I’m Not Black or White—I’m Both
A teen describes her experiences growing up biracial.
“Racial identity isn’t in a box. It’s not a quota system and it’s not a survey. These are the thoughts that usually echo in my brain whenever I have to fill out the bubble sheet for a standardized test or application. Sometimes it feels like a gigantic psychological eenie-meenie-miney-moe game. “Fill in one box” the directions at the top of the form read. One? It’s not that simple. What do I choose? Caucasian? African-American? Ummmm. That Pacific Islander box is looking pretty good—but none of these selections describe me. “I’m biracial!” I want to scream. But alas, I take my pencil and bubble in ‘other’ . . . again.
It’s hard to define my race
The pressure to choose one thing over the other is prevalent in almost everybody’s life, but when it comes to picking one race over several others, things can be tricky. My mom is white and my dad is black. In my home and family, my race wasn’t important—I was just plain old Carla. The same thing went for elementary school. No one cared and the boxes were always filled out by my parents. It was their problem to solve.
Then along came junior high, a place where differences start to become more significant. I remember the first time I was ever really questioned about my race. It was seventh grade physical education. I was your typical 11-year-old dreading the fact that I would soon have to play tennis, a sport that I have never played before. Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t noticed that the girl in front of me was inspecting me. When we finally made eye contact, her first words were “What are you?” What was I? Well, hello to you too.
“Are you mulatto?” she asked. I tentatively asked what exactly mulatto was, preparing myself for some sort of insult.
“It means you’re mixed” was her reply. Ohhh. Now I get you. I took a sigh of relief and gave a half-hearted reply that contained a brief synopsis of my immediate family history.
That day changed me and I found it was far more challenging to describe my racial heritage to about six people a day than to play tennis. After a while, the questions didn’t bother me. It almost became part of my day. You know, get up, wash face, brush teeth and find a way to sum up my racial identity in 30 seconds or less.
Biracial children are not “tragic beings”
What did and still continues to bother me is ignorance. Primarily, the closed-minded outlooks of people on daily talk shows and the like that have a problem with interracial couples and multiracial children. The general consensus seems to be that children of mixed heritage are these tragic beings who have no clue who they really are. Supposedly, we suffer from perpetual identity crises and are seen by the world as “zebras” and “oreos.” We are also told, through the messages from the mainstream, that we should either hang out somewhere in a dark corner or just pick a race, stick to it and make it easier on ourselves.
Being biracial isn’t any of these contrived ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I feel so privileged to have a multitude of culture and history wrapped into me. I am certainly not confused. I don’t think that choosing one race over the other is as simple as deciding whether to wear your blue shoes or your red ones, and often this type of decision is trivialized in that way.
To me, saying that I’m either white or black would be a lie. Since my mother didn’t have me through immaculate conception and my father didn’t find me on his doorstep, I have no intention of choosing a “race.”
If my decision happens to spoil someone’s survey then so be it. The beauty of being a child of mixed ethnicity is far more complex than any checked-in square ever could be. The same thing goes for people of other races. Instead of being so wrapped up in the facades of race, perhaps we should look at people as people with likes and dislikes, outside of the quota system.”