I identify as mixed-race
What Are You?
I find myself being asked that question more often than I like to admit. It takes many forms, broken down and built back up again, that same old question rattling around in my head like a single penny in a tin can. It makes so much noise, demanding attention. It’s a person’s desperate attempt to make sense of my loose curls, almond shaped eyes and light complexion. That strong human instinct to organize and categorize, coming from the depths of a person’s consciousness, causing many people to squint and nod their head as they try to piece my features together like a puzzle.
I’m Mixed.
Telling people this makes most people smile as they are finally able to put me in a category. I tell them about how my mother was born in Africa and is Portuguese and African and how she rode donkeys and lived near a volcano. I tell them that my father is African-American, Irish and Native-American. I tell them he rides motorcycles, has tattoos and gets sunburned during the summer.
A lot of people don’t understand my choice to say that I’m mixed. They say that everybody is mixed and that to call yourself mixed is to call yourself nothing at all. I guess they think that not categorizing yourself, that not defining yourself, allows others to define you instead.
They tell me that I’m black in both who I am and how I was raised. There was a time when I would have bowed my head and adopted a single racial identity, but I have come to understand that my identity is mine to decide and nobody else’s. I decided that I would be proud of who I am and not allow anyone else to try to fit me in a box.
Being mixed race means that you are one of the few who can separate themselves from the clean-cut idea of race. As Anne Rinaldi, in Cast Two Shadows says, “People who cast two shadows are very special.” I think this means that being from different races gives you a special perspective on things that others do not have. A mixed-race person has the ability to understand and identify with the struggle and history of many people. You can see the overlap of experiences, both hardships and triumphs, experienced by all people. You carry with you the paralleled histories of all that you are while also relating to all that you are not.
I am proud to be of mixed race. I claim all that I am, which is essential to me.
