In my Understanding Race class, my professor often stresses the truth that the concept of race is a socially constructed idea. He goes further explaining that while yes, I might not look like you, or the person next to me, Humans/Homo Sapiens share at least 98.5% of the same DNA. The last 1.5% of the remaining DNA varies just enough to the point where we look different from one another. So, scientifically speaking, we are more similar to one another than we are different.
It is not uncommon for someone to ask me the question of “What is your ethnicity”? Or even “What are you”? I enjoy the asking of these trivial questions – I think it’s amusing. Despite the humorous aspect to it, I personally think that the collective need to define and label individuals into races and/or ethnicities based on their physical appearance is telling of the state of our country and opinions and attitudes concerning race.
In a world where we are pressured to identify with a race for the sake of our identity, I hope you can imagine what it might be like if you were caught in the middle of it all…like me. I am biracial. I say this with the utmost pride, and I think it’s really cool to be mixed race. My dad is of English and Swedish descent, while my mom is African-American with a touch of Cherokee, yet…somehow I look Asian (or at least that is one of the most popular assumptions when I’m questioned about my race/ethnicity).
While I take pride in being a mixed-race individual, I sometimes feel like I need to label myself so that I might fit in. I feel pressure to identify as Black because that’s how the majority perceives me. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters: how people perceive you. I could be White, but if everyone else says I’m Black then it doesn’t matter.
As a kid, I never knew how to approach this idea because always felt like I would be discrediting my father’s side by saying “I’m Black”, but in the society we live in it is more acceptable to say I am Black than it is to say I am White, despite the fact that racially speaking, I am no more one than the other.
Since it is February, Black History Month, I find, myself thinking more about what it means to be “Black”, and how being Black affects not just my life, but all people of color. And also how being biracial more often than not also means being Black, especially in today’s world. That having been said……racial ambiguity for the win! LOL.