#mixed guy

"Good morning my darling! Why are you staring?"

Thought out my life, I have struggled to understand what that word means for me.  “Biracial”

For as long as I can remember, I have always had to deal with people attempting to do racial math on me.

“Hey are you _______?” Fill in the blank…. of the ones I can remember the most common were, Mexican, Asian, Chinese, Indian, Native American, and Samoan.  At one point, people thought it was funny to just label me as “Ethnic Man” because they could not figure out what I was, nor would they accept the answer that I gave them.  Sometimes it would just be the classic, “What are you?”  While many did this, I’m sure with no intent to harm but, when I tell you this began a deep internal struggle to understand myself, I don’t say so lightly.  

I am the product of a single white mother and a mostly absent African American father. I didn’t have deep interaction with the African American side of my lineage until I was about five years of age and after that that it was only every other weekend and some summers.  I have been indirectly told by white people that I am far too dark skinned to be considered white (the thick curly hair doesn’t help) but have even more often been reminded by my people of color that I act far too white to ever be considered black.

For the past 24 years, I have wrestled with something now being coined as “Racial Imposter Syndrome” loosely defined as someone who straddles between identity boundaries but feels they can’t reasonably identify as one or any of the ethnicities that make up their DNA.

Growing up being told I’m that I am certainly not black but also defiantly not white, left me in a place of confusion.  If I’m not one of those two things, what am I?  I grew up never understanding my heritage, but instead hating myself because I looked so different and never fit in at school (mostly white kids) or with family (all my sibling are African American.)  And because every other light-skinned or biracial person with similar racial makeup to mine identified or seemed to identify as solely African American, I didn’t feel as though I had anyone to share my plight with or anyone that understood what or why I was feeling the way I did and still do.  I felt utterly alone traversing this vast and large chasm hoping to one day stumble upon the answers I was seeking.

Lately, I have been doing a lot of research on what means to be mixed or biracial, how I could better understand myself in the context of my biracial-ness and how I could better love myself for who I am.  I stumbled upon this podcast called, “Code Switch” Which posted an episode early last year titled “’ Racial Impostor Syndrome': Here Are Your Stories” in this episode they talk about RIS, the feelings and science behind it as well as, some ways people dealing with it can work through it.  If you would like to give it a listen, here’s the link: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/01/17/578386796/racial-impostor-syndrome-here-are-your-stories

One of the things they talk about in the podcast is that even if you may not feel like you are or can fairly identify with one or either of your races, that doesn’t at all take away or change the fact that they are apart of you and by that fact alone you have the power to own that.  So this is my declaration to the world, my friends, my family, and all the assholes who thought it would be funny to make my racial makeup their laughing point, I AM BIRACIAL. HALF BLACK. HALF WHITE. ALL HUMAN. And you will never take that away from me.