ERR: Missing Identity. Mulatto?

I love how powerful some words can be. I especially love them when they’re made up of as few letters as possible. Take the three letters that make up “I am”, for instance. When someone follows those two words with other, longer words, they become powerful. Powerful and lonely and limiting and confusing and defining — but not in a good way.

I AM

Hello, I am multiethnic. I used to be biracial, but that wasn’t politically correct anymore. I thought I was American, and lately I’ve been telling people I’m a citizen of the world. But despite my extensive traveling, I am still multiethnic.

My dad is a strong, humble, black business owner who worked three jobs to put himself through college so that my white mother could stay home and raise the three of us difficult children, including bipolar me. This same mother cried because she couldn’t afford new dish towels. They had no help because my mother’s family didn’t like my dad and because my dad was, well, poor and black.

I grew up just fine. Five digit cars on my 21st birthday, a credit card with a limit I didn’t have the covetousness to fill just yet, 15 or 20 cruises — I lost count — to everywhere and back. We had made it, right? This is why white people didn’t like us, because those niggers don’t work hard and don’t get anywhere.

Except what am I? Everyone tells me I talk and act like a “white” person, a statement I later discovered was an extremely racist way to say I behave as I should. White people have good credit. It’s not really my card, but that makes me more white, right? White people go on vacation. White people speak “proper” English. Black people choose to speak Ebonics because they don’t want to do any better.

I went through my phases. I tried to be Black and stereotypically ghetto, wearing sagging jeans and cursing and doing stupid stuff that God obviously protected me from. The Hispanic phase was interesting, but the only takeaway was learning Spanish above conversational level. I still retain some fluency. Then came the white phase. Polos. Double polos. With the collars popped. And my views on welfare and food stamps.

Now, I’m just cynical. Black men who don’t act “Black” are gay. I went through a phase that had me questioning if I was gay because I liked classical music instead of questioning whether or not I like men.

White people don’t really care for me here in Texas until I speak “educated English” and they see I’m not “that kind of black”, at which point I become a sounding board — a liaison of sorts — for their most racist thoughts. They usually start out with “I don’t mean to be racist, but…” and end with the most racist shit you’ve ever heard in your life.

Oh, and I married a Moroccan woman. They’re all different shades of brown. This is really harmful to my identity hunt when I’m overseas and everyone speaks Darija to me, adding yet another race to possibly attach to.

As a mutt, I’ve discovered many things about race. Here are the two most important: First, everyone is at least a little bit racist, but the ones you have to worry about are the quietest. The people who have openly attacked me about my race are usually just ignorant or angry. Second, race is an integral part of everyone’s identity, at least here in the USA. There is no escaping it. So when someone like me is missing that part of our identity, we just feel powerless.