Mixed Points of View (a ramble)

Many of you commented that you like reading about my mixed experience (despite that I forgot to include it as an option), often as parents of mixed kids. Being mixed means different things to different people, and we tend to have strong opinions about what it means. Ah! I got you. In my book, there is no "we" mixed people.

The essence of being mixed, to me, is being the only one. Yes, we are all mixed, but I mean the kind of mixed that you have to grapple with all by yourself, not the kind that is traced in a family tree that you share with your whole family. Naturally, I am speaking from the vantage point of someone my age, who grew up in suburban New Jersey, who spent a great deal of time in Trinidad, with divorced parents, and without mixed siblings. Figuring out my identity with that backdrop as a young adult was an isolating experience, although not a bad one. I was raised to be mixed, and I was fine with that until high school, until the other kids wanted me to choose a side. I mean, kids would ask me point blank "would you rather be black or white?"

I could have sided with the white kids, and although I wasn't cool enough to be the token black friend, or better yet, the raceless friend, showing how colorblind our society was. But I wasn't Jewish, a prerequisite to being in the in-crowd, didn't have enough money to dress the right way, didn't play soccer, or have a SAHM to drive me around to after-school activities. It would have been easy to side with the black kids, and bask in the privileges that light skin and "good hair" that was occasionally petted brought. But the black kids in my school were nonacademic and more interested in sports and music than I was.

Neither the black kids nor the white kids had an understanding of how every summer I would take an international flight by myself to a place where I spoke differently, ate different food, where the world was not divided into black and white, and where you drove on the other side of the road, listened to your friends moan about O Levels and A Levels, and few people had telephones. Their worlds didn't go much farther than our suburban town, though some reached as far as Brooklyn or Long Island.

Looking back, most of my friends in high school who were children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves. My closest friends were Indian, Trinidadian, Filipina, and Pakistani, and each had emigrated to the US as a child or had immigrant parents, as well as a Jewish girl (whose parents were not thrilled at me being her friend when she developed an affinity for nonacademic black boys, quite independent of any influence from me). I didn't intend to have a United Nations of friends, it just worked out that way. (My graduating class was probably 90% white.)

Plus, I was the smart girl, a sure way not to be popular. It's hard to believe considering how cool I am now, isn't it? So, I wobbled back and forth a while as a teen, being African American (before the term was widely used and "African" was an insult), being white, being totally Trini, being "grey," and probably a few other things. It was a lot for a 16 year old, but I imagine all kids go through something similar when they shape their identities, deciding just how African American they want to be, just how Jewish, etc. I guess the difference is, if you're not mixed, you can just be black or just be white, and only wrestle with what that means vis-a-vis society as a whole and your place in it if you want to, but when you're mixed you have to.

When I was 17, two things happened. I started driving, and my dad moved to Queens.

I started spending a lot of time with my cousins Billy, Millie, and Baker. We were a quartet! We did everything together, movies, the mall, road trips to DC, Spades until the wee hours, you name it. And unlike in my high school, after the 90 minute drive to Queens, there was no need to choose, no need to explain the immigrant backdrop, in fact, we all tried to set our parents straight on how things were in America versus in Trinidad -- but you can't tell Trini parents anything. (Trust me, we tried.) My cousins knew about the world outside the US -- Baker had just come from Nigeria and the rest of us went to Trinidad all the time.

One of my favorite flights to Trinidad was when Billy and I flew when we were about 10 and there were 27 UMs (unaccompanied minors) on the plane. BeeWee stewardesses kept us disciplined, but we did have a lot of fun! Okay, I am digressing.

To my cousins, I was just Brunsli (well, Tilly, if you must know). They did give me a hard time for not knowing where the Queens-Long Island border was, which was important, because it determined if you could turn right on a red, which as a Jersey girl, I did, even within the boundaries of NYC. So, part of being mixed, to me, was having two cultures, and it was normal among my cousins to slip in and out of Trini and American culture, choosing the parts we liked from each.

Okay, I am really rambling here, nostalgic for the days with my cousins. Back to my point.

Since for me, being mixed was a process of sorting out who I was, and I affirmatively chose to stay mixed, I feel very strongly about it. And the other mixed people I know feel strongly about the choices they've made about who they are. Since we are so invested in our identities, which were once so fragile, we're now overly protective of them, and perhaps close minded to people who have chosen differently. Again, I say we but I really mean me. (Yes, I know that pronoun should be "I" but I like how we and me rhyme.)

So, do I look at Barack Obama and wonder how this mixed guy who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia and met his Kenyan father exactly twice became an African American activist on the South Side of Chicago? And do I wonder why Halle Berry is completely African-American despite being raised by a white mom? And do I have thoughts about Tiger Woods' invention of a new race as though he's the first mixed man? Yeah, a little. But, they grew up in different times, different places, and created different identities for themselves. And, I shouldn't be the Mixed Police, now should I?

As I've read more, and met more mixed people (whom I won't blog about), I understand that who we are is really shaped by our experiences and the era we live in. I understand why Barack Obama is who he is after reading his 27-year old autobiography. I laughed my way through Angela Nissel's book Mixed, that took place in Philly, at around the same time I grew up. And, I squirmed while the June Cross's journalistic-type memoir Secret Daughter that took place in New Jersey, a bit before my time. And, I read my e-friend Valerie Beck's book Romance Around the Corner. While not a memoir, she did reveal a lot about herself in it.

The most recent mixed book I read was David Matthews' "Ace of Spades." This memoir, written by a mixed man a little older than I am who grew up in Baltimore, was incredibly painful. Matthews found it easier to pass than to be the puny white-looking black kid. It's well written, and sharply funny, but difficult to get through. His life changed dramatically when he moved to NY as a young adult, and I was so angry with his father (and mentally ill absent mother) for subjecting him to such a harsh childhood. I want someone else to read it so I can talk about it because I haven't fully digested it.

So, if you're like my mom, you're wondering, so where's your book? I don't know. But, you know, everything is always the mom's fault...

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I got one comment on my survey that kind of threw me because the Reader said she was reading my blog to study why mixed people aim to dominate the discourse on black beauty, and also with respect to the Middle East where everyone is mixed. I don't get where that came from. I'm just a mixed girl who frets about her hair a lot. I always hated my hair because it was too thick, too curly, and my mom didn't know how to handle it. (See, it's Mom's fault already!)