Ya know, just a little race rant but uh,
One of the biggest reasons I get damn angry about people tellin me their oppressed over stupid intangible shit, like their flag not being in a picture or their gender not appearing in a little select bar on social media, or their wildly dyed hair not being accepted in schools, or their parents not allowing them to attend women’s rights rally’s because danger/school work/distance/so on, is because I know what actual hate looks like. It’s also why I get upset when people assert you can be racist to certain races, or that certain races themselves can’t be racist. That someone needs power in an institution to be racist, to hurt you.
Not well known, which is understandable because we are such a tiny minority in this county, but interracial marriage was only legalized throughout the US in 1967, June 12th. That’s 53 years ago. I’m a 24 year old mixed woman. When I was born my parents relationship and my existence had only been legal for 29 years. My mother was born 3 years before the ruling.
My parents had to fight, physically at times, the public and their own families every step of the way. I don’t know most of my family on either side because of race. Only some cousins are growing curious now that I’ve become successful. I guess they have a near guarantee I’ll be useful, or not a leech at least.
I had to fight, physically at times, for my safety in and out of school. The parents had taught their children their hate, and I was bullied mercilessly by all ages from the time I started kindergarten. No one played with me. People ran away when I was near them, fearful of the “insert my name Touch” as if my race were a catchy condition. I was falsely reported for things I didn’t do in schools, like threaten people with knives, throw books, destroy property, and more. Schools still found a way to punish me anyway, even when their was no evidence. After all, some of those parents were among the teachers and the PTA. I could find no help from adults.
At home I had to hang out with my older brother and his rag tag group. He was lighter than me, and more bookish, he was quiet. Plus kids that much older didn’t feel the need to beat on a girl 3-6 years younger than them. People were less likely to try to attack me. Later I got a little girl friend, about 4 years younger than me, a Muslim. She wasn’t liked either, and we stuck together following around the boys. If we were caught alone we could get beaten. I wasn’t allowed near the pond in the neighborhood. My mother convinced me it was because things that could eat me lived there. In reality I couldn’t swim, and though I held no interest in entering the water, young kids are clumsy, and many kids are cruel.
Things calmed down after a move, after the divorce. My older brother was even quieter. I was angrier. I became resentful. I found a fast friend in a beautiful bookish hippie, and I have loved her since. I was among another kind of person here, untouched by the majority of racial turmoil it seemed. My white mother didn’t get malicious stares at the store with us, just confused or curious ones. People asked questions, asked to touch us, asked us what we were. We became exotic, alien, and to them we were agreeable, after all, we didn’t talk like the scary blacks they saw on tv.
It was better, but I was still other. But I wasn’t so other I was alone. I was just other enough to hang with the other other kids. The band kids, the theatre kids, the library kids, the Harry Potter kids. I was never fully in any group, I bounced around, with a core set of close friends, pieced from each area. I was stretched thin, but I was loved, and I loved.
Eventually, as time wore on, the extra attention became bothersome. The unwarranted touching was anger inducing. And I realize, I wasn’t fully seen as a person. More as a sentient oddity. They didn’t mean it, it wasn’t malicious, I was an odd creature, but another black family moved to town, and then another, and then another. I gained from one girl, who oddly didn’t turn her nose up at me like her sister, the ability to assert my own boundaries. To tell people know without fear of them turning on me and my existence returning to before, when I was always hurting.
I am balanced now. I am healed and I understand.
And I wish others could as well, without having to suffer and face my own inner turmoil as I did.
