I’m neutral.
I fit in most everywhere I go, but never completely. There’s always that hint of confusion on people’s faces when they try to pin-point my race. They never get it right. People love labels. They love putting things into categories because it makes them feel safer. That’s why they say things like “you don’t look very black” or “you don’t talk like a black person.” But what does that even mean? What does a black person sound or look like?
Labels.
I’ve never been black enough, I’ve never been white enough, I’ve never been hispanic enough, I’ve never been indigenous enough.
But I fit in, just barely. In Costa Rica I was the girl with the expat parents, the white mom and black dad. In Los Angeles I was always the white girl, even though my Spanish was 10x better than all my latino friends combined. In Portland I was the server at the restaurant who was asked multiple times by old white people, “how did you get so tan in the winter?” to which I’d reply, “my dad’s black.” They’d swallow their meals uncomfortably.
Ignorance. Think before you speak.
I even barely fit in when I taught English abroad in Vietnam. Their culture is obsessed with whiteness. My students loved to trace the freckles on my brown forearms and old Vietnamese women approached me to point at them too, then up at the sun, then wag their fingers at me, as if I’d committed a mortal sin by loving the touch of sun on my skin.
I think people say things in front of me because they think I’ll understand. That because I’m a mash-up of races, I won’t be offended. That because I’m neutral, I’ll cut their asinine comments some slack. And typically I have in the past, because I was a shy kid who didn’t understand race. Because I fit in barely and could get by with only a few confused looks and microaggressions.
But let’s back-track.
In the mid-eighties, before I came into the world, my parents decided they didn’t want to have children in the US. My father was originally from the tiny Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago but had lived in Los Angeles for the last ten years and worked for the Blue Cross. Being a handsome black/carib-Indian man in a predominantly white company, he was quickly moved up the ranks and promoted to supervisor. Affirmative action at its finest. This is where he hired my mother, a beautiful white woman of Irish/Scottish descent with big blue eyes. They began dating, much to the chagrin of the black women in the company. They hated her because she’d taken “a good-looking, successful black man” out of their dating pool.
My parents were deciding between Australia and Costa Rica. Australia was their first choice since the language was the same, but when my mom contacted the embassy to find out immigration details, they promptly told her they didn’t accept black people into their society.
Point blank.
So, Costa Rica it was. My sister and I were born in the capital city of San Jose but we moved to the southern Caribbean coast of the country when I was two. This was a melting pot of cultures. Expats from all over Europe, America and Canada, carib indians and blacks who’d come in from the islands decades before, native indigenous and of course, latinos, mostly descendant from the Europeans who’d raped and pillaged the lands a long time ago.
But I’ll never say there wasn’t racism. Racism was and is everywhere.
Growing up there were jokes and comments about that one girl who was so dark she was probably fried by the sun, or the redhead that had skin that looked like the yuca plant or the poor brother and sister at school who were native indigenous and were constantly harassed. We whispered that they never bathed and were “come kukulas,” or sloth-eaters. Without realizing it, I was betraying the indigenous blood that runs through my own veins. I still think about the sister. She never had any friends.
But moving to the US unearthed new realms of what racism was and how I fit into the world.
As a shy, mixed-race teen from a small town who was suddenly tossed into the concrete jungles of LA, I was terrified. I was the weird foreign girl with a wheelie backpack and curly, frizzy hair. I ate lunch alone for the first six months as I tried to absorb my new world, wondering if I’d ever make a friend. One day I arrived early to class and found a group of my peers already at their desks. They were all black. They asked me why my accent was strange and I shrugged, unaware that back then, my English was peppered with a Caribbean edge, so I simply said, “I’m from Costa Rica.”
“Oh, so you’re hispanic?” they wanted to know. “No, not really. My dad’s black and my mom’s white.” The group burst into a raucous and said over and over again that I was lying until one of the girls came over and dug through my hair, searching. Finally she raised a hand in the air victoriously, claiming that she’d found some nappy strands.
This was the first time I wondered about my identity.
This was the first time I felt not black enough, but not white enough either. This was the first time I realized racism created labels and people wanted to categorize me and put me in an appropriate box. From there, the hispanic friends I eventually made constantly called me white-girl because all they saw was my mom. My boyfriends always loved how “exotic” I was and would proudly tell people I was black, as if this merited them some sort of award of achievement. And to this day, I still have to argue with people about my race, because in their eyes “you kinda look hispanic” or “there’s no way you’re black, you don’t sound black” or “you sound white but you don’t look totally white.”
Let’s fast-forward now.
When Sonia and I birthed the idea for this blog, I was scared. Not because I didn’t think it was a good idea or wanted to do it. I was scared because I felt I didn’t not have the right to be here, in this space. I felt, because I struggle with my identity, I don’t deserve to put pen to paper and tell my story.
I felt, because I’m a “little too white,” I need to shut the fuck up.
And maybe I do, I don’t know.
But if there’s one thing the BLM movement and the magnifying glass that has been dragged across an eternally racist America and world has taught me is that running away from my identity is doing no good. Likewise, trying to label myself feels wrong. I am still not sure what my identity is. Maybe it’s the fear talking, but if someone were to ask me straight up what my identity is, I’d be at a loss for words.
Labels are just as dangerous as silence.
Sometimes I feel black, sometimes I feel white, sometimes I feel hispanic, sometimes I feel indigenous. But what does it even mean to feel those things? My skin, blood and nationality betray me as much as they honor who I am. I move through this world trying to discover my place while never really finding my footing. Maybe this is why I’m restless, maybe this is why I travel and yearn to learn about life, craving to understand my identity, whatever it is.
Maybe there’s chaos within that, but maybe there’s peace within that, too.
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How powerful would it be, if we could share what being black means through our eyes?
If instead of educating and lecturing other people, we could let them in in our lives, share our struggles, fears, and joy, while raise awareness about our identities?
Our vulnerability and rawness are much more powerful than us teaching you about racism. You can walk in our shoes and learn about the emotional response your actions might have caused.This is the idea behind “Identities”. A bi-weekly series where real humans will share real human stories.
Check our intro post to find out more about this project and, if you wanna write for us, check this post! We will be opening soon to other identities ❤
