Often when I write these blogs, or have the feelings I feel, I think about how the friends I have who are White and well-meaning must wonder why this is so prevalent or feel attacked, and perhaps a little awkward by never being able to fully understand that experience.
Or I think about my black friends who may be a little perplexed by the ongoing "people of color" ordeal. Or the Vietnamese family who are a little more hu-ra about Vietnamese culture than I would ever be.
It can get quite divisive and so often people choose to attend to their everyday lives rather than to explore it. And to be fair, if your looks suggests that you're authentically one race--- if you look like what "black person looks like", or what a white person looks like, or an Asian person outside of the middle east, Thailand, and India looks like--- there is an option to suppress those questions in order to attend to daily obligations.
But it's 2013 which means America (including the islands and South America) is increasingly filled with mixed, light-skin, or racially ambiguous people like myself. And that inbetweenness, though not new, creates a lot of questions for parents, society, and "racially ambiguous" people to incrementally answer.
1. Do we still, in theory, have the paper bag rule?
2. Do we still, in theory, have the one-drop law?
3. What type of hair qualifies a person as Black? And what type of hair dismisses them?
For me, and for millions of other kids who have an Asian, White, Middle-Eastern or Hispanic (non-black identified) parent, it may be about the space we keep in our identities for the parent who is not Black. Or in my case, the 1.5 parents. There are questions about that, too. Because even more of us will have to talk to our racially ambiguous children one day about the history of their ancestors and allow them that room to explore who they are.
And maybe in a few generations the majority of people will be racially ambiguous but until then, if there is a system of mimicking than people still need to face that reality. People in the U.S. from all minority races mimic how a certain dominant race speaks and writes. People lightening themselves throughout the world to incrementally approach a certain ideal-- because subconsciously they know that not only is that ideal for beauty but that those people who they are vying to imitate hold the power, resources, respect AND admiration.
It's different for everyone but for me, my mother knows I identify more with my father's dominant race and ancestry, because whether in Vietnam or the U.S., the paper bag, one drop, mimicking realities are the ones that he, and as a direct result, I face more often than she or my brother (who resembles her racially and ethnically) does.
People say Barack Obama or Tiger Woods or Hallie Berry or Alicia Keys aren't Black because they have a non-Black parent and therefore, they must identify as mixed. Which they may. I do. There are many black experiences, mixed being one, first generation being another, immigrants from the African Diaspora being another; Latino yet another, but if they have to navigate their world, their society, their lives experiencing the experiences that their non Black parent does not experience based on their Black genetics than, they are justified to own their own experience as a Black person. Simple. Who is anyone to tell Barack Obama he is not the first Black president because his mother is white?
But I think racial ambiguity also brings up the fierce contradictions of how you view yourself versus how society views you. Not everyone will get 20 minutes to explain their racial identity to everyone else. And the way society perceives you is powerful. If my hair were thicker, I may be more likely to be considered Black, but currently, I am, as crude men would say, "exotic." And regardless of self identification, a lot of the time, how we look defines our challenges and experiences. I don't experience things Vietnamese women experience but I certainly don't experience or face many of the challenges that the average phonotypical Black woman faces either. I have some experiences, mostly derived from the Asian or liberal (confused) White community, but certainly not all. That's a fact. Self identification has NO bearing on that, whatsoever. My skin is olive-brown and my hair is naturally straight and my 3-year-old students adore the hair almost as much as they adore me.
Perception matters because it shapes a large part of the experience. It is why a white person is not a black person no matter what neighborhood they grew up in, what rallies they went to, what non profit they started, and what friends they had. It's why a man doesn't understand a woman's experience. It is why anthropology, education, and sociology are still so fucked up because they are filled with white people who study people and otherness, albeit for a long time and possibly a lot of hard work, who are well meaning and intrigued, and would like to create discourse, and spread the knowledge and experiences they think they know through those years of hard work. But while the numbers and facts are there, and the experiences are captured second hand, the authenticity may not be. The way the story is told, what is left in, what is left out, what order the chapters are arranged... is the choice of, an outsider.
I relate to my blackness, to my one dropness, to my experiences but I don't claim it when sharing spaces where I did not need to navigate through certain experiences the way certain others would have. That's where colorism comes back in.
This is why the discourse is difficult. Because if you don't come authentic, you don't come at all. Where does that leave white friends?
Where does that leave Vietnamese people, including my father, who are perplexed that I don't relate to, identify as, and live that particular experience?
Where does that leave my black friends who question why this dark skin, yet biologically majority-Asian girl dedicates so much of herself to understanding race, white supremacy, colorism, and blackness?
But it's discourse that needs to be had because the world is more free and more inbetweenness and boxes exist to check. And whether more boxes is necessary or not (boxes inform the allocation of resources and the reality of white domination in every sector of society, so more seems unnecessary), we still need to talk.
