What are you?

In my blog the other day, I wrote about how I, as a mixed race person and probably some others, had problems with forms that had you fill out your race.  So today I thought I would share just a few of my experiences that involve people who were ‘curious’ about my races.  I put ‘curious’ like this because I really think most of them were just nosy or bored. 

One of the questions I get a lot is “what are you?”  Seriously.  I get that from my own family. So I think that I will use that as the theme for this particular post.

“What are you?”

One of the times that I had to answer that question was shortly after Big Daddy’s funeral, when we gathered for the meal. Big Daddy was my mother’s father and her family was all from the south.  It’s a bit more common to use Big Daddy/Big Mama for grandparents.  I was in middle school and sitting with my cousins.  One of the girls was coloring, when she suddenly looked up at me and asked, “If your mom’s black and your dad’s white, what are you?” 

Now I will remind people who have read my last post that my mom is Black/Native American but most of her family doesn’t know that.  I got into genealogy early and often interviewed my parents about family history.  That’s why it was a black and white question, she asked me.  Yes, I also realized the pun.

My immediate answer was, “Grey.” My cousin looked at me strangely.  My skin wasn’t grey but a light light brown.  It must have confused her, but I took her black and white crayons and showed her how they made grey. I didn’t think much of it until after I had returned home. Of course I had been asked the question before, but this time it was someone from my own family.  She was little, but it eventually made me wonder how many relatives didn’t know what to make of me.  Strangers, confusion was to be expected.

 More recently I had to actually stop going to a particular train station in my town. Why?  Because every time I went there I felt like I was being harassed.  Now, I know may people consider harassment to be committed by one person, but a feeling of harassment can also come from being repeatedly subjected to the same sort of behavior, regardless of if it was by the same person or different people. 

I take the train a lot.  Mainly because both my school and my internship is in the city, while my home and my job is about an hour away by train for now.  I don’t like dealing with strangers, especially when I’m almost always constantly on the go and stressed out.  So while I’m waiting for the train at most stations, I have my purple headphones on.  Usually I don’t have them plugged in.  I just use them as a device to discourage people from brothering me.  However, at this one train station, the headphones were not working.  People, who I do not know, for some reason I was never told, have taken to coming up to me.  They stand and look at me.  I’m not talking about glancing at me out the side of their eye but literally staring directly in my face and for such a long time, that reaching out and punching them in the nose seems like a good idea.  Nobody likes to be studied that closely by strangers unless they are posing for an art class.

I am somewhat use to being looked at. Most people who come from racially mixed families are generally subjected to being looked at, when they are together. It comes with the territory, but the people staring at me in the train station was just downright too up close and personal. The first time one of them actually said something to me it was:

Rando person: “Hey, I know you’re black and Indian, but what are you?”   

Me: (Removes earphones pretending not to hear) Huh?
Rando person (louder):  You black and Indian..what else?

And it gradually increased from there.   People have come up and told me that they made bets on if I was Hawaiian, or if I was randomly related to this person or that because I they knew I had blood from Mexico. 

One time I had pick up a call from overseas and the conversation went like this :

Me: Had a brief conversation in  汉语 (Mandarin) 再见 (Goodbye) (hangs up phone)
Another Rando Person: What were you speaking?
Me: Chinese.
A.R.P: You can speak that because you’re part Chinese. I can see it. You look it.  You black too. And something?  You awfully light-skinned.

This was happening EVERYTIME I went to that station, which was about 3 times a week. 3 times a week on its own doesn’t sound too bad, but multiply that by 4 weeks.  That’s 18 times in a month.  That’s being harassed. I am NOT a walking, talking, breathing guessing game. I eventually had to start going to a train station further from my house just so I can have some peace and quiet and not be bothered about my race.  

It’s happened to me at one of my schools.  I’m reading outside on a hill reading Harry Potter, minding my own business and some rando person just kneels in front of me, squinting and says: “I know you’re part black and Chinese, but what else are you?”

I seriously doubt that incidents like this will stop.  People are nosy.  Lately, I’ve been countering this sort of thing by asking, “Why do you care?”  So far I have not received an answer but if I do I will let you know.

If anybody wants to share their stories, feel free to share.

Understanding Issues of those who are Bi-Racial or Multi-Racia

I know I don't blog often.  I've wanted to but this summer has been so hectic.  Everything seems to be happening at once,  from Donald's Trump idiotic campaign, to the mass shooting in Charleston, to the confederate flag coming down and Black Lives Matter taking off.



I'm sure by now many, many people have either seen or hear of the article on Shaun King on Breibart News that have started many people to doubt the race of this #BlackLivesMatter activist.  The write of that article is this man named Milo Yiannopoulos.  He's a conservative so called reporter for the Breibart News site. I will be very honest with you.  I have absolutely no respect for the man.  Do I think he's a horrible person? Yes, I do.  Is it because he's gay?  No...he's just a horrible person who is more interested in trying to be better than everyone else.  I swear he has an ego that makes the pyramids look like a pebble. I gave him a chance.  I read several of his pieces, I know he had tried to start a national news site and not only did that fail, but he failed to pay his workers.  I listened to him fail again at #SPJAirplay, because he couldn’t keep on the panel’s topic.  But simply I want to ask this....what makes him think he can decide who bi-racial or not?  Who is he to say he understands how it works to be bi-racial or mixed in the United States of America?

 

 

I am not here to judge whether Shaun King is bi-racial or not.  I am not to judge his personal family history.  It should have been his choice whether to relieve it or not, because it’s his family. What I can talk about is my experiences growing up. I am of mixed races.  My mother is Black and Native American and my father is the son of Hungarian and Czech immigrants. Even though my parents have always taught me to be comfortable with my race, it’s something I deal with constantly. As a kid and even now, people can’t just look at me and know what I am. 

One of the problems was filling out forms.  Now,   people have it soooooo much easier when it comes to filling out the race question on forms.  The forms from the late 70’s all the way through to the 1990’s usually listed:  White (Non-hispanic), Black, Hispanic, Native American/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander with the instruction to check just one of those boxes.  While that is fine for most people…I knew at an early age that it didn’t apply to me.  How could I mark one when I was more than one?  The given solutions when I asked about it usually came in these choices.

• If my father was present they would put his race (White)

• If my mother was present some would put Black (My mom is Black/Native American but they didn’t see that)

• If it was just me they would tell me to put down whatever I felt closest to that day.  (Most popular and common choice)

Again, this is because people still didn’t know how to handle mixed race people.  It wasn’t until the early 2000’s that more choices were made available and what was that choices?

• Other or Decline to Answer. 

Not so great choices.  How could I choose other when my options were listed but…I could only choose one, that instruction still existed.  That is how many bi/multi-racial people have so different forms that say they are of different races or have inconsistencies. I remember more than once my parents having to argue about my ethnicity when whoever received the forms didn't like what was put down.  Then there was “Decline to answer”.  That was usually met with a judgmental look or they ask why you decided not to answer.  Really, we couldn’t win. 

Now on a lot of forms people have that option to put down bi-racial or multi-racial.  Some paperwork even allows you to “check all that apply”.  It’s really a big step.

 Recently my mother told me about what happened when a census was being down.  Originally she had put my race down as black (again there was no option that would accurately fit me), but when the person taking the census asked about my father, my mother answered that my dad was white.  It was then the person informed her that legally for the census, whatever the father was, the child was.  So once again I have another inconsistency about my race.  It's almost inescapable.

Twitter embarrassment.

Okay, I started this blog mainly for a school project last spring.  Hence why I post sparingly but tonight I'm posting from a mixture of feelings.  What are these feelings?  Like I said they range from embarrassment to disgust to anger and being...well pissed off.  

What triggered them was tweet I saw. It was in thread and I saw a familiar name and face of someone I knew in real life.  I have never randomly ran across someone I knew in Twitter. At first I was like cool I'll send a tweet saying hi.  He can't be as bad as he was back then.   Then I saw the bright pink and purple colors he tweeted.  It was a cartoon of a girl tying a noose, standing on a chair and happily hanging herself.

 This is where the embarrasment, pissed off and anger came in. I wish I could say shocked but I can't. I had issues in the past with JC75 (not his actual handle). He had several times called me the 'N' word and then Mutt and mixed breed when I pointed out I had a white father.   From there there was a few instances of other insults that led to ignoring each other completely. He claims to be Christian and claims to love God.  How can anyone make those claims and then post a cartoon like that?

Now, here is the sad that I felt, his mother  was a very nice, kind and sweet woman. Sadly, she had passed.  I can't imagine anyone saying the same about him one day.