mistavybe replied to your post “no point”
May I ask what led to you being so passionate about your blackness? I only ask because as someone who physically presents as unquestionably “black” looking, i’ve always been curious what it’s like to look racially ambiguous and thus have somewhat of a choice on what to identify as… and how the process of identifying works in that case. For me, ppl take 1 look at my African features, and i’m black -that’s it. So I never felt like I had a choice I guess. Thus my curiousity. No offence intended ��
None taken.
Part of it had to do with my father. He was passionately pro-Black. My father, before he became a diplomat, was a teacher and I grew up among all of his teacher friends. They were in their 20′s and 30′s during the 60′s and 70′s, when the Black Power movement was in full swing. They were somewhat political and this was their identity.
Race wasn’t something heavily discussed in our home but my father made it very clear that he considered himself a Black man in this world. He was very ethically ambiguous and could easily pass for almost anything. But he was very adamant about his identity. My mother has always identified as mixed as is more Asian in ethnic heritage than anything else. I took my cues from my father as he was my primary intellectual role model.
Another part of it had to do with growing up in Venezuela. It’s a country with quite a bit of racial diversity and a relatively large population of people of African descent, partial or otherwise. But class and race follow colour lines there and the European-looking person is the ideal.
I went to an international school there so my classmates were from all over the world, but quite a few of them were Venezuelan/American. In general we all lived in a very privileged bubble within that country. For many of my classmates, their only real interaction with Black people would have been their maids. Many of them were casually racist, as were many Venezuelans in general. It wasn’t an active hating of Black people but rather a looking down on Blacks because they tended to be poor. Furthermore their ideas of Blacks outside of Venezuela was shaped completely by American movies and television. They had no other point of reference. Black was hood and gangsta.
Living in such a climate, where I was one of maybe five Black kids in my entire school, I made a very conscious choice to identify as Black. My classmates would say I was “Brown” and would exclude me from a category of people about whom they had very defined, often very negative ideas. So I was adamant that they should understand that Blackness was not confined to their narrow definition.
The third part of it has to do with my husband Chris, who is a phenotypically Black man. He is mixed, but doesn’t appear to be. And he is a dark skinned Black man to boot. I think I became a lot more aware of racial issues after I married him, only because I could no longer reside in my little bubble of racial ambiguity beside him. When you are mixed (and look it) you can perpetually be the “other” and in many ways you occupy a place of privilege. I have medium brown skin. I have what they call “good hair”. I have racially ambiguous features. I can be anything I want to be. No one in life has EVER defined me as Black. Not once. And for a lot of my life it was easy for me to draw a line between “them” and me, “them” being any racial group. But being married to Chris made me more aware of what life had to be like for him and people who look like him. And so when it came time to speak up, I spoke up for his side.
It’s still a conflicting thing for me, the defining myself racially. I make a choice because not making a choice leaves me nowhere. I choose Black because I do not connect with the other parts of me. I am not White. I don’t connect with Indian culture to say I’m part of it. I don’t connect with Chinese culture in that way either. What is left? Mixed race is not a social identity. It leaves me on the fringes of society politically. It’s not that I reject the fact that I’m mixed. I love it. I’m very proud of it. I love being a chameleon. But I feel in this world that we have to stand for something. And on socio-political issues, I stand proudly as a Black woman.
soulsistrin 