By Tashmica TorokLaughter floated above a table where drinks were poured and women bonded after an intense work out. Women who I had spent nearly a year with traveling and sharing my life, all sat around with loosened manners and relaxed hearts separate from the expectations of their individual responsibilities. Even though time was slipping into a later hour, one that we would all regret in the morning, we continued to sit together where our only responsibility was to listen and finish our drinks.
One of my friends shared with us her concern about her Autistic son’s lack of filters and her fear that he appears to be racist because of his uncontrollable outbursts. In a bar, outside of the realities, we could all laugh at the awkwardness of the situations she and her husband dealt with on a daily basis. As a white couple, there was no end of people that they could offend and they were helpless to prevent it. Even though, if you met them I wouldn’t have to, I will say that they are not racist people.
In an effort to relate and soothe her concerns, I told her a story about my own difficulties raising a biracial family. I recalled a story about when my family was out for a walk in a park and my two oldest children had gone off down the path a bit. As a black middle aged couple came up behind them, my oldest son grabbed his brother and made a run for it. When I asked him what was wrong, he said he didn’t know those brown people. I told my friends that I was scared I was raising a child afraid of black people.
How could that be? Doesn’t he know that he is black?
A black acquaintance over heard my story from across the room and called me over later. He and his friend told me that I should not be sharing stories like that with white people. I was a bit surprised but I told them that we all have the option to decide to share honestly with the people in our lives. I choose who I share with and that is my right. They went on for almost thirty minutes about the risks of telling white people stories that they will now go and share with their other white friends.
I was unsettled. It took me a couple of days to realize why.
I married a white man. My mother, fair skinned and red headed, married a black man and after he died, she married another black man who brought with him a black child from a previous marriage. My other brother fell in love with a beautiful Mexican woman. My sister is fairer skinned than my other siblings with freckles and a head full of ringlets. My parents delight in the most caramel colored, freckled, dark and light eyed melting pot of grandchildren. The sun falls on them and they are like gold to me.
I grew up in a home where my dad loved Stevie Wonder and my mother, who had less interest in music, told us stories about her favorite musician, John Denver. We ate greens, fried chicken and acorn squash on Thanksgiving. We grew up in the border town of El Paso, TX, steeped deeply in the Hispanic culture that surrounded us. We enjoy a good salsa, action flicks and talking trash over an intense game of bones.
We were never quite black enough and here again; I was being called on the carpet for not being black enough as a grown woman. A black person was telling me that my experiences as a biracial person and mother were only appropriate in certain situations. Those situations would apparently need to be approved by the nearest black person I could ask for approval.
All of the anger and indignation came flooding back. My father was ridiculed for being another black man stolen by a white woman. My mother was disowned by her parents for several years. My hair was too long to be cut willingly by the black hair stylist, my speech too absent of the urban refrains of a true “sistah” and my music was to alternative. My new black brother, raised in part by biracial parentage was ridiculed for not knowing enough black music or traditions to be truly black.
When I found out I was pregnant, a friend of mine exclaimed that my child would have no idea who he was. Every black history month, I read my children stories about slavery and civil rights. I tell them the stories of our own family. I watch the stories fall like sand through their hands. When they look at their own skin, they are not black and they don’t understand what that means. They understand it even less than I did for they are now three generations farther away from slavery, inequality and segregation. They have a diverse group of friends and cannot fathom a system that they call stupid.
My child is not afraid of black people. He is afraid of strangers the way I taught him to be. He didn’t know how to verbalize it any other way. He was afraid of the strangers that happened to be brown and he tried to protect his brother. It was my jaded reaction that painted his perception with a more racist slant. He is a child and sees things more simply.
I however am not a child anymore. I am an adult who has spent her life being told who my race tells me I should be. I am still sensitive to the wants and needs of two cultures that seem to be playing tug o’ war over my allegiances. I think my children are the answer. They seem to know who they are and it is only enhanced with their biracial background.
I watch them and I wonder over a life never feeling bad that you just really dig ska music. I wonder how it must feel to dye your hair pink, purple and black without ever being challenged for acting like a crazy white girl. I hope that no one ever tells them that they are not really black because they aren’t great dancers. I wait with hands clasped tight over my heart to see them develop in such fullness and limitless possibilities.
It is when we box ourselves into a definition of what a race makes a person, we lose our own original gifts. We shave off the things that do not fit in the box. We stop dancing because we don’t know the steps. We don’t sing because our voices don’t match those of the choir. We don’t because “we” don’t and the world misses out.
As a mother, I was committed to teaching my children my family’s culture without a heavy emphasis on race. I told them about where our family came from and why we know so little about it. I told them that those marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. were indeed marching so that we the little family of caramel colored, dark and light eyed melting pot could love each other with wild abandon. I was gifted with the opportunity of watching that knowledge seep into their pores.
I have now added another lesson to my curriculum on culture. It is a lesson about how it is our privilege and our responsibility to define ourselves outside of the limits others would place on us because of old stereotypes. I have surrounded myself with a very diverse, intelligent and open minded group of people. It has been awhile since someone has tied a trip wire before me in an effort to stop who I am. I am thankful for the reminder. We have a long way to go.
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This was printed in the February 12, 2012 – February 25, 2012 Edition
