The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Irene Crane,
Batavia, IL
Listening to your book “Our Hidden Conversations” so many of those stories and 6 words resonated with my experience growing up and now, thank you for putting this together, it is good to know that one is not alone
Alyssa Swearingen,
Norfolk, VA.
I come from parents who are different races. I have a mother who is white, and a father who is black. All my life, I get told “You don’t look black,” or I get asked if “I’m sure I am HALF black.” I’ve been told numerous times that I look like I’m only white. As a young girl, this discouraged me. I started off fighting it. I would argue with everyone and try my best to prove my race. However, as time went on, I began to fight less. I began to just hold my tongue. It was so much easier to let people think what they wanted, and say what they wanted. Now as a woman, I am starting to get my fight back. I refuse to hide a part of who I am.
Jen,
Bowie, MD.
My husband (African American) and I (Caucasian) took our son to his one month doctor appointment. The nurse asked us if he was Caucasian or non-white and wanted me to make a decision so she could check a box. When I asked for other options like a biracial or two or more races, she said there were none. I said well at the moment, he looks white and she said don’t worry honey, he’ll brown up. She checked non-white.
Matthew Powers,
Riverside, CA.
“Growing up Irish and being raised by a single mom in the 50’s and 60’s in Omaha I saw racial tension and acts all around the city, but I can’t say I understood anything about it until my younger sister and I were transferred to a different school because mom couldn’t afford the tuition at the Catholic school we were attending. The elementary school we were moved to was an all African-American school and we were the only “white” kids there, we took a lot of abuse and faced the fact that our skin color wouldn’t allow us to fit in or be accepted. We were the target of a lot of being beat on, racial slurs, isolation, and being chased home daily but eventually we did make a few close friends and things settled down. I can’t say we ever fit in but we survived and built a few relationships. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me from an understanding point of view as I saw and felt from the other side what being defined by a color or race felt like, it didn’t matter who I was inside. My family reflects that lesson we learned, my seven children’s mother had a white mother and African-American father, my children are mixed and they are proud of it, and have spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends from other races and it’s a beautiful community. My sister married a Mexican man and had three boys. Through the experience I learned that true beauty, goodness, and humanity comes from the inside, and shines through the outside regardless of what color or race that outside is and we taught the kids to see all people in the same way, individually from the inside out.” CBU HIS 311
Nvizaboman,
Syracuse, NY.
Pointing a gun in the face of a Black boy or choking a Black man, is not a common cultural practice in the Black community. I just feel that needs to be said. Please stop killing us because our lives are an appointment we don’t want to miss. Thank you.
Becky Lynn Washington,
New York, NY
I got pretty lucky I guess-grew up in the desert where there was little diversity. Our family was different for a lot of reasons-my father’s job took him out of town often, we didn’t go to church, my brother was a tortured genius so we were always switching schools, and no one in our family looked alike. My mother is white and my father is black. Against a vanilla backdrop, everything about us made us outliers, so the question of feeling different because of the race was somewhat muted. The heaviest-handed questions were about my mother because she was around so often, and people would question why I didn’t look like her. It could have been a child innocence on my end but she seemed so gracefully separated from any of these questions or comments she’s my daughter, he’s my husband, he’s my son. There was really no confusion, they were just my family. In my mind, it was almost a novelty to meet families that perfectly resembled each other, because that wasn’t my reality.
This doesn’t quiet thoughts or experiences I’ve had with race- my personal thoughts on which race box to check, my personal conflict with affirmative action, small frustrations with my hair and my appearance, the conflicted way I feel when people ask me “what I am” and the conflicted ways I feel about how they ask it, my own conflict in identifying with any specific ethnicity. My first thought in the “race card” was where to begin. That all pushed aside, I’m comfortable in my skin and where I stand with my identity and respecting other people’s as well.
What hit me lately was a Cheerios commercial. No, not even the cheerios commercial-because, well it’s cheerios. The headline for the cheerios commercial-“CHEERIOS AD INTERRACIAL FAMILY CONTROVERSY.” Cheerios-controversial? Interracial family-controversial? Nothing about the headline made sense to me or went together. Racism and race controversy exists, I know. I don’t live in a bubble, I’ve left the desert and moved between different populations, and as mentioned it’s a reality that discomfort with race is the norm. But a 30-second snip-it calls for mention because of the featured mixed-race couple. Not a television show that goes any further into their lives, just an image of a mixed-race family is confusing to people.
The thought crossed my mind for the first time that my kids aren’t going to be safe from this bullshit. 25-30 years removed from my family who was a novelty, regardless of who I procreate with someone is going to have all kinds of questions for them about why they are different because the odds are way heavy that they are going to have a slew of mixed features like I do. I guess it’s part of the job and the challenge to arm them with the kind of self that makes this a non-issue but the reality is I’d figured it was one place that was simple progress-that the questioning of mixed-race was something that my generation was going to have to deal with and wasn’t something I was going to have to pass on to my kids.
Roger Tryone Williams,
Huntersville, NC.
My name is Roger Tyrone Williams and I’m white. Additionally, I was raised by a black man. If you want to learn more, just ask.
William Jones,
Reisterstown, MD.
It’s Vitiligo. Yes, it’s what Michael Jackson had. It basically means the cells that make skin color stop doing that. All though you can’t see it as well in lighter complexions, anyone from any race can develop it, and at the age of about 30, I became one of the 1% of humans who do. What’s funny is that, as a bi-racial person, I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with race issues, from both sides, and wondering exactly where I fit. Now that I have white spots that will slowly but eventually completely cover my whole body, the idea of the color of a person has taken on a whole new meaning… and a much smaller one I think. When people ask about the spots, I explain. When people ask how I feel about it, I simply tell them that I spent the first half of my life as a really attractive black guy, and I plan to spend the second have as a really attractive white guy.
Franklin Oliver,
Submitted via Twitter: @FOLIVER4U.
Kaller,
Portland, OR.
Native American grandfather, Quaker grandmother, their child was my mother. Black stepfather, biracial brother, adopted Latina child, all Chinese grade school, segregation, race riots, the battle for Civil Rights…who are “my people?”
Azariah Solomon,
Wilmington, NC.
My brilliant mother always used to say, “One day, there will be no black or white … everyone will look just like you and your sister: golden!
Heather Sams,
Moreno Valley, CA.
My daughter is a beautiful, intelligent, biracial young lady. I am white and her father is a light skinned black man. I say those race terms that way because that is honestly how people in society view others, by color. My daughter is as pale skinned as I am. When I became pregnant my father was not very happy. He did not want me to have a bi-racial child. He said that we would encounter people that would hate us and that he did not want for me to take on that burden when this world was hard enough as it is. I did not listen of course. My daughter, Modesty, came into this world 18 years ago. She has blue eyes and blond hair. She is tall and her smile can light up a room. When she is with only me people see her as “white” and when she is with her father the response is normally, “Oh yes, I can see the black in her now”. She has endured being called albino and half breed. Up until now as she is in college, she has had a hard time being accepted by both sides of her ethnicity. She found comfort among the Mexican kids at her school and accepted for who she was, a loving and kind friend. Now that she is at college, she is starting to hang out with the black crowd. However with in one month of being there, she was verbally attacked on the bus by a black man calling her and her friend “yellow babies” and that their mothers had “jungle fever”. He told them that they weren’t white and they weren’t black, they were yellow and do not fit in and are no better than anyone. My daughter has always been raised to embrace who she is and to know her history of both sides of her family. At the end of the day, she knows she was created from love and it is that love that she shows people, not her race. I love my yellow baby and wouldn’t have it any other way.
I have to give a shout out to CBU HIS311 -thank you for opening the eyes of people and their hearts to subjects such as this.
Lynn P.,
Raleigh, NC.
My mother is white and my father is black. I am light skinned and proper speaking but not white enough in skin tone. I do not think I should have to choose a side, so why as me to? I wish I was more white skinned, then I would feel accepted. I am accepted by nobody. Too light for some not dark enough for others, not light enough and tot dark for me. I love white men but they do not seem to love me. I hate all racist crimes and actions. Yet I know it is racist to wish to be more white. My life would be different. now 46 I am still lost and not accepted. I have no identity other than as a mom.
Deborah Robinson,
Los Angeles, CA.
I grew up in profoundly white Eugene, Oregon, where I’d laugh at banners emblazoned, CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.
“What, as long as it’s not here?” I’d wonder.
Yet the whiteness of my hometown did not mean it was a racially hostile one. I nurtured no ill will for folks from different walks of life, and trusted those nearest and dearest me felt roughly the same.
It was against this backdrop that I was able to genuinely believe that the fact I’d witnessed no overt acts of racism meant racism was dead.
I began dating a black man shortly after I moved to Los Angeles. I didn’t think of him as a “black man,” but rather as a silly, sweet, sexy and smart man I had fun hanging out with. Indeed, it was only after he became the father of my child that he spoke words that blew my mind: “Our baby is going to experience racism someday.”
I discounted these words initially, though he told me he’d been called “n*****” plenty of times. But though my instinct was to discount his warning because its basis was so outside my personal experience, I couldn’t ignore the possibility there was more to this world than that which I’d personally experienced.
I started reading, from blogs to essays to research, and was shocked to discover how useless my personal experiences as a white woman were for gauging the presence or absence of racism in the modern world.
Since my son was born four years ago, I’ve been asked countless times where I got him, regardless of how much he looks like me. I’ve been asked if he’s mixed, or if he has a black daddy. I’ve heard passersby make derogatory statements about his skin color, as if it reflects a single useful thing about who he actually is. And, heartbreakingly, I’ve heard his many comments reflecting the idea that “dark” is bad. He’s not getting this at home, where his father and I tell him the world is made more beautiful by the diversity of its citizens, but he’s getting this idea somewhere.
I’ve written about a handful of these experiences on my blog, and have been astonished how many people offer up anecdotes of a black person being mean to them as indication that “reverse racism” is alive and well, while “original” racism today is nothing more than a byproduct of overactive imaginations. I’ve tried to encourage reflection on the idea that personal experience ought not be confused with systemic violation, and that the fact that a white person hasn’t personally recognized an act of racism doesn’t mean individual signs of a deep rooted problem haven’t actually occurred in their presence. I’m not honestly sure how successful my questions are, but I have to keep asking them, because I believe that we perpetrate injustice by pretending it must already be past.
I try not to throw up my hands in frustration, or think less of people for their individual anecdotes presented as societal fact, because it took me a very particular set of experiences to make me reconsider my assumptions about race, history and society. Without those experiences, I’d probably still happily but erroneously believe that racism is an artifact of bygone times.
That’s the biggest thing I’d ask people: that they consider the idea there is only so much they can see from where they are sitting. The anecdotes of any one person’s life can only go so far toward explaining the entire human experience.
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