I am multi-racial, and I'm not talking about 50 shades of white. I'm half white, half Creole. For anyone who doesn't know what Creole is, it can be any number of races mixed, usually black and something European or Native American. Dictionary.com defines Creole as "a person of mixed black and European, especially French or Spanish, ancestry..." In my case, Creole means a mixture of French, Dutch, Native American, Asian, Black and some other unknowns. Anyone else who is multi-racial knows what I'm talking about when I say if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what race I am, I wouldn't have any college debt.
Being multi-racial, there are an abundance of things that I experience and questions I'm asked on a day-to-day basis that can either enhance or worsen my human experience. I have mixed feelings about being asked these questions, because sometimes I just don't know how to take them. Some people want to know what race I am simply because they're curious, and that's okay, but I also sometimes feel like telling them it's none of their business. Some people want to know what I am because they have some weird fetish for whatever race they think I am, which obviously makes me pretty uncomfortable. Then there are those people that want to know what I am because they want to "make sure" that I'm white. Living in the middle of a racial equality movement, that makes me furious. There's really no telling what I'm going to get when someone approaches me with the question of my heritage, but this is what it really feels like to be multi-racial.
I don't know who I am.
I only know part of my heritage, and the rest hasn't been revealed to me. It's hard to feel fully part of any community when you're not really sure which ones you belong to. It's also hard trying to find your place when you're such a mixture of cultures and histories.
People approach me speaking a language I don't understand.
This only adds to my confusion, as part of me feels like maybe I should know how to speak these languages. Maybe, but I don't know who I am.
I never know which side I'm on.
Any time there's a racial war waging, I never know which side I'm supposed to be on, because I'm also not fully accepted by either side.
I don't want to choose sides.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that people want to know about my race because in this day and age, race is something that defines you. I want to know my exact race because I want to know how to define myself, because heritage is what everyone seems to be obsessed with these days. I just want to find where I belong, and somehow I've always thought that knowing where I come from could help me. I wanted to know what my life could have or should have been like had I grown up around the culture of my people, but I was wrong.
My race doesn't define me. My character defines me. I define myself.
