I’m Black, I’m White, I’m Neither

James Weldon Johnson

“I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.”–James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

It’s been over a century since the publication of James Weldon Johnson’s novel in which a bi-racial man passes for white in post-Reconstruction America. He shares first his experience of living as a black youth, then as a young man who passes for white in order to become successful and avoid persecution. He goes from a continual sense of doom and danger to a life of safety and security.

James Weldon Johnson lived during a time when it was perhaps understandable why someone would want to shed one’s skin, so to speak, and be done with social ostracism or culturally sanctioned murder.

Just when it seems as though things and times have changed—along comes Trayvon Martin. And Michael Brown. And John Crawford. And a list way too long, with statistics way too skewed against black males in America’s prison industrial complex.

The novel’s lead character, Ex-Colored Man, passes as white. One wonders why anyone wouldn’t still want to do the same thing, if possible, to secure a fat slice of the American, upper-crust pie. Well, no self-respecting bi-racial person, or at least not a socially conscious one, would do that today. (Right?) Still, perhaps she’s found herself in situations where she’s assumed to be a certain race and has to act accordingly.

What has this looked like for me? What does it mean for a mixed-race black and white person to experience blackness, whiteness, and something outside of either?

My father was told not to marry my mother because she was Jamaican. (We know how that turned out.) Once he went ahead with it, he was told to not have kids. (Ditto.) As a young girl, I experienced racism within my own extended family. I was never expected to do well, never encouraged to even speak at social gatherings, and always assumed to be, in the words of one of my aunts, “dumb.” As I got older, I learned what it’s like to be invisible in groups of mostly white people (especially in upstate New York). I’ve gotten side eye, up and down eye, glare eye, and annoyed face. In college, I started understanding and returning “the nod” when walking by a black person, as if I was part of a secret club.

I was also the first in my family (and I believe hometown) to go to a prestigious college. I’ve always—knock on wood—had good job karma, usually landing positions after one or two interviews, if I’ve even had to interview. I grew up being ridiculed for loving The Beatles. I’ve been told, “Oh, I thought you were white.” I’ve heard the N-word uttered, with no black people in sight, when no one thought I would care. I was often told as a child that I had “good hair.” I’ve gone to clubs with black friends who were turned away at the door after I was told I could go in (followed by me yelling at door guy, my own “annoyed face”, and leaving in a huff).

I’ve experienced both racism and privilege. Is this what it feels to be black and/or white? Is this the mixed-race experience?

Mixed-race, as it turns out, is a whole different beast, an alternate reality that takes elements of both white and black, and everything between, outside, and around. The puzzled looks of people trying to figure out what I am. The conversations with other mixed-race people that can only happen after such incidents as a recent trip to the grocery store. An older white man came very close to my mixed-race toddler, exclaimed, “The hair!”, and tried to give her a high five. She cowered and I interrupted with, “Hello, strange man, I don’t think she likes that.”

The mixed-race woman in the next aisle saw the whole thing. Thus came the post-game commentary: eye rolling accompanied by a discussion of how annoying it is when that happens. She told me that it wasn’t until she was 25 until she realized she had “good hair.” On the one hand I thought, great, maybe all the comments my daughter gets about her hair or indeterminate race won’t affect her all that much and she won’t even think about them until she’s older. On the other hand, I thought, wait, this woman spent two decades of her life thinking she had awful hair? Is this what it means to be mixed race—existing in a no man’s land created by society’s need to peg someone definitively as something, until such time that the someone finds her own sense of pride, identity, and self-respect? And what forms of suffering happen until then?

Ours is not a tragic mulatto!

Like any identity, mixed-race is a culmination of life experience, some good, some bad, and some uncertain. It’s refusing James Weldon Johnson’s “mess of pottage.” It’s taking the best of two worlds, processing the rest, and offering a unique perspective that can only come from seeing the larger world in different ways.

On a train in Italy back in the late 1980s, three Canadian guys mistook me for German, talking about me openly behind my back and not realizing we spoke the same language. My Italian friend said something to me and blew my cover. Being racially ambiguous has its more entertaining moments.

 

Am I Raising a Mixed-Race Child?

Forced photo credit: Dakota Billops-Breaux

“Are you raising me white?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So you’re raising me mixed?”

I have two mixed-race daughters. My teen daughter and I had the above exchange as we drove to her SAT. It came right after my sage advice to use either ‘bruh’ or ‘blood’, depending on who she was talking to, in the event of a race war. (Always know who you’re dealing with.)

This wasn’t a situation where someone was asking me or my wife if either of us is the birth parent of our toddler. It had nothing to do with someone trying to figure out our daughters’ racial heritage. There were no skin tone comparisons, or earnest inquiries, or attempts to touch hair.

What does it mean to raise a child to be mixed-race? Is there a mixed-race culture?

The teen daughter in question is fond of music. Her favorite genre is pop-punk, whose musicians are predominantly white. Although she’s familiar with contemporary hip hop and can quote lyrics like nobody’s business (or is it bidness?), there are no black hip hop artists on her smartphone. Does this make her mixed-race? Would having music by black artists allow her to play a race card?

Her meals run the gamut from organic and vegan to cheap and processed. Does this make her mixed-race?

She can dance. Does this make her mixed-race?

She has self-proclaimed “hair issues”. But doesn’t that cross racial lines? (Doesn’t it?)

She can switch from a “white” accent to a “black” one. Is this the defining factor?

Most importantly, how has parenting contributed to any and all of the above? Was it early exposure to The Beatles? Did slipping in The Roots shake things up? Was it the hip hop dance classes?

I have no idea. I know she’s aware of the predominance of white women and girls in books and media. Her friends are diverse. The first report she ever wrote for school was on Ruby Bridges. She doesn’t currently identify so much with her Asian heritage, although she wants to someday visit Japan. (She’s not part-Japanese.) We have a blended family that includes black, white, Native American, and Filipino.

Perhaps I have indeed raised a mixed-race child. How has this manifested? My daughter is smart, sensitive, hilarious, and culturally attuned. She can interact with people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, and backgrounds. She even knows how to combat hair issues.

We haven’t laminated the race card, but we’re working on it.

 

6 Profound Statements from a Mixed-Race Aunt

Mom, Dad, and Aunt Alice

My Aunt Alice is pushing 100. We’ve never been close, but we’re cordial during very rare get-togethers. When I was a kid, however, she was a regular presence in my life. While her heart was in the right place, her tongue couldn’t always keep pace. As a result, she holds the esteemed title of Most Likely to Say Clueless, Inappropriate Things at Breaux Family Gatherings.

But were the things Aunt Alice said really all that bad? Can we learn something from her rudest and most egregious utterances?

I think we can.

  1. I wasn’t talking to her, anyway. My family and Aunt Alice were at a restaurant. Aunt Alice was complaining about my dad. Mom stepped in to defend, wherein Aunt Alice mumbled, “I wasn’t talking to her, anyway.” Important lesson, particularly for artists and marketers: Know your audience. Also be aware of how you’re crafting your message for optimal impact.
  2. Don’t raise your skirt for any boys. I took this one to heart. Because of this important forewarning, I came out during the summer of 1989 and never looked back. I may have looked sideways a few times, but now I’m here and I’m queer. I even think Aunt Alice got used to it.
  3. Learn how to sew. I really wish I’d taken Aunt Alice up on this one. How useful would it be to be able to fix a rip in one’s own pants (that I now wear to avoid raising my skirt), or dabble in bespoke fashions? I missed the boat and the sewing machine on this one.
  4. Did you find a rich husband yet? With some kind of mystic prescience of the economic downturns of the 80s, 90s, and our recent “Great Recession,” Aunt Alice knew how to save a buck and inform others how to do the same. I have a wife who’s doing okay, but alas, no rich husband for me.
  5. Did you win the lottery yet? Advice: Think big.
  6. She looks better now than when she was alive. At my mother’s wake in 1997, as I walked back to the Catholic church pew after viewing the body, these were the hushed, insightful words that lit from Aunt Alice’s red-lipsticked mouth. I’ll never forget them. I know that during someone’s “difficult time,” I can pass along the same words of encouragement, knowing I was taught by the best.

So, the next time that crazy uncle or madcap auntie causes a ruckus at the annual family potluck, or if you ever happen to be down on your luck and dealing with circumstances beyond your control—remember Aunt Alice. I do, and I’m a better person for it.

 

Identity and Resilience, Part Three: My Collegiate Crisis

Okay, so everybody goes through an identity crisis in college, right? These are the formative years, a time of nascent adulthood and three-drink bisexuals.

I’ve been thinking about college not only because my oldest daughter is about to embark on her search for one, but also because of my recent explorations with identity and resilience. It’s been a long time since I figured out who I am—although it hasn’t been all that long since becoming comfortable with certain aspects of what I figured out.

Who and what am I?

Well, I’m mixed-race black and white. I can be shy, I see myself as an extroverted introvert, and I’m a filmmaker, wife, mom, and lover of solitude. These are all aspects of myself that are and were easy to appreciate. I’m also a queer chick who spent about 18 years drinking heavily then stopped (pretty much cold turkey—I’ll save the crazy AA stories for another time).

The heavy drinking, quite honestly, actually helped (for awhile) with the “uncomfortable” part—specifically, being around those of the queer, female persuasion. I came out in 1990 but spent the next many years overcoming this anxiety. Although I came to understand other parts of my identity, my evolution into a shiny, happy lesbian was a slow one.

It all went down (so to speak) in college. It started in a drama class with Anna Deavere Smith and ended with lesbian sex in a passenger’s seat.

It was my senior year at Stanford, 1991. Anna Deavere Smith, who was about to bask in the theatrical limelight of Fires in the Mirror, was teaching a drama class. It was a popular class and I knew it’d be hard to get in, but I showed up to the first session to try my luck. The criteria were simple enough: precedence was given to drama and American studies majors. Everyone else had to provide a convincing argument for being in the class.

We went in a circle, offering hard-hitting and deeply sociopolitical reasons for wanting a coveted spot. “As a Black female,” started one student. Others had similar, self-prescribed labels of identity: Black man, Asian woman, gay male. (Among those who made the cut were Omar Wasow and my friend Alice Wu.)

My answer to the identity question: “I don’t know what I am. I just thought the class sounded interesting.”

So, yeah, I didn’t make it into the class. Right afterward, however, after I wandered out of the drama department in a daze and headed toward The Claw in front of the Stanford Bookstore….I ran into her. She was the unofficial Big Dyke on Campus. Like me, she was mixed-race. We talked for probably four hours about ethnicity, our families and backgrounds, identity, and sexuality.

Cutting to the chase: about a week later I had my first lesbian sex in her car. She interned for the police department and knew the nighttime beat, so we were supposedly safe in the parking lot near the Stanford Museum for the time being. I think Joni Mitchell was playing on the car stereo. (Of course Joni Mitchell was playing on the car stereo.)

I promise I won’t dredge up a fake scandal if she’s ever nominated to the Supreme Court.

And with this—along with my years of heavy drinking—I was brought into and eventually became comfortable in the world of my own skin, at least to the extent that I avoided any major, life-threatening catastrophe. Was it easy? No. Did I make it to the other side with a better understanding of myself (and a new if unfortunate lesbian wardrobe)? Yes.

What I learned from all of this: For anyone going through any sort of identity “crisis,” or any process of bringing into greater focus those things that lead to “me,” it always feels like the first time—not unlike sex in a parked vehicle with a time limit.

In the next and final installment of identify and resilience, I’ll share a few of the finer moments with my now estranged friend, alcohol.

You Know You’re a Tragic Mulatto When….

Does the tragic mulatto still exist in literature and film? We’re not quite sure. Imitation of Life has been old news since the advent of Jennifer Beals, Halle Berry, and Maya Rudolph. Even The Human Stain is verging on outdated. It seems transgender is the new black, or the next frontier of mainstream media figuring out there’s more to entertainment than stereotyping.

Tragic mulattoes are still out there, however. Here’s how you can tell if you’re one of them.

You know you’re a tragic mulatto when:

  1. You identify with Tyler Perry movies.
  2. You think half-breed is the name of a cocktail.
  3. You think mixed race is another term for Bay to Breakers.
  4. You think biracial is a skin whitener pronounced bee-RAH-cee-all.
  5. You have no black friends.
  6. You have no white friends.
  7. Your idea of racial pride is watching The View.
  8. You often can’t decide between a polite handshake and a fist-bump, slap-on-the-back, “wassup dawg” combo.
  9. People who don’t speak Spanish address you in Spanish.
  10. You search Urban Dictionary on a weekly basis for new terms.
  11. You have a news alert set up for Tiger Woods.
  12. You’re a mulatto who’s never heard of the tragic mulatto.

There’s hope for you yet. Stay strong, do some reading, and get out more.