Anchorage Archives - The Race Card Project

In Indonesia I am asked “Dutch”?

January 30, 2024January 30, 2024 Ah! A-lask-ka, AK, Anchorage, Blanda, Dutch, Indonesia

Nancy Deschu,
Anchorage, AK.

My Dutch ancestors arrived in New Amsterdam in 1624. Now, four hundred years later, I live in Alaska but my roots in New Jersey are strong and deep. While traveling in Sulawesi, Indonesia 15 years ago, locals would ask me, “Blanda?”, or what I learned was a slang term for “Dutch”. I felt shame because of the history of the Dutch colonial occupation of Indonesia and brutality to Indonesian people. Most people asked in a circumspect, curious way, though one man refused me a taxi ride. Usually I just answered “Alaska”, an easy way out, because this answer usually sidetracked any further conversation, and elicited a response of wide-eyed smiling response – “Ah! A-lask-ka!”.

We are at war with ourselves

January 30, 2024January 30, 2024 AK, Anchorage, JC Snead, War

JC Snead,
Anchorage, AK.

I trusted adults that taught hate.

January 30, 2024January 30, 2024 adults, AK, AL, Anchorage, Birmingham, church leader, Ferguson Card, hate, role model, scout master, Stan Pitts, trusted

Stan Pitts
Anchorage, AK

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and was 10 years old during the fateful year 1963. My father was a Birmingham Police officer terribly conflicted between upholding the law and the treatment of the civil rights participants. My trusted adults and role models, the church leaders, scout masters, and teachers, taught me that while “all men are created equal” and that “Jesus loved the little children of the world”, it really meant white men and white children. I didn’t have a black classmate until high school, and my last two years were wracked by school-wide violence, especially during sporting events. I didn’t realize I was a racist until I was drafted and exposed to new people and ideas. I struggled with prejudice until my daughter married a black man. He is a wonderful person, husband and father and they have been happily married for twelve years. I asked my daughter why she married him, knowing the difficulties of bi-racial relationships, especially where she lives in Texas. To my surprise, she said that I had taught her to respect and care about all people, and that’s what she did. I cried.

Suicide: Native voices must be heard.

December 5, 2023December 5, 2023 AL, Anchorage, Native, Native American, Rusty Creed Brown, Suicide, voices

Rusty Creed Brown
Anchorage, AL

Privilege is real. I get it.

November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 advantages, AK, Anchorage, cuts three ways, Eric Moore, privilege, real, uncomfortable, white privilege

Eric Moore,
Anchorage, AK.

“I get it” cuts three ways. First, I understand this is true. Second, I am in most ways the example of a person who is privileged and this has brought me opportunities, second chances and more.
But Third can be an exasperated “I get it” because no matter the advantages I’ve enjoyed I’m still constantly faced with worries over the challenges I’m bound to face in the future. So privilege often doesn’t seem relevant in day-to-day life… and of course it’s a privilege that I can usually leave anything race-based off of my list of worries. So if “I get it,” it’s not that I don’t care. It’s more like “I’m uncomfortable but I don’t know what to do.”

Native Americans Americas Invisible Invisible Invisible.

May 24, 2021May 25, 2021 AK, Anchorage, Gene Tagaban, inspirational, Invisible, National Geographic, Native American, Raven Spirit costume, Ruston, storyteller, WA

Gene Tagaban,
Ruston, WA.

West Asians Count As Asians Too

March 9, 2021March 10, 2021 AK, Ali Arturo Mansour Hull, Anchorage

Ali Arturo Mansour Hull,
Anchorage, AK

Im mixed race. My maternal grandma is of Syrian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Saudi, Iranian, Indian and Pakistani Ancestry. My maternal grandpa is English Norwegian and French. My dad is English, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch , Swedish and Danish. Growing up I didn’t fit in anywhere because I was ethnically ambiguous but didn’t fit in with any of the main ethnic groups in my area. I tried fitting in with every single minority group. I didn’t even know that I was a quarter Asian until I was in college and took a DNA test.

Being light-skinned I faced harassment and slander and was labeled as a fraud, including by people who I had known since preschool. Even today, my own dad doesn’t accept the fact I am mixed race/hapa and I have faced racism as well as racism combined with Islamophobia (I’m a Shi’a Muslim), Anti Shi’a bigotry and Orientalism. Many of my mom’s immediate relatives are so Americanized, so I wasn’t exposed to Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Azeri, Gujarati or Rajasthani growing up, only English, French and Spanish. Also that was partly due to my grandpa’s racist and Islamophobic biases. I had to educate myself about my own family heritage because nobody else would and MashAllah, I have learned so much and Inshallah I will keep learning.

Blond hair – can’t use Afro Sheen

September 16, 2019February 21, 2021 1960's, afro, Afro sheen, AK, Anchorage, blond hair, classmates, Diane Smith, first experience, fit in, Los Angeles, Windsor Hills Elementary School

Diane Smith,
Anchorage, AK.

I was the only white girl in my 6th grade class at Windsor Hills Elementary School in Los Angeles. I wished so much that I looked like my classmates. My greatest compliment back then (the 1960s) was that I might be white on the outside, but I was black on the inside. We all want to fit in.

No, I’m not Italian or Spanish

April 19, 2019April 19, 2019 AK, Anchorage, Arturo Mansour-Hull

Arturo Mansour-Hull,
Anchorage, AK

My mom’s biracial Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese,Yemeni, English, Turkish, and Kurdish. My dad’s English, Scottish, German, and Irish. White people think That I’m Spanish and Black people think that I’m Italian.

A “Racist” charge changed my life

December 14, 2016September 18, 2020 African American literature, AK, Anchorage, black student, change, color blindness, liberal, Robert Crosman

Robert Crosman,
Anchorage, AK.

Explanation: I was a good liberal, with the milk of human kindness in my veins, when a black student I viewed as marginally disruptive called me out in the middle of a class on Renaissance literature, calling me a racist because I was trying to ignore his too-frequent questions and comments. The upshot was an unsent defensive letter written by me to the student, and a trip to an advisor on his part, leading to his apology in my office. He realized he had over-reacted; I realized that “color-blindness” was not an option for either of us – we were, inevitably, aware of racial differences. Alvin and I got along better after that confrontation, because we were BOTH willing to examine our assumptions and behaviors, and we are still friendly fifteen years later. The incident led me to attend some community meetings about racism, and then to help form a racially diverse group called Healing Racism in Anchorage, dedicated to educating ourselves on the subject, and to openly exploring our own feelings and experiences about encounters with people of other ethnicities. The membership changes over the years, with new arrivals and old departures, but the group continues fifteen years later, organizing periodic small-group encounter sessions and occasional “big events” by visiting speakers. We’ve found no miracle cure, but we’ve done our bit to helping members of our community to overcome our own racist attitudes and behaviors. I even began teaching courses in African American literature, previously neglected in our university. I’ve also had many more friends of color than I had as a “white liberal” with no awareness of my own unconscious racism, or involvement in patterns of institutional racism. As I retire, my proudest legacy is having helped to hire my department’s first tenure-track African American assistant professor.

Ninety-three languages spoken Anchorage School District

May 11, 2016May 11, 2016 AK, Anchorage, Anchorage School District, bilingual, language, Nancy Simpson Martin

Nancy Simpson Martin,
Anchorage, AK.

Didn’t know/you don’t sound black.

September 30, 2015September 30, 2015 AK, Anchorage, Charity Son, Color, skin, Sound black, stereotype, you don't sound

Charity Son
Anchorage, AK

I was disappointed that this seems to even surprise a congenitally blind white woman I work with–“I didn’t know you were black!.” Happens on the phone as well. In person, black people, white people, all kinds of people seem to resent the way I speak. What does it even mean, to sound like your skin is a certain color? The way I speak doesn’t make me trying to sound white, or trying to sound smart, or trying to spund rich, and shouldn’t even be associated with those things exclusively. It’s just the way I was raised to talk. It’s not actually connected to anything and yet socially and culturely we’ve made sure that it is. We’ve made sure that depending on the audience, one way of speaking is more beneficial or more limiting than another. Dialects become colored and tinted by association.

White, Non-native, North American, European ancestors

September 9, 2015September 9, 2015 AK, Ancestors, Anchorage, European, Megan McBride, Native, North American, white

Megan McBride,
Anchorage, AK.

Black. Not Black Enough. Too Black.

March 31, 2014February 3, 2015 AK, Anchorage, Black, skin, too black, Toolie, White girl, you talk like

Toolie,
Anchorage, AK.

To the black community, I “act” too white to be like them. To the white community, my skin is too dark to be like them. I am black. I am not black enough. I am too black. No matter where I go, I can’t seem to fit in anywhere. All my life I’ve heard “Why do you talk/act like a white girl?”, “Why don’t you act black?”, “You need to stop trying to be white.” I don’t try to act or pretend to be any race, I’m just myself. If I hear something I like, I listen to it. If I see clothing I like, I wear it. I’m sorry I enunciate my words that’s just how I was raised. Maybe it’s just me, but my parents taught me to see the person and not the skin. I don’t want to live my life being a color… I just want to be a person, but in this world I have to sit alone and never feel accepted all because I am black, but not black enough, and just too black.

I wonder if racial harmony exists

January 25, 2014 AK, Anchorage, E. Andre Thorn, racial harmony

E. Andre Thorn
Anchorage, AK

What am I, I am human.

December 2, 2013 act black, AK, Anchorage, Anne Ward Masterson, Cherokee, human, once, one race, Race

Anne Ward Masterson
Anchorage, AK

Growing up Black, White and Cherokee in NH in the 1960’s and 70’s made for some painful tensions. In Kindergarten other children would see my mother and tell me she couldn’t be my mother. People would ask me ( and really, still do…) What are you? On the days I am patient I explain my heritage. On the days I am cranky I have been know to exclaim “Human!” The biggest tension is straddling multiple cultures. In college other black students insisted that I only claim my African American heritage. One went so far to explain that before he met me, he thought all interracial marriages should be dissolved and the children “Gotten rid of.” White students would exclaim ” but you don’t look/act black!” The best thing and the hardest thing has been being strong enough, loving enough, patient enough to be that bridge between different cultures offering a mirror for people to reflect on their assumptions AND for me to reflect on my own.

Having a foot in two canoes.

November 14, 2013 AK, Anchorage, Anishinaabe, canoes, College, Emily Wood, foot, Gift, locker, mixed, MN, Swedish Heritage Days, tribe, two, worlds

Emily Wood
Anchorage, AK

Growing up in small town Minnesota where the local summer celebration was “Swedish Heritage Days” could be awkward for a girl with a white dad and a Native mom. My parents raised my brother and I to celebrate the fact that we had two sides to us, that we lived with “a foot in two canoes”. But what I realized later in my life, standing between these two worlds with an uneven foundation can make for a shaky existence. I always felt that my Native-ness and my White-ness were on two poles of the same axis; never converging, just rotating to make room for the other identity when the appropriate time arose. I felt uneasy about being Native around my white friends, one time coming back to my locker after lunch to “Indian bitch” scrawled over it. Another time a friend told me she and her family had to work to pay for college because their “skin wasn’t getting any darker,” resentful of the gift of a small scholarship I received from my tribe. I went to college to understand more about my culture and enrolled in the Indian Studies program, but realized that I had no idea how to have Native friends. I was always the “token Native” in my group. It took my a long while to rid myself of the resentment I had towards the ignorance I faced, angry that I had to explain myself on a daily basis. But now as a cultural anthropologist who travels throughout Alaska interviewing Alaska Natives, I’ve found my “Mixed-ness” a gift. No one needs me to qualify myself to them, they aren’t asking for my Tribal ID. They know that I share something with them, a few phrases or characteristics that makes us similar in a way. Often that’s enough for them to feel comfortable as I interview them on personal details of their lifestyle. As my Mom once told me “You were born Anishinaabe, you will die Anishinaabe.” This is the part of me that helps me not only survive in this shaky world, but to thrive.

I’m afraid for my daughters future.

June 26, 2013June 26, 2013 afraid, AK, Anchorage, daughter, fear, future, Louis Moore

Louis Moore
Anchorage, AK

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