a response to a response

I spent a lot of time writing about multiracialism over the past few posts- it's a topic I'm heavily invested in, obviously. I was discussing it with a friend who brings up a very good point.

Their response was in regards to the fact that Barack even considers himself black because, as quoted in TIME magazine:

"If I'm outside your building trying to catch a cab," he told Charlie Rose,
"they're not saying, 'Oh, there's a mixed race guy.'"

That's a valid point, but it's missing the heart of what I'm trying to say. This is probably my fault for a number of reasons: firstly, because I used examples like Barack Obama and Becca and never related it to my own, personal struggle; that might help to understand what's going on inside my head right now. Secondly, I never took the time to explain it- I don't know how I didn't in 3 posts, but I'll take the time to explain my exact point of view in a 4th post.

So, you'll notice that when I talk about multiracial issues, I talk about it as an identity. Your identity is about who you are and how you define yourself.

As a society, one of the problems that we have is we leave those definitions up to other people. Race, in particular, has become nothing but an external identifying factor.

I just went to the ECAASU conference at Cornell (the East Coast Asian American Student Union) and there was a workshop I attended that focused on the idea of identity. We were given two forms to fill out, one asked about social identities (race, gender, sexuality, etc) and the other was about personal identity (talents, majors, favorite color, etc). The facilitators asked a good question: why, if we have a choice over the items in our personal identity, do we immediately identify with the social elements. Some of us discussed how it's easier that way because even though they're part of who we are, society pretty much gives us this identity... and we accept that.

I know the idea of empowerment seems idealistic and outdated, but I think it's the first step to reconnecting ourselves as a society as opposed to fragmenting each other into different social groups.

Knowing who you are, and presenting yourself as an individual, not as a color or a gender or a religion, or any other factor, is a first step towards social cohesion. And take note that I say it's only a first step, it obviously won't cure racism and other forms of discrimination. I can make it clear to my friends and acquaintances back home that I don't want to be labeled the "ethnic" girl or "ambiguous" girl, but will that stop a potential employer on judging me by the color of my skin or by the fact that I'm a female when I walk through the door of an interview? Will it help me to get strangers to stop asking if I speak english anytime I look confused? Will it help Obama catch a cab?

No, no, and no. But, I think we have all eventually come to realize that there is no single, simple solution to every problem. Solutions take time and they take the effort of many in a variety of ways. This is one that I'm offering: know who you are and own it.

Maybe you knew this about me, and maybe you didn't, but I'm just beginning to overcome my own struggles with racial identity.

I held it off for a long time. I held it off during elementary school when people would ask if I was adopted because I didn't look like the family that I lived with. I held it off during middle school when people first started becoming curious about race. I became aware of who I was in high school, and aware that others were aware too, and I still held it off.

I went from the suburbs where I was quickly championed as "ethnic girl" to Jersey City where I literally became an alien. I didn't conform to their perceptions of what a white girl from the suburbs was supposed to be... but I also wasn't one of them.

To be honest, I always felt less comfortable in the suburbs, where my home had been for most of my life. In the suburbs, people notice when you're not "one of them", but there's this odd feeling of hesitant acceptance.

In places like Jersey City, it's a more obvious process, but in the suburbs... it starts with the questions like "oh, what are you?" "oh, that's an interesting last name... where is it from?" "do you speak any other languages?". Probing questions that make me feel more like an object under a microscope than a real live human being trying to have a normal conversation.

If the topic comes up, I enjoy talking about it, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I've had complete strangers just ask me about it out of nowhere. And it makes me uncomfortable.

But, in the end, I never had to claim a racial identity, and that was a strange way of finding comfort in the situation. Let's be honest about the suburbs, no one is particularly comfortable talking about race--- white people. Generalization: most white people, who are surrounded by other white people most of the time, don't usually like to talk about race. It's uncomfortable, yeah?

This is simply stemming from my experience surrounded by suburbs and going to school with a significant amount of kids from the suburbs. You could claim this is a parallel to racism, and while I'm not proud of making generalizations, this is going to bring up the debate of nature versus nurture that I don't feel like getting into.


It is in this experience that the few white people who do talk about race around me, usually talk about it as a punchline for a joke. Or they are asking questions about my race. There have sadly been few exceptions (in my experience). It's an interesting topic with so many paths to explore, I wish there could always be an open dialogue.


So I guess that's why it was such a shock when I came to college that so many people were so willing to participate in an open dialogue about race-- and then I realized I wasn't hanging out with a lot of white kids.

Another blatant generalization, but oh well: When you are not white, race usually winds up becoming a huge part of who you are and the experiences you've had. Because you are always reminded of what it means to be not white.

And then I realized I would never be white. As much as my mother told me that I was, as much as I told myself I belonged in the suburbs, and that I fit into the suburban landscape- I realized I was in a situation just like Obama. No stranger, in the millisecond they use to judge me, is going to think "Oh there's a girl who is part-white from the suburbs."

As I started to hear a lot more people talk about their experiences, it started to make me think about my own. The questioning, the confusion, the probing... everything that came along with being multiracial. Including the effects that it had on my family and friends, and maybe they'd like to deny that there is one... but I see otherwise in some of their reactions.

I realized though, that one of the problems I was having with my friends and family concerning racial identity is that I never asserted one. I could not place myself into any of the neatly categorized boxes for racial identity that society has handed to me, and I left my identity open for society to decide.

It's not like others wouldn't judge me anyway, not like they would understand my multiracial identity without me having to explain it to them anyway.

But now, when I am discriminated against, when I am judged, I have an identity to fall back on. I know who I am. It makes it that much harder for someone to make me crack.

Because that's where I was headed. It's not that I didn't know that I was a multiracial girl, but I never really took the time to think about how that fact became a part of who I was.

So when people said I look like something else, or I act like a certain race, or I have "qualities" of a certain ethnicity, I let those perceptions make up my identity more than who I actually was. I became a question. And being a question can wear you down easily. Your identity is the first and last thing you have a hold onto in this life, and if you are unaware of what makes up that identity... what do you really have to keep you anchored?

This is why I stress the importance of being able to assert and claim a racial identity?
If you're black, be black, embrace it... but embrace it for the reasons you want. Be black how you identify it, not how society does for you.

I put a certain emphasis on white people within this blog, and that's because I've noticed a lot of white people running away from the idea of identifying as white. "it's boring" "it's nothing" "it has a negative identity to it". I want to change that. There is no reason that white people cannot be participants of a racial dialogue. In fact, I think it's necessary that this race- that ALL races- be a part of it. But, in order for that to happen successfully, most white people must come to understand what it means to be white. To identify as white.

And, obviously, the group I'm reaching out to the most is the multiracial group. It's a group that's growing quickly and group that is being dragged along through its development without any roots. I've noticed a lot of confusion and distress within this group because there's no real definition for it. Everytime one of us have to fill out an application , we're forced to compromise part of our identity-- or surrender our racial identity altogether by checking "none" or "other".

Maybe Obama identifies as black, maybe he has never connected to his white identity... as long as he owns that identity and doesn't let society shape it for him. You can't defeat racism by internalizing it. If Obama self-identifies as a black man and not societally identifies that way- then he has made that first step.

But maybe, for some multiracials, maybe for the Colombian-Jewish-Chinese-French-Malaysian-Native Americans, the Filipino-Irish-Colombian-French-Dutch-Vietnamese-Ecuadorian-Spanish-Chileans, or half black/half white individuals... it's just not that easy. Which box to choose?

Fuck boxes. Maybe, I will choose the Pacific Islander/Asian box on the application form... but I will carry out the rest of my day as a multiracial individual. When people ask "what" I am, that's what I will tell them. When some asshole at Newark Airport makes some racist comment based on his personal assumption that I'm an Arab girl, I will tell him that he's ignorant and THEN will assert my identity (and I did). At worst, the man remains an ignorant asshole, but at the very least I haven't let his ignorance chip away at my individuality and sense of self-identity.

Because that's all I have, and if I can't take ignorance away from society, I'm not going to allow society to take away identity from me.