Mixed Illusion
You’re too white for us. You’re acting black. You sound white. What are you mixed with? You’re acting white. Look at her using all those big words acting like she’s a white girl. You’re nothing but a high yella bitch. You’re too dark to have a white mom you must be adopted. If this were a game of Jeopardy, the winning answer would be “what is stupid shit people have said to me when I say I’m mixed Alex”
I remember when I first started filling out applications for things. Colleges, jobs, health forms on my own, it didn’t matter. The question is always asked, regardless of the specific verbiage, what is my ethnicity/race? I can hear some of you saying okay that’s not so bad right, a lot of people have that same situation and it shouldn’t be a big deal. Here’s the problem…back in the day it used to say (and often still does actually) “check only one”. The system was set up for me to chose one of my parents/lineage/culture/history over the other. Just for kicks one time, I chose white or Caucasian. It’s factual but controversial and not easily accepted…
Why you ask…because my skin and hair and eyes tell a different story. This is my favorite selfie:
I’m too brown to be considered white/Caucasian by pretty much anyone who looks at me though. The choice is made for me most of the time and if I chose “wrong” I’m ridiculed, guilt-tripped and made to look like an idiot. How can I possibly be white…I mean yeah my freckles and light skin prove there’s some white in me (yes this is real stuff people have said to me) but that “doesn’t make you white.” Interestingly enough, it hasn’t made me Black either a lot of the time because well passing.
Fast forward to today. We’re more than 50 years post the Civil Rights Act and all is well and good now right? Yeah not so much. Back in 2019 I applied for a job at Walmart. While doing the application, when the race/ethnicity question came up and some language was updated. I no longer had to “check only one” and there was an option for two or more races too. Yay progress right? Wrong.
Under the “two or more races” box are no subdivisions or additional options. Under the Caucasian box, there are also no additional options. To the best of my knowledge, I’m pretty much as mixed as it gets. My mother’s side is Irish, Scottish and Native and my father’s side is Black of Jamaican decent which is primarily African in nature. Where’s the box for multi-ethnic complete with the drop downs? Where’s the segments of the population that are multi-ethnic? You know multi-ethnic communities like we have white and Black or Polynesian or Russian or or or ones…oh wait that’s right, it’s an illusion.
It doesn’t matter what my DNA is mixed with, judgments will be and have been made exclusively based on my skin color. Before I speak, before I write, before I act.
Mixed is an illusion reserved for a box on an application and I won’t be contained. In a world that has never apologized for judging me by only one ethnicity, I refuse to be anything less than unapologetically Black…with a capital B.
Originally published June 7, 2020 and updated today.