My Ethnicity

So I was just reading about all the sports scandals involving people who's sponsorship was pulled.... and then it occurred to me that it was mostly men... but THEN it occurred to me to look beyond what everyone else always thinks about... I mean everyone is talking about the fact that the sex scandals happen... Straight up guys, if you have sex, and you are famous, you COULD be accused of rape/force/coercion, any number of things.  Women, well, we all know, if THEY have sex, well it is a whole different ball game... I mean, when is the last time you saw a tabloid story about some guy's junk hanging out, and I know guys, lots of them, and I have seen junk hanging out... it is what it is, but I certainly don't hear what terrible MEN they are.... but I digress.... because this is something more, something different, something that occurred to me after that, because I WAS going to talk about those things...

But then Tiger Woods came across the scene... and I know most people will stop and think about his sexual exploits.... whatever, he had sex... he shouldn't have, but he did, these things happen, how many people do YOU know who have been inappropriate... I've been guilty of it myself.... why lie.

That said... that's not what I think about... I stopped for a minute and thought about the fact that to look at him, I see a black man... first... but then I look at his features and I see the Asian in him, and that led me to think about President Obama.... and the fact that to look at him, I see a black man... first... but then I look at his features and see that he too is mixed... with white... Halle Berry... mixed, I do believe so, however, my sources (google) have so many damn results that I am not quite sure, so if I am wrong, please do let me apologize to her.  That said... it started me thinking about the fact that people are mixed race is somehow different....

I am mixed race, my mother is white and my father was black... my older (next) sister is my 100% full blood sister and we have various other mixes on both sides... but we are... black I suppose.  My father used to say that Mulatto was an insult, though I never understood why.  and I see by looking at my children (my daughter could pass for any straight, through and through white kid) that mixing races you never quite know what your child will look like, whether they will be a "visible" minority or not....

I never liked being colored... when I was a kid, I would walk down the street, with my eyes trained completely forward, veering neither left nor right, so that I could not see my skin out of the corner of my eye.  It is interesting that I did that, don't you think?  When I dreamed, I was blond... I had long, beautiful blond hair, pale white skin (like my daughter's coincidentally) I was thin.... forever thin... and I would dream like in those "Tampax was there" commercials... long, tall grass, lovely birds singing, music playing, sun shining.... BLAH.... it was strange, don't you think?  That in my head, I was just like every other white kid?  It's not that I hated being black for a reason really, except that it made my family look strange, the 3 girls colored, the parents and brother white... everyone always wanted to know if we were dirty or adopted.... if you read about the kitchen, you DO understand the dirty part.... but never that we were my mother's children.  My father was, as so many are, absent a good portion of my life, but THAT is a whole different post... my mother was there and my step father until I was 9 or 10 (it might have been before that, my ages all seem to run together) and he too was white... I was confused at first, when I realized that I was not actually the same as my mother and that this was, in some way, unusual... I didn't know that other kids' parents were the same color as their children... It didn't occur to me to look I suppose.

When I started grade two was when I met the first kid in my life who was a different culture that I was aware of, and I suppose that is when my own difference occurred to me as well.  I remember Harjinder well, he never liked me after that day because I didn't know the little white square over his braid was a cultural thing that BOYS do... you can imagine my embarrassment when he told me he was, in fact, a boy.... I went to that school with him for another 5 years and not a day went by that he didn't remind me how stupid it was that I didn't know he was a boy.... That day, when I got home, i really LOOKED at my skin for the first time... looking at it intently, then looking at both of my sisters' and my brother's skin as well... my brother, fully white, looks just like my mother, with his then blond hair and blue eyes, pale white skin... he was... different... my younger sister Tammy was pale as well, but not like them.... she could pass for white in the Caucasian features, there was doubt that she was mixed with African American like my older sister and I.  My skin, a caramel color in the winter time and a deep, dark golden tan in the summer... my hair, kinky and curly, high forehead  plump lips, prominent jaw and cheek bones, Dena with darker skin and the same facial features and hair, without the lips... but my mother... her skin so pale, she burnt so bad in the summer time, I never understood the reason... I simply thought that she got too much sun....

I look like my father... or everyone has always said that i do... his skin so dark, like tar, his short Afro curly hair, large flat nose and big lips, his jaw forward, high forehead... perhaps... perhaps I have some of his features, and yet I never felt that I did.

I grew up, simply accepting things as status quo , I was not black, and yet I was not white... I was... different....  Now that I am an adult, I hear a lot about racism... I know it is there... this I am not surprised about... I just don't understand how it matters anymore.... my daughter, if you believe the one drop rule (which I do) is black.  I am black... my son, nieces, nephews, sister, my grandchildren, all black no matter what color their skin may be.  If you believe you can breed the color out... well, i doubt that will happen, no matter how many times you mix it... someday, somewhere, sometime, a full out black child is going to be born... and somebody is going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do... That said.... perhaps, now... it shouldn't matter?