It's been a harder than usual year to be mixed, multiethnic, racially ambiguous, "passing", a word that implies I'm trying to be someone else or trying to deny part of me. It's very othering.
It entirely depends on the context and who is doing the perceiving. It's odd to be labeled so differently by so many different people. My own cultures generally accept me but I feel like I have to preface interactions by identifying myself first. Mixed people who grew up in white cultures are less accepting than monoracial POCs, which I find interesting.
I grew up in a Latinx majority. (I was the closest thing to white for miles, and in my own family.) I was told by a rural midwesterner that it shows that I don't know how to act in white settings, lol. How odd then to have simultaneously been called "watered down" by that same person who grew up culturally white, unlike me. There is no such race as "water" dear. I am more races, not less. I respect all my ancestors, equally, and I wish others could do the same, for their own roots sake as well as for mine. I refuse to be self hating.
Someone else once said I must have an internal battle of the races inside me. I thought it weird to view myself as an internal race war, because my parents and grandparents formed long term loving bonds which I am a product of. Sure maybe, somewhere in my ancestry, someone was a product of colonial rape, but my indigenous roots are so geographically isolated and insular that I'd be surprised, and, unlike the common story of the raped or abandoned indigenous mother raising the mixed child alone, in my family it was the reverse: For at least three generations, for a variety of reasons, the darker skinned criollo father was the primary parent taking on full domestic responsibility with the help of grandma. Maybe it's unusual but that's just how it went in my family.
I didn't grow up with my white maternal side. My African ancestors weren't slaves. My Jewish ancestors weren't from Eastern Europe. And no, my indigenous grandmother wasn't raped. Love created me.
It's not an internal struggle, but it sure is an external one. It puzzled me growing up when kids would say "Why is your dad dark?" We look identical, but he was a victim of racism my whole life, meanwhile I had to prove I belonged in my own culture because of my racial ambiguity, as well as hear horribly hurtful things from people who wouldn't have said racist things to my face if they knew I am the race they were openly shitting on. It's an isolating feeling, but it's all I've ever known. People's perceptions become even more noticeable when dating...
I've already ranted about all this before so all this is probably redundant. It surfaces now and then. And I rehash my entire being, taking it all apart to put it together again.
Just don't minimize me by calling me a mutt or erasing my culture who 100% raised me. Its rude and hurts my feelings. People are mixed. Some mixed race people have light skin. It happens. Things aren't always what they seem. Deal with it.
Yes I feel better now thanks.
9:33 a.m. - 2020-11-28