The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Abigail,
Forest Lake, MN
I grew up in the rural Midwest. Being a Korean adoptee in a Norwegian and Swedish area, I really stood out. I have felt the ugly racist, hateful remarks my entire life. I grew so I wouldn’t be consumed. Flower you say? I’m a mountain!
Paulina Persson,
San Clemente, CA.
People love to make assumptions by skin color. I love to see people’s facial expressions when they find out I was born in Stockholm and that I am half Swedish and Puerto Rican.
Arturo Hull,
Anchorage, AK.
My mom is Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, Swiss-German, Austrian, South German, English, Norwegian and Danish. My dad is English, Scottish, Irish, Swedish, German, Polish, and Russian. I am light-skinned and can easily pass as French or Italian, but I embrace my Arab roots to the fullest and enjoy foods like Falafel, ful medames, and baklava. I also celebrate Arab holidays, such as Syrian Independence Day and Syrian Revolution Day. When I go to synagogue for Shabbat, I try to attend a Sephardic Synagogue and I eat qitnyot on Shabbat.
Hannah,
St. Louis, MO.
My mother is from Africa. She has dark skin. My father is Swedish. My mother used to get asked if she was my Mexican nanny. I was bullied as a kid because I look like no one in my family. No one understands I identify more as a minority but I look like a white woman. It’s a weird place to be. I often felt like a spy.
Lisa Page Rosenberg,
South Pasadena, CA.
Mexican-Spanish-Apache-Basque-Irish-Swedish American
Matthew Palavido
Beaumont, CA
My family’s background is Polish and Swedish and the town I grew up in in New Jersey was predominantly “white”. Like a lot of Americans, I grew up rather sheltered and culturally insensitive/ignorant. While on a camping trip with my family and friends from my wife’s side of the family, we recounted the story of one of the first time’s that my wife and I met. Rather than asking her what her family heritage was, I asked her if she was Puerto Rican. My wife immediately corrected me and explained that her family is from Mexico. While sharing this story with family members and friends while camping, someone in the group commented that “White people group always try to lump Latinos into the same group, they don’t understand that we come from different countries and have different heritages that we are proud of.” I was at first offended and said “Tell me where the country of ‘White’ is.” It was at that moment we all realized we are more alike than different, and our cultural biases were similar, just viewed through a different lens. We ended up having a great group discussion about all of our individual backgrounds and what our different families experiences were emigrating from their respective countries.
Lisa Craig
Washington, DC
It’s a bit complicated. My father’s family consists of Scottish, Swedish, French, German, English, Mexican, and two different Native American tribes. My mother’s family consists of French-Canadian, English, Inquit (Alaskan Native Americans), and some other ethnicities that I am not aware of (I am not close to them). All of my family easily passes as white. Except me. Some people think I am mixed Asian. I frequently get asked if I am adopted. My father openly tells me that I must convince people that I am pure white because he was and is still embarrassed that his daughter doesn’t look like anybody in his family race-wise.
Lars Engström,
Sverige.
In the US people share the same language, religion, and culture. So why this race-awareness, to use a less incendiary label? In Sweden the issue is hardly about racism. Those “others” are mostly fresh to this country. I’m just shy of 50. As young, there were no immigrants in my class, none in the entire school, and nobody in my district at all. 40 years later virtually all people in my district are recent immigrants from all corners of the world. Some 90% of colleges at work has a foreign name, and speak with coworkers and costumers in strange languages. Am I a racist, for feeling like a stranger in my own country now (in the words of a friend from Morocco,,,)? Anywhere in Sweden is the same. Foreign languages, foreign food, cars with foreign license plates, beggars lining the streets, exploding numbers of homeless people, increased crime rates, religious terrorist acts, and so on. The changes are going at a lightning speed. Will these newcomers be able to pick up enough sense, and carry on the heritage, or will I end my days in a nation turned to an Islamic dictatorship. I feel lonely and scared. Should I emigrate?
Isabella Thomas,
Philadelphia, PA.
My name is Isabella Thomas, and I’m a student currently attending Central High School in Philadelphia. The concept of ‘race’, to me has always correlated with ‘color’. Or perhaps an erasure of identity. I am not simply white, just as my peers- my friends- are not simply black, or Asian. I am Swedish ice and the streets of Munich. I am Italy’s vineyards and Ireland’s fields and the tombs of Wales. Our heritage is swept away by one word descriptors that say nothing more about us than the color of our skin. I will not pretend to have a struggle with this- I am Caucasian and am privileged as any such person of my skin color, and I will not pretend that I understand- but it does not seem fair for anyone to have to hold one part of their heritage above any other. None of us is ‘simply’ black or white or Asian- we are European and Haitian and Laotian and and and- we are not simply anything. We are a mesh of countries and a smattering of cultures from all corners of the Earth. To not be able to recognize the cultures our parents passed down- to have to deny one part of yourself to satisfy the skewed statistics- is simply not right. It will never be right.
Chris Cochran,
Murrieta, CA.
Where are you from? It’s a loaded question in that I could answer where I was born, where I was raised, where I live currently, or from which country does my family hail. Well, I’m a bit of a “mutt” actually because I am a conglomerate of many immigrants of many nations, but most notably English, Irish, Scottish, Canadian, Welsh, Swedish, Native American, but many just call me “White boy.” True, my family has come from all over, but I am a sixth generation California with ancestors dating back to the Pony Express in Northern California since 1870. I may be just another white boy or “mutt,” but that is Mr. “Mutt” to you!
California Baptist University, History 311- Minorities in America.
Heather Sanchez,
Upper Lake, CA.
As the world gets more politically correct, I have turned to study my own roots, as a ‘white’ person. What I have found has debunked many of the world’s stereotypes for white or caucasian people. This makes me proud. Is that wrong? I find great pride in the troubles and suffering of my own people, and in their triumphs. No slave owners. No royal blood. Just hard working immigrants who hit the east, and continued west to the Pacific. Mechanics, soldiers, servants, pioneers, cooks. Humble origins. Not Nazi’s either. My German grandfather left prior to WWII to go to Argentina. Ordinary, right? And I’m not Caucasian. Not at all. English, German, Danish yes. Go back further, and you find the European tribes.
The Danes conquered the Brits, the Saxons conquered the Danes, and the Germanic tribes? Who can remember it all.
All I know is to say I am white is no more fair than to say a Native American is Indian. It takes away our rich history as people. It takes away our culture. All white is not the same. Is French language and culture the same as Swedish? Far from it. Yet they are all considered ‘white’. White is a color, not a race. To my children I give the gift of knowing really, truly, who they are. From their Mexican ancestors, to their European ones.
Heather Ann Lindstrom
Buffalo, NY
My beautiful son was born to two very different parents. Me, of Swedish and Irish heritage,and his father of Samoan and Chinese heritage. When I would take my son out as a baby, it felt like everyone I met assumed he was adopted and asked “How long have you had him?” It always seemed like a strange question to ask first thing after hello.
Nathan Smith
Richmond, VA
White is a generalization of what I really am. I am a quarter Cajun, quarter Swedish, and a quarter Italian, and a quarter of mixed up Western European races.
VCU
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