Accepting Diverse Communities
Growing up half black half white in a primarily white community was very intriguing. Everyone would play the black friend card on me saying that they understood my culture when I didn’t even understand my own. My African American father would avoid his family in shame while my white mom would parade her family heritage and pride. We were pretty well off as both of my parents had made better lives for themselves than past generations with nice houses, cars, clothes, etc. Because of my lifestyle I considered myself stereotypically white, disregarding the color of my skin as I didn’t see the importance of it. This was both a good thing and a bad thing, because I was confident in my mixed heritage, but at the same time I didn’t understand why I was called an Oreo: white on the inside black on the outside. It wasn’t until I went to college that I saw how much of my identity I was missing. I realized how people should accept others of every color without disregarding the established cultures and instead being educated on how they all benefit society.
Lisa Marie Rollins, a black woman adopted by white parents made the comment, “I grew up in an all-white community, all-white Christian evangelical school. The notion of my blackness was simultaneously erased, yet everyone is projecting their ideas of blackness on me.” After reading this I realized that I felt the same way as family and friends expected me to know how to be “black” but brought me up in a way that they thought every person should act. The amount of pressure put on people to make the world a Utopia where everyone is the same has brought a new sort of racism to those who want to keep many cultures as it becomes more and more common to have multiple backgrounds. Pew research has found that about 21% of people say they “have felt pressure from friends, family or ‘society in general’ to identify as a single race… [and] they have attempted to look or behave a certain way in order to influence the way others perceive their race.” The time that I spent with the white side of my family compared to the black side contributed to not only how I felt about myself but also made me look at others with prejudice. This led to issues with perfectionism as I never felt I was good enough to be with the people I was around and had to try even harder to get the recognition I felt that I deserved from both sides of my community. Lawrence Otis Graham, a prestigious black reporter who had gone through the same struggle to be heard, wrote of how he felt that it was necessary to get his Princeton and Harvard Law degrees and make a plethora of money in order to join the white class and protect his family from past biases. He wanted to make a difference in his life to prove that he could join a community he previously did not feel a part of. This compulsion to be different than who you are in order to fit in with the majority is not what future generations should have to go through.
My parents did a good job of talking to me about my multiple different heritages, just like many others do. However, the struggle in growing up with only one of these cultures has brought an identity crisis in my life now. According to the Pew Research Center, three-in-ten adults with a multiracial background say that their view on their own race has changed over the years. A person who went through a similar situation with her self worth, Rachel Noerdlinger, said “ It wasn’t until later in life that I had an identity crisis. And it was just a feeling of not knowing … I had a lot of questions. I had this profound sense of loss and not knowing, and I sort of felt like there was a lifetime of experiences I had not been privy to.” Not knowing one side of a story can alter someone’s thoughts on a situation drastically, which has happened to me with my two races due to America’s view of a melting pot instead of a salad bowl. People seem to want everyone to be the same without actually considering the beauty in those differences and how each person can help another to see a new perspective on life itself.
Noerdlinger said, “My parents honestly thought in their hearts they could raise us in an environment where you don’t see color, and unfortunately that’s just not possible.” Colorblind can be good in some ways, but seeing in black and white mostly hinders people’s view on the world around them. Everyone needs to be educated on the different cultures in order to see what others have gone through to get to where they are today. When it comes to families of any heritage, they should expose their children to as much diversity as possible to broaden their horizon. Through my multicultural testimony and many others’ views on how American culture has treated races, one can see how we are needing to look through that broader lense. The reporter Graham wrote, “As we observe each other and think that we have a close understanding of what it means to be black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, rich or poor, we really don’t — and very often we find ourselves gazing at each other through the wrong end of the telescope.” I want people as a whole to not only be accepting of others but consider all of the different cultures that make our society what it was today. It would be amazing for others to understand where my family has come from to shape me along with the rest of the world around me. With this informed mindset, humanity would be able to get along more which would lead to a decrease in the amount of controversy we have today.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/i-taught-my-black-kids-that-their-elite-upbringing-would-protect-them-from-discrimination-i-was-wrong/
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/_3_black_adoptees_speak_about_growing_up_with_white_parents.2.html
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america/
