Internalized Racism

Being biracial (black and white) can be difficult. You know what is even more difficult? Having biracial siblings.

Most of my life has consisted of re-learning the lesson that no one else thinks like me. This includes members of my own immediate family, who grew up in relatively the same environment as I did.

At times, the ways in which this lesson is reiterated can be extreme.

A few weeks ago, one of my siblings visited me in Madison. It seemed as though every other thing that came out of his mouth was some joke about a racial stereotype or prejudice about people of color. Black people. Asians. Latinos. On and on and on.

None of them were racist, per se, and I never responded to any of them, but I didn't like it. They weren't amusing to me.

The kicker came on Sunday.

We were walking back from church. There was a group of 4 black male college students walking down one of the streets. Now Madison is a pretty white city, 85%, and the downtown area is particularly white so it is a pretty rare occurrence to see any people of color.

My brother of course pointed it out- "You never see black people by themselves. They're always together."

Okay, sure, whatever, I thought. But I'm pretty competitive and I like to prove people wrong, so on the next block when I saw one black male college student walking by himself on the other side of the street, I naturally had to point it out. This black male student just happened to be walking a few yards behind a single (as in there was one) white female student.

My brother glanced across the street and said, "He's probably gonna rape her."

I didn't even know what to do. I was in complete shock. I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk and I looked at him, probably with my mouth hanging wide open.

In that moment, all I wanted to do was curse him out. He should have been grateful that he was my little brother and not my peer.

As a black person, I was offended.
As someone with a black father, I was offended.
As a freaking human being, I was offended.

How, as a black person, could he say something like that? That student is our cousin, our other brother, our father 20 years ago!

Negative and racist stereotypes about black men had been fed to my brother, who is a black man, and he just spits them right back out as jokes!?

What does it say about the society we live in when a person (a minority) can say something offensive that criminalizes themselves, their brother, their father, and half their family and not think anything of it?

Being Biracial: A Rant

Today I went to get my new Wisconsin driver's license. I left work 30 minutes early to get their before it closed. The drive over was nice- no rush hour traffic yet. The DMV was surprisingly efficient. It took me less than 10 minutes to sign in, have my picture taken, and get called up by one of the clerks. I would have said it was the best experience I had ever had in a DMV!

This perfect reality came to a screeching halt all because of  a .5 inch square box.

On the license application was a small box titled, "Race." Now, as a biracial individual and having had to fill out my race on multiple forms throughout my life, I am very much aware that this is not a simple task. Everyone has their own terminology they want you to use to indicate that you're simply multiracial. For me, that means I am White and Black.

Choose one:
    "Other"
    "Multiracial"
    "Biracial"
Choose multiple:
    "AA/Black"
    "White"
    "Asian"
    "Native American/Pacific Islander"
    "Hispanic"

I was fairly certain that those were the only options out there, but I needed to know which one this institution wanted me to answer with. They didn't have a nice list on the form, so I had to ask:

Me: "What are the options for race?"
Clerk: "White, Black, Asian, or Hispanic"
Me: "Well, I'm biracial. What do I put if I'm biracial?"
Clerk: "We actually don't have an option for that..."
Me: "So I can put two?"
**awkward silence**
Me: "So I have to choose one?"

Well, let me tell you. My entire perfect experience at the DMV went up in flames! How, in 2012, on an official government document, in the United States of America, is a multiracial person not able to correctly identify themselves! There is no way I am the only multiracial person up in this state! If I am, someone please tell me cause I have got to go!

When is America going to wake up and realize that it really is the melting pot that it was designed to be! Not only are all people not White anymore, people aren't just once race anymore either! It wasn't until 2000 that we could even self-identify as Multiracial on the Census!

Multiracial people were the fastest growing racial group in 2009! That was 3 years ago. At that point 5.2 million of us self-identified according to Census polls. The number of multiracial children is growing even faster. In 2011, the number jumped 50% to 4.2 million multiracial children!

Change is happening, and in a lot of ways, change is already here.
How are we going to handle it?
How are you?


Side note: I put White on the form, but I did contemplate putting "Black." However, I thought that that might cause lots of unnecessary issues with airport security.