I’m finally learning, I am powerful.
Alexandra Rosas,
Milwaukee, WI.
After a lifetime of wishing I could be accepted and trying to be anything except who I AM, to fit in, I am finding, my strength is in my uniqueness. #culturalworkout
“But you’re not ‘really’ black, right?”
Danielle Petterson,
Tampa, FL.
I have light brown skin and I consider myself to be mixed. Most people have a simple-minded belief that “mixed” means that one parent is black while the other is white. To me, it runs so much deeper than that. I have 4 grandparents from 4 different countries: Puerto Rico, Curaçao, Guyana, and the US. Therefore, my background is a mix of Puerto Rican, Dutch Caribbean, and Native North and South American Indian: THAT’S what I mean by mixed. However, I don’t speak Spanish, Dutch, Papiamento, or any other languages my ancestors may have spoken, I was born and raised in Florida, I check “African-American” on applications and surveys, and since race and ethnicity are two separate things, yes, I really am black. I am not obligated to answer the question “What are you, really?” with a full explanation of my family background and my many ethnicities. My mother, with skin lighter than me, considers herself to be black and my father, who is darker, considers himself to be black, thus I am black. Yes, really.
I’m never asked about hot sauce.
Christine R.
Ann Arbor, MI
Before I started dating my “black” boyfriend, I really didn’t think about race very much or the privilege I inherited with my “white” skin. There have been times that people have made rude comments or asked, what I would consider, overtly racist questions upon learning of our interracial relationship. However, I find the hot sauce question often posed to him interesting because I believe it is asked without malice. I have never been asked if I want hot sauce at a restaurant regardless of what I order. Never. I cannot count how many times my boyfriend has been asked if he wants hot sauce while dining out without much regard to his order. One time a waitress brought a bottle of hot sauce to him without asking if he needed it while saying “I know you will need this sweetie.” My boyfriend does not like hot sauce. I have dined at the same place in the same week with my brother, who ordered the same dish my boyfriend did earlier in the week, but there was never an offer of hot sauce. Some may think the question of hot sauce is an innocent one. However, assumptions have been made about my boyfriend’s preferences based on the racial category he is perceived as belonging to. What other preconceived notions are being generated about my boyfriend in addition to his love of hot sauce?
Pale freckled redhead burned by words
Marie Farrell,
Brooklyn, NY.
I grew up in San Diego, California where the sun shines all the time. I was the kid that never tanned, just freckled and burned. I was also raised by an Irish mother so there was a lot less love than fights and tension. I recall a day when I bravely went to school in shorts and was destroyed by the words of a black girl who said “You need to get a tan”! I was often looked at weird because of the pale skin, being told to tan as if it were that easy. I was told by a girl in my gymnastics class “You have freckles on your knees,” as if that was such an odd thing. I was called “Annie”, “Pippi”, “Strawberry Shortcake,” and later I was called more inappropriate names like “Fire Muff” and “Ginger”. Since having cancer and losing my hair it has grown back less red, but I feel I am always and will always be a redhead on the inside and out; always feeling like a fish out of water in a hot, sunny climate, being called names that most people might not think are racist, but no matter what they thought it stung. It burned me more than the awful sunburns I grew up with. As an adult I take pride in my “spots” and my pale skin, in my sort-of red hair, and my Irish heritage, but sometimes those words still burn
.
Delicious ambiguity: the permanent inbetweener.
MaiLynn Stormon-Trinh
New Zealand
I am the only child of an American woman of Norwegian descent born in Fargo, North Dakota and a Vietnamese man who moved to the US in the mid-seventies and cut all his Vietnamese familial ties. I look more Asian than white, but culturally, I was raised in a white world, with a white family and predominately white friends. As an adult in my mid-twenties, I feel like I am the permanent inbetweener, stuck in the fringes of both the worlds my parents have come from. At times, race has made my life a lonely, mixed up (no pun intended) place. But I am learning that there can be great power in being multiracial. My race, and thus my identity, is not spelled out for me through history and stereotypes. I have a freedom in obscurity that Gilda Radner called: “delicious ambiguity”.
Like you, gingers do have souls.
Katelyn Nicole Volz
Hemet, CA
“You know they say Gingers have no souls right?” “A Ginger gains a freckle every time they steal a soul.” “Do the carpets match the drapes?” Does ANYONE know how tired I am of hearing that? Yes, my hair is red, yes it’s natural, and yes I am Irish. Does it really matter what my appearance says about me? I work hard, have a job, dress appropriately, and yes, I do have a soul. EVERY HUMAN DOES.
Shout out to CBU HIS311
Being Jewish in the 60’s hurt.
David Wandel,
Madison, WI
Great Project and interviews……
I wish he was a girl.
Kristen Moorhead,
Silver Spring, MD.
I’ve always told my son, “You can be anything you want to be.” Before Shani Davis’ won gold, POTUS was elected – prior to Neil deGrasse Tyson gracing our screen in Cosmos. What was once – is still – momentous to me is his normal: ‘I like ice skating, why not? The President’s black – and? Of course African Americans do astrophysics!’
Initially it was comical: trying to impart the earth-shattering significance of things he finds hopelessly mundane. Laying the groundwork for ‘the dream’ was hard, I guess living it is easy.
He’s twelve now – almost my height and swears he ‘doesn’t see color.’ His possibilities are infinite, yes, but there’s a cruel catch: “You can be anything you want to be, but first, you must survive. And your survival is dependent on knowing this: you are young, black, male – perceived guilty until proven innocent, aggressive, ‘a demon,’ America’s prime suspect. We all bear the burden of knowing the procedures and pathology that come with that.”
Real. Male. Opinionated. Intelligent. Black. Invisible.
Richard A. Cummings,
Chicago, IL.
“They” should all be like you.
Shelagh Mullings,
Coral Springs, FL
A white supervisor said this to me in 1965 when I was the lone “Negro” working in a white collar job for a large international corporation in San Francisco. I am a naturalized American with light skin (yellow) who was born in Jamaica, BWI. I was well-spoken, quiet (shy), and, most of all, made no waves. I did not take this as a compliment and only wish I had the courage at that time to tell her she had just insulted me and a whole race of individuals!
I wish the voice would stop.
Al,
Atlanta, GA.
I was born 51 years ago. I grew up with a father who would definitely be considered racist today, but was probably just typical blue collar in those days – kind of an Archie Bunker figure. I heard the N word at least a dozen times a week. Fast forward to my adult years. I hate racism. I have black friends, my kids have black friends, they are all welcome in my home and I really don’t think about their race at all. I have gotten past it, except for one thing. When a black person cuts me off on the street, or does something rude, I hear my dad’s voice saying the N word. And I hate it and I hate myself for it. Does it make me racist? I wish the voice would stop.
I flourish farming ancient tribal lands
Ed Kaufman,
Morris, MN.
Another Six words: My grandfather stood witness at Mankato. I enjoyed seeing you at UM Morris a while back (when this would have been timely given the 150th anniversary of the Mankato Debacle)
Read More about this post:
http://highwayhighlights.com/
I am dead to my father
Debra Taylor,
Bolton, MO.
Fourteen years ago I married a black man. My father told me my child and grandchild did not exist because I was dead to him.
Red hair gets the most stares.
Stefanie Walker,
Sacramento, CA.
Sometimes I just want to dye my hair and see what it would be like to blend into the crowd-to not be defined by my red hair color anymore-to not be a “red head”. Red heads are the biggest minority of all in my opinion, how many do you actually know? (People like to tell me “my kind” are going extinct.) I can’t even count how many times I’ve been asked derogatory and demeaning things like, “Does the carpet match the drapes?” or “Do you have a soul, ginger?” Calling me “Red” for a nickname is like me calling you “Brown”-it’s not okay! It’s really annoying when you ask me if I’m Irish.. or when you point out how white my skin is-I’m pretty sure I’m well aware, but thank you yet again. I wish people would treat me like any other person and not single me out just because I have red hair. And NO that other girl with red hair isn’t my sister!!
My Mother Hated My Dark Skin
Mike Elliott
Alexandria, VA
My mother was brown. Her skin a shade so perfect until the day she died she was “Puddin” to her family and friends. My father a lighter shade of brown was “high yellow” and proud to be colored. He had a fraternal twin who was dark like an egg plant, blue-black.
My skin is dark brown , the color of a snickers bar. I gets shades darker like my uncles when exposed to the sunlight.
As a child, I would love stay outdoors for hours playing in the sun with my friends. Recently, I started having memories of my mother putting me in the bathtub to scub my skin with COMET or AJAX.
I love my mother and always will, but it is only now that I come to understand and realize that although she loved me she hated my dark skin. As my mother, she was doing what she thought best to lighten my skin, to protect me from a world that hated boys who were dark brown like me. Today I wonder would Trevon and other brown boys la cousin of mine who was gunned down by the police during a random traffic stop would still be here if they were white and not t brown like me.
