What Are You?
A color in the melting pot.
The “melting pot”: a place where a variety of races, cultures, or individuals assimilate into a cohesive whole; a process of blending that often results in invigoration or novelty. (Merriam Webster Dictionary)
“What are you?” Well that’s a pretty complex question, don’t you think? Before you begin to bombard with an arsenal of questions in regards to my race or my ethnicity, or my nationality, or whichever you were curious to know about, pay attention closely to what I am going to tell to you. Understand that I am the product of an interracial couple’s “love”, from the late 1990’s. During that time the approval rate of interracial relationships had risen from 4% in 1958 to 64% in 1997. (Gallup Poll: In U.S; 87% Approve of Black-White Marriage, vs. 4% in 1958) My mother grew up in a household that would have rather she’d date someone within their same culture, (which is probably why she rebelled against her parents and only dated Black men, producing 4 biracial children). In result of my mother’s calamitous urge to break away from her family’s overbearing control she ended up pushing herself more towards the African-American culture — abandoning her own.
While growing up, my mother hardly ever spoke Spanish around me, all of her friends were African-American, and the way she spoke even changed in a way that matched the lingo as that of her friends. What she didn’t realize was that by abandoning a major part of who she was, she would also be removing a special piece of my own identity, an identity that I would later on have to put together for myself. Her family was from Jalisco, Mexico and…well that’s about all I know in regards to her Mexican heritage. Her firm, buried spot in the African-American culture rid me of ever fully knowing who she was and who I was. “Remember that a couple is made up of two people, not two races” (Harvard Educational Review, Raising Biracial Children) because my father was raised in a home that was more tolerant and didn’t discriminate against a person’s ethnicity, race, or nationality, he didn’t precisely view my mother’s façade as an issue of significant value. He didn’t see her façade as a cause whose effect would result in his biracial child not fully understanding who she was because of her mother’s purposed ethnic and cultural deficit. So, if ”what we are” or “who we are” is inherited from our parents, who then do I become with a parent who doesn’t want anything to do with who they are?
My distorted design of what my individuality was meant to be, led me to believe that I didn’t belong anywhere. So, I kept my distance. I kept my distance away from the Mexican me.
It is ‘posited’ that “multiracial children do not differ from other children in self esteem, [or] comfort with themselves…that mixed children tend to celebrate diversity and appreciate an upbringing in…various cultures” (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) while being mixed may have been an appreciated and a joyful experience for some, I deplored it. Who was I? No one looked like me. I didn’t speak Spanish, my hair grew big and round — once the water was through with it, my eyes changed colors, and my nose was wide — the perfect misfit.
In Nina Simone’s song, Four Women,(published in 1966 when the approval rate for interracial marriage was 15%) she shares the stories of four different African-American women, each representing an African American stereotype.
“My hair is woolly
My back is strong
Strong enough to take the pain
Inflicted again and again…
My skin is yellow
My hair is long
Between two worlds I do belong…
Whose little girl am I?
I’ll kill the first mother I see
My life has been too rough
I’m awfully bitter these days…
What do they call me [?]”
From my own interpretation, the woman in the song is oppressed and is suffering because she feels she has no place within her own Black race or within the world because of her indeterminate self.
Since a clear and concise conversation about my identity and individualism had not taken place in my home, I didn’t know how to react to and interact with society’s “culturally conservative views”. As far as I began to comprehend, I was Black. My African-American grandmother’s silky collard greens, plump sweet potatoes, and buttery cornbread, her gigantic collection of African art which decorated the entire living room and kitchen, her portraits of African-American jazz performers whom adorned the walls and her Luther Vandross and Patti LaBelle records that sailed through the complete house were a part of who I was. After several years, this culture became me and disinterested me from any previous notions I had about who I was.
But then! In 2008, the biracial child of a White woman married to a Black man became the President of the Unites States — our Barack Obama (wow!). Followed by the 2013 General Mills, Cheerios brand, who decided to display in one of their advertisements — an interracial couple with their biracial child. In the advertisement the “biracial child [is] approaching her white mother asking about the heart-healthy benefits of Cheerios as it relates to her African-American dad” (New Jersey 101.5, Bi-Racial Relationships — Are They Still a Problem?) While the General Mills advertisement did receive negative feedback, it was still refreshing to see efforts being made by advertising and marketing committees, screening that they are aware of more ideal American families today. (Check plus!). In 2014, Bill de Blasion became the 109th mayor of New York City — a White man with a Black wife and two biracial children (They have fluffy curly hair too!). Recently, this year a ballerina named Misty Copeland, who has contributed extensively to the world of dance, was announced the first African-American woman to be revered the role of principal dancer at The American Ballet Theatre (At last!). Finally there were people who were potent, defying all odds, and shaking the placate zones of others by embracing who they truly were and what they stood for — a president, a professional dancer, a mayor and an American multinational manufacturer and marketer, all of whom symbolize the new normality of the biracial and multiracial culture.
Even though I had to experience an internal emptiness and face racial uncertainty throughout my life I was able to find solace during my breakthrough. Throughout my discovery I found out that I am NOT the only person who is of mixed race or the only person who had to undergo individuality challenges. It was then when my selfish, contented self, realized that though I may not truly belong anywhere, I am able to blend in everywhere.
At this moment I understand my mother’s deficiency in fully embracing her culture (although it wasn’t fair) she chose for herself who and what she wanted to be, she unfurnished her mind from what the “verities” pasted on her psyche said she should be. It didn’t matter to me entirely who she was anymore or what I was anymore, because regardless of what she was or what she wanted to be, what I did know for a reality was that she was my mother and to me, that was the information that mattered the most.
Today, I understand and accept that many people don’t like to be in the unknown so they marginalize (blended) people, they try to put every person in an ethnic or racial “box”, which is ok because when they ask the simple question “What are you?” a question that doesn’t have a simple answer, I know they’re asking this question only for their own refuge. People simply want to be safe. So for their safety, I’ll finally answer the question.
“What am I?” you asked me? I am the checkbox with the word “other” sitting next to it. I’m fascinating. Sadly, what they say I am is: Mexican, Puerto Rican and Black, but…where’s the checkbox for that at? Exactly. “What am I?” you asked me? I am green. I am blue. I’ll even be fluorescent beige if you’d rather, because I am only a color, an ingredient. I am just one color in the melting pot, among many other beautiful colors. And after each and every color is melted, in the pot you will find ONE remaining color, ONE remaining race, and ONE creation. Meaning, that it does not exclusively matter what I am or who you think I am because I am one and so are you. Remove the question marks and the labels, and instead, place the lid on the melting pot and let us all melt together in the pot so that we can be one. So what, if you examine my features and are unable to catergorize them — I like that it makes you painfully uncomfortable; for being uncomfortable is the first footstep to being comfortable; being comfortable with the mystique of people of unique outer shells that you are unable to classify. To those who only read my story to get the answer to the question in my title, this is especially for you: You got your answer, now go paint yourself… green or… better yet, fluorescent beige too!
What I am is what I choose to be.
I wrote this article on August 29, 2015.
