You ever catch one of your "mixed" friends having a bad day? You know, your friend, the kid with one black parent and one white parent, slumped on the floor, sobbing into the edge of the bedspread, "All the black kids tease me because I'm mixed and all the white kids hate me because I'm black! I have no friends!"
Even if you don't realize your half white/half black friends have done that, they have. You just may not have been privy to that particular sob-fest. They were probably just doing what I call "one drop rule" math...
black mom + white dad = black child
white mom + black dad = black child
If you genuinely don't have any "mixed" friends to talk with about this math, go find some. We're everywhere these days. In the meantime, I'll share a bit of my experience with you.
Yes, growing up the white kids called me nigger and told me I was ugly. The black kids, well, black people in this country are trained to love them some light skin (seen any darker women in hip-hop videos lately? Ever?) so they wouldn't call me ugly. But, the meaner ones would call me "oreo". I'm assuming you know why the white kids would call me what they did, but I realize you may not be privy to the whole oreo lexicon.
Observe the photo. An oreo is black on the outside...and white on the inside. How could I be white on the inside, you ask?
Well, unfortunately, black kids in this country are trained to believe that doing well in school and being whip smart is "acting white". I was a big nerd. Nerdy enough to skip a grade in school. Nerdy enough to take the SAT in 7th grade and get a 1320. Plus, there were almost never any black students in any of my classes. Schools have this culture where academics=whiteness. You think back to your own honors and AP classes. How many black students were there in there? Not too many and I hope you don't think that's because of some inherent lack of ability. If you do, feel free to come to work with me to see what I see every single day. I get to see how black students aren't put on the college bound, AP track in school. Believe me, they are put on the step-n-fetchit track...and it's now my job to make sure they are taken off it.
To enhance the "mixed-girl" nerdiness, my parents were also super strict and never let me out
of the house. I'm not kidding. Once school let out, no one saw me all summer. I spent my summers pulling weeds in our backyard and reading 700 page novels in one sitting. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I decided to read a book a day, just to see if I could. I read Dracula once a week for years. You've read Dracula before, sure. But 217 times? Yes, not only was I "mixed" but I was also pretty darn weird.
To foster my ascendancy from merely a "weird mixed girl" to an "ultra weird mixed girl", let's not forget the icing on the cake: house music and Depeche Mode. Every other black kid was drooling over Prince, New Edition, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson (before he tried to purposefully turn himself into the weird mixed kid) and Ready For The World. Not me. I was staying up all night listening to the Hot Mix 5 on WBMX and dreaming of marrying my favorite house DJ, Julian Jumpin' Perez.
I was busy scribbling Depeche Mode lyrics into my notebooks and was actually dumb enough to ask other black kids if they listened to them. "To who?" was the usual response. To give folks credit, 75% the white kids I knew only listened to hair metal bands like Def Leppard and didn't know who Depeche Mode was either. High school was tough. Like you, it wasn't till I left home for college, that I finally felt like I met people who were my friends despite all my weird quirks. Even though there were those who still called me an oreo every once in awhile, it was all good because I was having a whole lot of fun in life.
If you genuinely don't have any "mixed" friends to talk with about this math, go find some. We're everywhere these days. In the meantime, I'll share a bit of my experience with you.
Yes, growing up the white kids called me nigger and told me I was ugly. The black kids, well, black people in this country are trained to love them some light skin (seen any darker women in hip-hop videos lately? Ever?) so they wouldn't call me ugly. But, the meaner ones would call me "oreo". I'm assuming you know why the white kids would call me what they did, but I realize you may not be privy to the whole oreo lexicon.
Observe the photo. An oreo is black on the outside...and white on the inside. How could I be white on the inside, you ask?Well, unfortunately, black kids in this country are trained to believe that doing well in school and being whip smart is "acting white". I was a big nerd. Nerdy enough to skip a grade in school. Nerdy enough to take the SAT in 7th grade and get a 1320. Plus, there were almost never any black students in any of my classes. Schools have this culture where academics=whiteness. You think back to your own honors and AP classes. How many black students were there in there? Not too many and I hope you don't think that's because of some inherent lack of ability. If you do, feel free to come to work with me to see what I see every single day. I get to see how black students aren't put on the college bound, AP track in school. Believe me, they are put on the step-n-fetchit track...and it's now my job to make sure they are taken off it.
To enhance the "mixed-girl" nerdiness, my parents were also super strict and never let me out
of the house. I'm not kidding. Once school let out, no one saw me all summer. I spent my summers pulling weeds in our backyard and reading 700 page novels in one sitting. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I decided to read a book a day, just to see if I could. I read Dracula once a week for years. You've read Dracula before, sure. But 217 times? Yes, not only was I "mixed" but I was also pretty darn weird.To foster my ascendancy from merely a "weird mixed girl" to an "ultra weird mixed girl", let's not forget the icing on the cake: house music and Depeche Mode. Every other black kid was drooling over Prince, New Edition, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson (before he tried to purposefully turn himself into the weird mixed kid) and Ready For The World. Not me. I was staying up all night listening to the Hot Mix 5 on WBMX and dreaming of marrying my favorite house DJ, Julian Jumpin' Perez.
I was busy scribbling Depeche Mode lyrics into my notebooks and was actually dumb enough to ask other black kids if they listened to them. "To who?" was the usual response. To give folks credit, 75% the white kids I knew only listened to hair metal bands like Def Leppard and didn't know who Depeche Mode was either. High school was tough. Like you, it wasn't till I left home for college, that I finally felt like I met people who were my friends despite all my weird quirks. Even though there were those who still called me an oreo every once in awhile, it was all good because I was having a whole lot of fun in life.
You'd think these issues of identity and feeling like the weird oreo mixed girl would evaporate now that I'm a grown woman, right? Yeah, I thought that too. But, last night, I had this dream where I decided to invite a black woman I like but who I don't know super well to my birthday party, happening next Friday. The conversation in the dream went something like this:
Liz: Yeah, I'm so excited about my party next Friday. I hope you can come. Anonymous Black Woman: Oh. Where are you having it?
L: At my apartment. It's going to be a Depeche Mode themed party. I'm calling it "Black Celebration" after their fifth album.
ABW: Who?
L (oblivious to ABW's confusion and thinking she just can't hear me due to poor cell phone reception): Depeche Mode. So, everyone has to wear black but eyeliner on men is completely optional.
The response was silence.
Then, in the dream, all those feelings I thought I'd left behind came rushing to the forefront. I started to wonder if ABW was thinking, "Yep, Liz is a really still a weird mixed girl and I don't know if I want to be down with this." I started to explain that Depeche Mode's songwriter and sometime singer, Martin Gore, has a black father. "So, Depeche Mode, they're kinda black, you know." I start to elaborate on how I am working to close the education achievement gap. I remember saying, "Hey my husband is black and I have black kids." So please love me for being black, right?
None of it mattered. I still got called that name in the dream. ABW said it loudly, like it was on a world-wide intercom, "I knew it, you are an OREO!!! You aren't really black!"
Obviously, sticks and stones and all that. I know I'm not an oreo. I've always tried to avoid living my life ruled by our society's arbitrary meters of blackness or of whiteness. But I am left with a question. What does the dream mean and have I secretly been over-compensating in certain areas of my life for maybe not feeling quite black enough?
L (oblivious to ABW's confusion and thinking she just can't hear me due to poor cell phone reception): Depeche Mode. So, everyone has to wear black but eyeliner on men is completely optional.
The response was silence.
Then, in the dream, all those feelings I thought I'd left behind came rushing to the forefront. I started to wonder if ABW was thinking, "Yep, Liz is a really still a weird mixed girl and I don't know if I want to be down with this." I started to explain that Depeche Mode's songwriter and sometime singer, Martin Gore, has a black father. "So, Depeche Mode, they're kinda black, you know." I start to elaborate on how I am working to close the education achievement gap. I remember saying, "Hey my husband is black and I have black kids." So please love me for being black, right?
None of it mattered. I still got called that name in the dream. ABW said it loudly, like it was on a world-wide intercom, "I knew it, you are an OREO!!! You aren't really black!"
Obviously, sticks and stones and all that. I know I'm not an oreo. I've always tried to avoid living my life ruled by our society's arbitrary meters of blackness or of whiteness. But I am left with a question. What does the dream mean and have I secretly been over-compensating in certain areas of my life for maybe not feeling quite black enough?
