Mixed Race Studies

Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti

Gawker
2015-07-25

Roberto C. Garcia

The first friend I made in Elizabeth, New Jersey was a white kid named Billy. As a New York transplant my Dominicano look wasn’t too popular with Jersey folk. I had an afro, wore dress pants, a collared shirt, and black leather shoes with little gold buckles. Most of the kids just wanted to know what my thing was. Billy and I couldn’t have been more different, but we got close pretty quickly. Despite the fact that Billy’s parents wouldn’t allow him over my house, my grandmother allowed me over his. She took one look at Billy’s blonde hair and blue eyes, and at his mother’s middle class American manners, and pronounced their household safe. “Where are you from?” Billy’s mother asked, referring to my grandmother’s heavy accent. “I thought you were black.” On that day I couldn’t have imagined how many times I’d have to answer that question in my lifetime. “We’re Dominican.”

A couple years later, when the neighborhood became predominantly Cuban, African American, and Haitian, Billy and his family moved away. My new best friend was black, and his mother wouldn’t let him over my house either, on account of us being “Puerto Rican.” You can imagine our surprise when I returned with a similar story. My grandmother didn’t want me over his house because they were black. We looked each other over. Two skinny round-headed, chocolate brown boys wondering what the hell each other’s families were talking about. As far as we knew, we looked the same. My grandmother was just as black as Tyshaun’s mother and I told her as much every time she chided me about playing with him. What was I missing?…

Read the entire article here.

The Men Who Left Were White

Gawker
2014-04-12

Josie Duffy

There are three things you should know.

First: I’m not biracial.

“What are you?” people ask, and they expect me to say something thrilling and tribal. I answer, but still they press. “Where are your ancestors from?” people ask, and they want answers that aren’t San Antonio and Wheeling, West Virginia. But that’s all I got. My story is both simple and untold.

The bones of it, of me: I’m black, despite the skin that goes virtually translucent in the winter. Despite the thin unpredictable curls. My mom and dad are black, as are my grandparents. That’s all she wrote. That’s all there is, even as I write this sentence. My parents, usually liberal employers of nuance, have always been militant-clear about drawing that line. We aren’t biracial.

When I tell people I’m black, they find it unsatisfying. “That’s no fun,” one girl joked to me recently. “I thought you were going to have a story.”

Second: I’m 44% European, 49% African. Not exactly an equal split, but pretty damn close.

I hear the same sentence twice…

Read the entire article here.

What Do I Tell My Blond Son About Being Black?

Gawker
2013-08-17

Anita DeRouen, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing and Teaching
Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi

“I think we should teach him to use his privilege to his advantage.”

It’s Sunday morning, July 14, 2013. My husband and I are talking, have been talking, will always be talking about race in our world and how it shapes our understanding of race in our home. Melissa Harris-Perry’s show is on, and she’s wearing black, and she and her guests are subdued-yet-passionate as they do a post-postmortem on that dead black boy in Florida, on so many dead black boys, on what black parents should say to their sons and daughters about dead black boys. Our son is sitting next to me playing with his alphabet game while his father and I talk about him like he isn’t there.

I am not sure where to take my husband’s statement, but the horse is out of the barn, so someone’s gotta ride it.

“Why? He’s never going to be profiled the way Trayvon was.”

And he won’t. My just-about-white-passing child is unlikely to ever have a person cross to the opposite side of the street when they see him coming, is unlikely to be followed through stores as he browses, is unlikely to wonder if a cop’s behavior on a traffic stop is shaped by the color of his skin.

I know these things as sure as I know that a day will come when that sweet dirty-blond headed, blue eyed boy will have to decide whether he will see his half-blackness (and, therefore, me) as a blessing or a curse. My husband disagrees, though, and I find myself having a conversation about skin tones and shades of blackness that leaves me questioning the facts I’ve long just known about race in America…

Read the entire article here.