, especially the black women, to like me…to want me. It brought up a lot of stuff for me around the dissonance between my black birth mother who gave me away and my white mother who raised me to be this person…strong, proud, resistant, and sure of who I am.
At lunch, the leader of the black African heritage caucus would not look me in the eye; and I knew the invitations to community were truly not for me. I hung in there. It actually took a lot for me to not flee to the “not identified” table where I would have been more comfortable. Imagine, being more comfortable being “not identified”. Although, what are the other choices...misidentified? During that lunch a woman who framed mixed race as a self-identity; although she had not done so before this which was curious to me and made me feel more targeted, said “we with mixed race families will learn to see how we are confused in our relationships”. The leader then looked directly at me and said “we will learn to choose rather than to be chosen, we will learn to see what they have done to us”. And in that moment, the facilitator reached over to the door in between us, a door that was never really open, and turned the key. I am unwilling to have anyone deconstruct my intimate realities.
So I returned to my office... wrote about it in my disseration... cleansed myself of other people's "stuff" and am left with this... Cups are built to keep the fluid in...
More soon...
Friday, July 29, 2011
Responding to comments
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.
More soon.
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….
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)