-Not having the pleasure of having a family tree you can look back upon and be proud of because your family does not know its past;
-Not feeling welcome in the community that you wish to be part of because they do not approve the color of a parent;
-To be constantly referred to as the race of a father who was never there, and a grandfather who probably raped your grandmother;
-To constantly have to explain your heritage because your name does not match the what the person expected to see;
-To not have any heroes to look up to because almost every bi-racial figure underplay their heritage and even hide their ethnic features to be more presentable (IE Amerie; Tasha Reid early in her career);
-To have to constantly be bombarded by a society that only presents bi-racial females as sex objects (if their heritage is mentioned) and not as human beings;
-To have people constantly pegging you as a race you have no connection to;
-Not knowing what ethnicity to mark when filling out applications or surveys;
-Not having any student or ethnic group to represent the problems you face as a bi-racial;
-Being forced to be either "white" or a "model minority" who should not care about the suffering of other human beings caused by bigotry;
-Never feeling comfortable for who you are because in the end, you have no culture or community to go too;
-Being mocked because you call yourself an "Asian American," the heritage of your mother;
-Being the descendent of a man who probably had "yellow fever" and was hoping for an obediant Asian wife to serve him;
-Feeling like you can never be comfortable with yourself because your own self image does not match society.
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hey this is good! thanks for writing it and sharing the experiences.
ReplyDeleteMan, way insightful, on a complex issue such as this, no less. It took Latin America over four centuries to really come to acknowledge the complex hybrydity of our population. In many ways, it still struggles with it, especially with the fusion of a dominant languistic paradigm from Europe and a deeply embedded Mesoamerican cultural norms. And yet, there is still that move toward viewing society using crude binaries. I can go on and on about this, so I'll just stop here. Thank you again for sharing.
ReplyDeletei've always thought being bi-racial was too cool, and i'm sometimes i wish i were bi-racial! at least that might avert some "do you speak english" ice-breakers. but you bring up a lot of issues that i've never thought of, especially the 'bi-racial females as sex objects' part.
ReplyDeletenevertheless, kudos for illuminating these issues and facing them head-on in your life.