I AM A BLACK BIRACIAL WOMAN
Each story told is a step towards change
As you may know, I have not used this platform to talk about issues regarding race or any topic that could potentially be controversial. However, I have been inspired by many other people of color, mostly black and biracial women, who have started to share their stories and for the first time in my life I feel that I have been given permission to share mine and speak out about these issues.
The injustices, now being highlighted, around issues of race in this country have left my heart filling heavy. In all honesty, my emotional response these last few weeks has been overwhelming. I didn’t realize I had so much pent up emotion on the subject of race. It has taken me a good part of two weeks to unpack what I am feeling and find the words to articulate my experience and the big emotions around it.
I am not surprised or shocked by the events that happened to George Floyd on May 25th. I am very aware that these tragedies happen all the time and every once in a while a camera catches this atrocity, and for a moment, shines a light on acts of racism that happen everyday, all the time.
As I write this, I feel incredibly uncomfortable speaking out about my experience as a biracial black woman in this country and all the contradictions it seems to entail. However, I think it is important that I share my truth. I believe that each word written and each story told is a step towards change.
My intention is to share my point of view, in hopes to be an advocate for anti-racism. We are here to evolve and we have to do this together. It’s the only way this moment in time will become a movement for real and lasting change for people of color everywhere, always.
I experience racism all the time. Yes, in California, yes in the Bay Area, and yes, especially in Marin County. Sadly it has been something I have accepted and learned to adapt to. My grief the last few weeks stems from the realization of how much, over the course of my life, racism HAS actually affected me. My ability to disassociate with this trauma in my day to day is frightening to me and is why I have been feeling so much grief and sadness these last few weeks.
It’s all coming out. One soppy, messy tear at a time.
For most of my adult life I have focused on 'the bright side’ that my privileged, light complexion has afforded me. This privilege has often led me to be passive about racist issues that I experience on a day to day basis and the tragedies that my black community suffers from. In my desperate attempt to fit in and survive in this world I have betrayed myself and my black heritage. The age of silence is over. I’m done trying to fit into the mold of what society wants me to be. I need to do better. I need to do better for myself and for my daughter.
“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.”
- Ijeoma Oluo
This has been my favorite quote that has come out of the Black Lives Matter movement because I think it helps to bridge the gap between white privilege and black lives. It is my hope and my ask that you too self-reflect on ways that your privilege has made you passive.
I am a black biracial woman, which often puts me in a place of privilege while at the same time I feel the generational pain, frustration and injustices from racism in this country.
This is my story… Please read with an open heart.
My light complexion
My mom is white, my dad is black. All my life I have felt too black for white people and too white for black people. This has left me without a sense of true belonging and identity, while at the same time I know the world views me as black or at least, not white.
In the black community we call me ‘passing,’ which means that I sometimes hold the privilege of whiteness because of my lighter complexion and am discriminated against by the color of my skin only in some instances.
~
“What are you?” This is the question I get asked when I meet people for the first time and is the question I have been asked most often in my life.
Most of the time, people want to see me as anything BUT black. I’ve been asked if I’m Colombian, Hawaiian, Italian, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Mexican… pretty much any race other than black. Even after I tell people, “I am Black,” they look at me like, are you sure?
Usually I am suspected of being the race associated with whatever country the person I am talking to has been to last. This feels sad to me and it is hurtful. I think to myself, what is so wrong about being black? Why does it feel like the world wants me to be any other race?
~
I get pulled over by cops all the time in Marin and asked questions like, “Where are you going?” and “Whose car is this?” When I know I’ve done nothing wrong.
And yet, when I see a cop the only fear I have is whether or not he’s going to give me a ticket, or awkwardly try to flirt with me... because I’m not quite black. But I’m not quite white either. I’m some shade in between that allows me to pass, sometimes. I straighten my hair and dye it blonde. I’m pretty enough, according to the standards of this white world.
White people only get pulled over if they actually commit a traffic violation. But I am light skinned and privileged, and unlike Sandra Bland, I get a normal traffic ticket with a farewell from the cop saying, “Okay I was just checking, you can go.”
Checking for what? To see how black I am so you can mistreat me and abuse your power? But I know better than to say things like this. This makes white people uncomfortable, defensive and usually leads to trouble.
If I get a mean look or bad service, my black side questions, is this happening because of my skin color? Where as a white person gets to think, that guy is a dick, and move on feeling powerful and worthy all day long.
~
Wounds from my youth
I grew up around Hispanic people, Asian people and lots and lots of white people.
When I was a young girl I would pull my ponytail so tight to make my hair look straight that I’d get red bumps along my hairline from yanking my hair to look like the other white girl’s ponytails.
I tried unsuccessfully to learn Spanish when I was 8 so that I could fit in with the Mexican kids.
I’d look in the mirror and pull around the edges of my face changing its shape wondering what exactly would need to be different in order to look more white, Asian or Hawaiian.
Is my head too round, is my forehead too big, do my cheekbones need to be higher, what are these dark circles under my eyes?
Obviously, I never saw positive representations of people that look like me out in the world growing up. Thank god, now we have Beyoncé, Thandie Newton and Meghan Markle. So now my daughter’s choices are: to be the best performer ever, an amazing actress or marry a prince. Progress?
I have been told by boys, and then later in life, by grown ass men that they would date me and have sex with me but that they would never marry me, because as one boy put it, “I want to have babies with blonde hair and blue eyes.”
Later, I’d hear someone else I love say, “we come from a different kind of family and culture.” This seemed to be a more acceptable thing to say, but no less hurtful.
Sadly this lack of self-worth and belonging contributed to me suffering for many years of severe obsessive compulsion disorder.
~
I am black and I don’t know where I come from. I don’t have a history. There are no records of a family tree or legacy left behind. There are only broken homes, lost names and relatives I’ve never met.
I remember my first time in Harlem stepping off the subway. It was a weekday morning and I thought I had stepped into a B film with an all black cast.
What is this foreign land where black people are everywhere? How marvelous!
Look at all these black people out and about starting their day. This is incredible.
Look, she’s pushing a stroller and taking her kids to the park.
Look, that black guy has a suit on and he’s holding a brief case, looking all powerful, walking with such purpose.
Look she’s at the grocery store, buying dinner for tonight, happy as can be.
Everyone is just OUT, happy, gathering, laughing and blasting music. Like they actually belong here.
I was giddy with excitement. I had never seen so many black people in one place, looking so productive in my life. I was wandering around happy, awestruck and amazed like a 3 year old discovering Disneyland.
Apparently this is not how most white people feel when they go to Harlem.
Micro-Aggressions
I constantly hear racist things said around me by people I love. These comments are micro-aggressions, and in my experience are usually unconscious racists remarks made out of ignorance, that perpetuate the problem of racism.
In that moment I have to choose. Do I get angry, do I ignore this comment, or do I educate? Sometimes, I’m exhausted and I don’t have it in me. But usually I educate as nicely as possible and start by saying, “Haha....Don’t say that to anyone else!...” Then I go on to explain.
I hate that in the past, I’ve laughed first. Maybe I laughed so I wouldn’t cry, or maybe I laughed so that the person I was about to educate didn’t feel threatened. Probably some weird combination of both… I’m done with that.
It annoys me when white people want to try and educate me about my black history. I don’t care what book you read. I sure as hell don’t care what museum you went to or the dates you’ve memorized… Just please, stop calling the cops on my dad.
Don’t you see that your Ivy League education and privileged leisure time has given you the opportunity to EDUCATE yourself about these issues instead of having to EXPERIENCE them everyday. Read your books, do your homework, be better, do better and just let me cry.
~
My daddy is black. People still yell nigger at him when he walks down the street. It’s 2020... and we live in the Bay Area. People call the cops on him while he’s in his home. People see him through his window and assume he is robbing a house. The police come, they knock, they realize they’ve made the same mistake, yet again, and apologize.
My siblings and I want to make a public announcement every time it happens that states:
Dear white people: a black man lives in Marin, please stop calling the cops on him while he is trying to eat his Chinese food and watch Star Track reruns. Please give him a break. He’s a black man in his 60s, who has never been to jail or murdered by a white man. He’s a unicorn! So just please- let him be!
You may see him at the local shopping center with his hoodie up around his head and a neck scarf pulled up over his nose in the summer time. He’s not planning to rob you, he just gets cold.
If you see him in the parking lot looking through a car window and then looking around, he’s not stealing a car, he just locked his keys in there. He might need to borrow your cell phone to call AAA.
My heart is broken. This is why I’m crying.
But…I am privileged
Black people see my whiteness and see me as other, sometimes, and I don’t blame them. I’d hate me too, with all my “good” hair, ignorance and privilege. 400 years ago, I’d be in the big house serving tea and being raped. They’d be dying in cotton fields, beaten, raped then murdered. Meanwhile, white folks were getting rich and powerful off of all the free labor.
Our ancestors have left us with a daunting task. Racism is everywhere and everyone must check themselves because no matter how woke, spiritual, mindful, wise and unbiased you think you are, if you dig a little deeper you will find it. It’s the air we breathe and has seeped into every facet of our lives.
We may not have created this problem and it may not be our fault, but it is our responsibility to change. Please drop down your guard with me, and let’s just call it what it is so we can actually move forward.
There are protests. Black people are trying, yet again, to have their voices heard. I cry, I rage, I grieve. I get angry. I stay educated. I donate. I speak up. I shut up. I listen. I do the part of both the white person and the black person living inside me, although I don’t really feel completely like either one. I am both, at the same time. Always other. Never quite fitting in. Offending… everyone.
But, there is a greater injustice out there. No one is trying to kill me or incarcerate me because of my skin color. I pass as white, sometimes.
The world feels scary and unsafe. But the sad part is that it always does for me. Nothing has actually changed except now there are some people that feel sad about an injustice that has been around for hundreds of years.
Will anyone remember these big feelings and revelations come August when the sun is shining and we finally get to see the new Top Gun movie? Will anyone actually show up to vote come November, so we have policy change?
Would this outrage even be happening if everyone was out and about doing their pre-pandemic lives? Probably not. Not when you’d actually have to see black people out in the world, in the office, out on the street. No, that would be too, in your face. You might actually have to have a conversation with one of them, and feel uncomfortable. You might actually have to change.
I know I’m privileged, because I can easily move from a Black Lives Matter conversation to complaining about my summer travel getting cancelled and how I need a spa day, all in one sentence.
I hold my daughter tight each night before she goes to bed, thanking the heavens that she is healthy and strong. Please stay healthy, please don’t die of this scary virus. And I also think. Thank god you have a light complexion, thank god you are a girl, and pretty enough, thank god you will pass, sometimes. I want you to live a long full happy life.
I drift off to sleep thinking about moving to a nicer home with a pool, the sunshine, a remodeled kitchen, in a safe neighborhood in a good school district for my daughter… where I pass, sometimes, and hate myself for it.
I am a contradiction. I have white guilt and black shame all at the same time.
My commitment to do better
I recognize that my light skin gives me some privilege and over the years I have found myself hiding behind a mask of “race-less-ness” and simply tapping out of racial debates and race identity all together, and instead defining myself by the roles I play as mother, friend, sister, fitness instructor…etc.
I’d like to learn how to be all of these things AND be a biracial woman.
In my search for belonging I have often made myself more palatable, less black, and I see now how that has contributed to my own self-worth and has kept me from loving all parts of myself.
A lot of people of color are doing their best to unpack these complicated feelings right now and I am so grateful for their stories. They are helping me to feel a part of something powerful, strong and worthy of belonging.
~
We might make mistakes, we might say the wrong thing but we have to start talking. Anti-racism needs to be an ACTION that we are constantly fighting for everyday, in every conversation and in everything we do. It must be a long time commitment and it will require self-awareness and reflection on our part. Otherwise, WE ARE a part of the problem!
My passivity has been a part of the problem for far too long and I am committed to doing better. Please, please, please join me! We cannot be keyboard activists. We must be willing to have hard conversations, and implement real change in our everyday lives.
I hear people say every day, “I can’t wait for things to go back to normal.” Please, recognize that the normal you so desperately want to go back to is a nightmare for people of color.
I want change. Vast, mind blowing, “WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING?” type of change. I want a better world for my daughter and her daughter and her daughter. I don’t want them to feel the way I do.
~
I talked to my brother tonight. We ended the call with me jokingly telling him, “Ok brother, I love you, be safe. Don’t go on a run, you can use my Peloton for cardio. And oh yeah don’t buy anything with a 20 dollar bill, they might think it’s counterfeit… on second thought, actually just stay home.”
We laugh and hang up. Because what else are we going to do.
I text my dad and tell him I love him. I want him to give me a hug and tell me it’s ok. Then immediately I regret wanting him to take care of my tears, adding to his infinite burden. I hope his heart is full of love and peace. I hope his spirits are high amidst this hateful cruel world.
I know many of you personally. I know your heart. And my hope is that you know mine. My ask is that if you are white, or sit in a seat of privilege or power, that you self-reflect on ways that you too have been passive and been a part of the problem.
Please help me be a catalyst for change, hope and love. Being ‘sad’ about racism and being ‘a nice person’ is no longer enough. We need you to FIGHT for us too, as if it was your child’s neck being pinned down for 8 minutes and 46 seconds calling for his mother!
If you are in a position of privilege or power please use it well and where you can.
Do More!
I see you, love you.
- Liv
