I stare longingly at others like me
Mary Ann Paris
Philadelphia, PA
Except for my brother, there were never any children who looked like me. I am black and white, more specifically Black, Jewish, German, Irish, Italian and polish and my brother and I have European features. We grew up in a segregated part of Philadelphia among black children. They never wanted to play with us, made us inferior with their words like “Light bright, damned near white”. As we grew older, my white friends would ‘compliment’ me by saying, “You know, you look white!”
My brother told his first wife’s father that he was Italian because she was from deep in the south and her father and brothers were Klansmen. I was twenty-seven years old before I saw another woman who shared my coloring, my features, parents of opposite races. I stared, so hard for so long, memorizing her features and wondering, as she met my gaze if she’d walked the same path I had. If she were a victim of circumstance. Since then, I’ve seen several inter or bi-racial adults and children, but the experience of recognition.
That “Wow, someone like me.” hasn’t faded and I always stare, always wonder what road they’ve crossed to get where they are. When I was able to check off ‘bi-racial” for the first time, I cried. For once I didn’t have to choose. I was allowed by the government just to be me. A person of unknown origin who doesn’t have to shun an entire side of her family just to maintain the illusion of human. When I found out our president was of mixed heritage, I cried again, “finally”, I thought, “people like me are ‘good enough’. Praise the Lord.” and then when I heard all the naysaying and race bashing, inter race bashing, I had to turn a blind eye or risk sinking into a depression. The nation debating his race was debating and discrediting mine.
Maybe one day in my life, the sight of one like me will be such a common occurrence that I will be able to stop staring. Maybe one day the census paper won’t have a race box at all. That is my prayer.
You will never be as smart
Fannie Blakely
Philadelphia, PA
Was in a gifted class in junior high school.
First day in an advance math class teacher informed me not to worry, but I would never be as smart as the other kids, that it was not in my genetic make-up. I aced that class (highest grade) and every other class while at that school. Been working ever since to prove to myself and the world that I am just as smart. Kind of sad.
“My Blood is Red, What’s Yours”
Ralanda King,
Philadelphia, PA.
Born and raised in the city of brotherly love, but I’m full of sisterly affection, I not black but brown and beautiful. the heart can see what our eyes can’t or refuse too. but, don’t charge it to my skin, but to my heart.
Yes I can be both races
April Daniels,
Philadelphia, PA
I was always told I had to pick one race or the other. But I felt like I would be betraying one of my parents if I did so.
The confederacy did not raise me.
Emily,
Philadelphia, PA.
I am a white American. My family is here because the Turkish government was committing genocide against Anatolian Greeks in the early 1920s. My grandmother lost her family and came to NY, and when Smyrna was burned she had no home to go back to.
The confederacy does not serve my family. To the white Christians we were not white enough to be allowed to assimilate, but at some point we did. My father was born less than white, and because of cultural shifts he became a white man. I was born in 1987 and have always enjoyed the privilege of his whiteness. I actively use language and context to disallow the idea that to be American is to be a middle class white person. I will never accept my country as being primarily for whites. This country is for everyone. Lest we forget.
Foreign does not mean he’s unintelligent.
Hazel Kasgur,
Philadelphia, PA.
My dad is from Istanbul, Turkey. He works hard and tries to be helpful. At most of the jobs he’s had, people are rude to him. At most of the jobs he’s had, all the other employees are American and white. I think his coworkers are rude to him because he’s not American.
Indya Black,
I’m an Eastern European Ashkenazic Jew
Anonymous,
Philadelphia, PA .
For a long time, I have known that the concept of “race” is a false way to identify or classify human beings. Race is not a biological reality. In the 19th century, in Europe, the concept of ranking people by color was used to justify conquest and slavery. The attachment of slavery to color was born. Prior to that, empires did enslave their conquered peoples but did not attach ideas of superiority based on color to them. Those ideas developed with European colonization and imperialism. European “race” theorists even applied these ideas to different (white) nations and groups within Europe (read “The History of White People” by Nell Irwin Painter.)
Several years ago, I decided I would never again say I was Caucasian again. My ancestors are not from the Caucasian mountains. (Good article in Wikipedia on how Europeans got to be called Caucasian, probably by Professor Painter.) My grandparents were immigrants – Jews who came to the U.S. from Eastern Europe – Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania – in the late 19th/early 20th century. They were fleeing persecution and poverty. I decided when I had to state my “race” (such as when donating blood) I would state that I was an Eastern European Ashkenazic Jew, which is what my grandparents were. But I really wasn’t sure what Ashkenazic meant, so I googled it. To my surprise, I found a lot of interesting genetic information. I learned about the National Geographic Human Genome project which uses DNA to trace the migration of people from Africa (about 80,000 years ago?) and to see how they radiated out to different parts of the world. More than 99% of human DNA is the same. The tiny fraction that is different is what causes differences in different populations. The differences arose as humans walked out of Mother Africa and settled in different regions. If they were in isolated areas, they eventually became a gene pool and shared certain characteristics that other groups did not share. Some groups formed a gene pool because social customs forbade marrying out of the group. However, in spite of isolation, there is still more genetic variation within any one group than between different groups. But some individuals or groups never settled – because of wanderlust, exploration, migration, trade, war – and shared their genes with other populations all over the world.
I did get my DNA tested. I got my Mitochondrial DNA tested in 2010, and my autosomal DNA tested in 2016. I’m not a geneticist, or a biologist, and I had to learn lots of new vocabulary and concepts to understand what it meant. It’s nice to know, and it’s anthropology which is fascinating, but that’s it.
Because I’m white, I feel ashamed.
Sadie Petersen
Philadelphia, PA
As a child, the streets of west Philadelphia were my playground. I loved going to school in the area and wouldn’t change a thing about how I was raised and how race was never even noted in my small family of four, which eventually grew to a family of 7. However, living in west Philadelphia and being a white female, I was the minority at my, almost, all black school. I was one of 5 white kids but seeing as we were such a community, race and skin- tone never seemed to be of any issue to any of us as young children. The story seemed to change, as I got older though. I was never teased or bullied, but sometimes I was excluded from conversations or hangouts because I was “too white” and “wouldn’t understand because I had it better.”
There was a time in my life when all I wanted to be was black and I was jealous of the coffee-cream skin tone of my best friend at the time, Amanda. Later, when I graduated to high school, I found that some people still held racial prejudice, and seeing as my youngest sister was mixed, I was horrified. It was astonishing to me that being black wasn’t as desired at it was at my old school, or at least for me. No matter how you look at it, when It boils down to me and that box, I cannot help but feel the twangs of embarrassment for the privileges and acceptance that I may receive out of racial bias over others because I am a white female with brown hair a green eyes. I feel ashamed that my appearance is what defines me and assess me as a human being. I feel ashamed for admitting that every last crime committed by my ancestors in the 1950’s and earlier is a part of me. That is what makes me cringe when I check that box labeled “White.”
We have a future you see
Cash’e Chapman,
Philadelphia, PA.
Boat after the Mayflower; who cares?
Merrill Mason,
Philadelphia, PA.
Being descended from early WASP settlers made my mother feel important and entitled. But I believe that suffering and endurance are human experiences, not racial ones. Stories of grit and survival should bring people together rather than create hierarchies.
The Race Card is played OUT!
Lisa Owen,
Philadelphia, PA
Black people have been speaking their minds and threatening the lives of white people all over social media. White people for some reason, don’t speak up. Black people aren’t afraid of white people.
White people are scared of what may happen if they speak up They blame white people for just about everything that’s wrong in their lives, for a police officer who was white (with 3 minorities right next to him) who killed a Blackman (definitely wrong, but not the fault of the whole white race) They claim that white people are privileged. As a white woman in a poor neighborhood, majority black, I’d say not only am I the minority but my children who are also white go to a predominately black school and get bullied daily.
All-white schools in the area are just much calmer and laid back. Why is this? Why are majority-white schools safer? Why cant my son go to the playground around the corner where all the black children hang? Because they threaten to beat him up if he continues to go to their playground. Why are only the statistics of white cops killing black people being brought up? Cops have killed more white people in the past three years. Why aren’t the statistics of the number of white people killed by black people a year being brought up? I know why the numbers are much higher than whites who killed blacks! Why aren’t the numbers of black men who killed white cops being brought up? I know why it’s not making them look good. Our society is telling them that if they keep complaining more and more, they will just keep on getting more and more as they do less and less to earn the privilege! If you want to be equal, let’s be equal! If black lives matter when a black man falls, why cant white lives matter and get that same attention when a white man falls? Are we not worthy? Why no matter what we say or do, they still hate us? I’m tired and they are never going to stop until they get what they want, the end of all white people! They don’t like White people and no matter how many hoops we jump thru to try and make them feel excepted, they never will. So why even bother!
You’ll find your real parents someday.
Alessa Abruzzo
Philadelphia, PA
Biologically I’m Korean. Ethnically I’m Irish-German-Italian. I was adopted at 4.5 months old, at which point I flew from South Korea to the USA and into the loving arms of my parents who happen to be white. To put it plainly, I was raised by white people – My entire immediate family (and most of the extensions) are of European ancestry. I really hate having to go into the Asian enclaves of the city to do certain grocery shopping or go to certain restaurants. Conversations always start with questions. “You [insert East-Asian race here]?” (No to everything but Koreans.) “Oh, you’re Korean! You speak Korean?” (No, I’m adopted and my parents are white.) “Ah, adopted!” And then comes the polite nod, the comforting pat on the shoulder, the smile that’s supposed to tell me that it WILL be alright, even though it’s currently not. “You’ll find your REAL parents someday!” That’s the instant I’m reminded that race, what’s on the outside, is what’s “real.” Ethnicity is learned, culture is a side-effect of being around people. But race is skin-deep, which is as far as most people look at first glance. My parents can’t be real because we don’t look alike. Real is apparently over 6,500 miles away, in the faces of two people I’ve never really met. That’s race for you.
Hey Do You Need an Interpreter?
Rebeca Cruz-Esteves,
Philadelphia, PA.
I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in both the U.S. Although my first language is Spanish it’s hard to tell since I have no accent. Growing up it was hard to immediately blend in as I spent my childhood in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood. As a teenager my family moved to a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and once again I was a little different. None of this ever actually bothered me until I was an adult, I joined the military straight out of high school and came home to attend a pretty well-known business school. Once again I was in an environment where I was one of few, but it never got to me. I’ve heard it all as an adult I’ve been offered jobs solely because I’m a Hispanic business student who happens to be in the service and a women. Literally the company was trying to attract large Latin organizations and would use me as bait. I’ve been praised and scrutinized by my own community at times as well as others. Nothing will ever stain as much as the day I walked into an office and before even shutting the door in back of me I was immediately asked “Hey Do You Need an Interpreter?” I understand with a growing Hispanic population interpreters may be needed more often, but I could have at least been given the chance to introduce myself. Now I see more than ever that no matter how much I attempt to blend in some people will automatically have assumptions due to my national origin. We live in the U.S the melting pot of the world yet I can’t walk into an office without someone assuming I don’t speak English and God knows what else!
