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Growing up biracial was a problem. While I was not barred from entering schools or restaurants, the problem was a matter of self-acceptance, the impact of adults and role models on my life, and the expectations I formed for myself. So, in college, I turned to Philosophy as the discipline to explore these social and psychological issues. Becoming a philosopher takes a lifetime of asking ‘Why’ and the fact that I was mixed made me an “oobject of peculiarity.” [1]
I grew up as the only non-white member of my immediate family in a low-income, single-parent household in Iowa. I had a white family member tell me not to play basketball with the Black kids at the Y. Why…?
At school, the white kids would call me a “wigger” and make jokes about me being Latino, a Zebra, or a Twist Cone. Why…?
The Black kids would wrinkle their noses at me and ask “What are you?” Why…?
I was not allowed to visit my Black family from my father’s side outside of the country until I was 18. Why…?
It was mostly for fear. Fear those black basketball players were thugs, fear of my skin tone, or fear my Black family would keep me. Meeting my father’s side of the family when I was 18 helped me to understand myself better. I love my family dearly, but as I have grown to become racially conscious and see the importance of anti-racist work, I have also come to worry. My father is acutely aware of the long history of white supremacy throughout the world and has struggled with mental health throughout his life.
“It’s because of something else,” I tell myself. “It’s not because of race.”
“Where did the concept of race come from?” and “how does race influence the present?” were my two favorite questions to explore early on in college. Then I heard about inter-sectionality theory and understood that we cannot take any one aspect of our identity in isolation; our different aspects of identity are related in complex ways. I applied Gloria Anzaldùa’s notion of simultaneously accepting and rejecting a placeand its social institutions in Borderlands as a Teach For America Corps Member on the Rosebud Reservation. I treasured Audre Lorde’s message that “self-preservation for people of color is an act of political warfare” in Sister, Outsider and reveled in bell hooks’ term “capitalist imperialist white supremacist patriarchy” in Teaching to Transgress because it validated my desire to be successful as an academic and to consider an exploration of the issues of identity as intellectually rigorous.
I wrote my Senior Essay in Philosophy on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth and claimed that “to colonize a people, you must colonize their mind.” As an undergrad, I worried about not having to write a thesis for the major, and have since understood this to mean that we must steer clear of writing a philosophical credo, and instead choose to continually grow as individuals. I was extremely fortunate to be able to live and work on the Rosebud Reservation for two years after college because I was able to work on my own ethical vision of what it means to be a morally upright person.
Having a background in philosophy meant that I was invested in the social justice aspect of Teach For America right out of the gates. “What is my role in ongoing imperialism and colonization?” and “if the work that we do is not anti-racist, then isn’t it implicitly perpetuating ongoing systems of oppression?” have been important questions for me since my undergraduate studies. I chose the title “Growing Up Between” for my essay because I have tried to make a habit of going between warring sides of debate whenever divisions occur and serving as an arbiter when communication breaks down. Never fitting in perfectly has meant that I live my life in motion and identify as a moving thing. I always try to move beyond strict divisions of thought.
I have taken much from feminist thinkers and writers not only because I align with anti-racist feminist views, but also because of the wisdom that can’t be found anywhere else. These concepts have helped me better understand who I am as a person and how to put myself back together in the face of adversity. Audre Lorde’s Sister, Outsider “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you”[2] and Linda Alcoff’s writings on mixed-race identity and against racial purity have been extremely formative for me in my thinking about my own identity and for American cultures.
#GrowingUpBetween means that I value dismantling and re-imagining structures of oppression and seek to grow the minds, souls, and imaginations of young people today.
[1] Alcoff, Linda Martìn. The Idea of Race. By Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lee Lott. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2000. 139-160. Print.
[2] Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print
edited by Wisdom Amouzou; Originally published on Streetknowledge.com (citation) and republished to Medium.
Photo credit: iStock
