Biracial Baggage- more on race...Surprise!

I was dealt this hand.  It is a strange hand, or at least that is what I think about it.  I am biracial.  My mother is white and my father is black.  To be an american with that parentage is no walk in the park.  I will not explain any of that in this post.  That is hard and exhausting.  But I will explain my experience, which is also hard and exhausting.

I do not look like my parents.  If I am in any store with my mother or any member or her family, it is not assumed that we are together.  If I am in a restaurant waiting with anyone in my father’s family, it is not assumed that I am one of their party.  I am brown.  I look Latino.  I look Hispanic.  I look Mexican.  I do not pass for Black.  I do not pass for white.  It was not a problem for me that I did not look like anyone in my family (except for my brother and my sister), until I was 5 when someone so kindly pointed it out to me (proof that race is a social construct; but a construct that is given so much weight).  

It was hard to feel anxious as a child.  I felt anxious because I didn't look like my father.  I was afraid someone would take me from him.  It was hard to have people admire my mother for adopting brown siblings.  I hated explaining myself and my existence.  I mean, who likes to do that anyway?  No one.  No one likes to explain who they are or how they are.  It is dehumanizing.  

I knew that I belonged to them and they knew that they belonged to me, but everyone else needed convincing.  That quickly tires a child.  Grown ups thought of me as a pleasant child.  I had good manners.  My hair was always creatively displayed.  I was energetic, witty, and talkative.  I could engage adults in a conversation.  And then suddenly they would look at me and say, “what are you?”  This continues to this day.  As an adult, I get it less, because I intimidate people (this is what friends tell me).  But I will occasionally find a brave person whose curiosity gets the best of them and they blurt out, “what are you?  what is your backround?  what ethnicity are you?  what is your heritage?”  They try to be diplomatic about it.  But once you open your mouth to ask a stranger these things, you can no longer be considered a kind person or a diplomat.  

You are being a nosey shithead.  

I know that people hear the way I speak and they see my skin and the 2 things do not sit right with them.  They want to know about my race because then they can categorize me and put me in a box.  They want a cheat sheet on how to treat me.  Latina, Middle Eastern, Native American, Indian, Southeast Asian- who knows?  

But, oh my, they are curious.  Then they find out that the only language I speak is english, and they really get confused.  I recently found out that was another way for people to ask about my race. I thought it was kind of genius of them.  But my answer only confused them more, which pleased me greatly.  

I used to answer people, gladly.  Or I would have them take a guess.  Now, I just sigh in exasperation.  I should just come up with some smart ass answer.  But I was raised to be more polite than that.  And I also know that I am still a minority, so I need to be kind and diplomatic so people won’t judge other minorities harshly because of me; the of the many burdens for People of Color.

Once when I was in high school my mother and I were at a large craft store finding a pattern for a costume.  A woman with a cart wandered over to look at patterns, too.  In her cart was a little girl, all of 4 years old.  The woman looked at my mother and I and said, “Can my daughter meet your daughter?  Can she meet you both?  I want her to see people that look like us.”  The moment was profound and charged with a kind of electricity I have never felt before or since.  Sometimes I feel something similar when I see a biracial family, but it is not as poignant as this moment was.  The woman was white and her daughter was brown like me.  The woman saw us and immediately knew what we were.  She truly saw us.  And she wanted us to see her and her child.  Most importantly of all, she wanted to give her child a taste of seeing people like them- a person like her.  My mother said, “Sure,” and we walked over to wave at her daughter sitting in the cart.  The mother said, “Look!  This girl is just like you.”  And she smiled at her daughter who shyly glanced at me.  I was glad that this woman was brave enough to speak with us.  Seeing them together was just as important for me as it was for the girl.  When we see people that look like us, we feel less alone. 

It is just so rare that I see someone just like me.  

My sister always says that she feels complete when we are all together as a family.  Or at least, when there is a heard of brown people orbited by a stray white or black person, we are better equipped to handle the side eyes or the comments.  Together it more easily rolls off our collective brown skins.  Together we can laugh about it in the car afterwards.  Together we can joke about how we couldn’t put an entire spanish sentence together if our life depended on it.  Together we can make jokes about race to lighten the mood, and our laughter eases the tension because we all understand how awkward the jokes are.  

Thinking of this moment, with the young girl and her mother, makes me weep.  I know what that loneliness feels like and I know that insatiable desire to fit somewhere.  This thirst is not often quenched when you inhabit the kind of skin that I do.  I never feel black enough.  I never will be white enough.  Alas, I am not Latina and I never pretend to be.  I straddle these 2 divided worlds and I have to make my home somewhere in between.  And I know that no matter where I rest, someone in my family doesn’t quite get it or doesn’t understand why I placed myself here or there or anywhere.  

It is quite lonely here.