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.
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