Adult Discussion Topic

Some have charged those of us who are part balck and who identify as biracial as “blacks who are attempting to escape their blackness.” Are you?

To respond to this discussion topic press  and use "Escaping our blackness" as the Subject.

Responses To Discussion Topic:

I REALLY HATE THIS SUBJECT BECAUSE IT IS STUPID. PEOPLE WHO ARE BI-RACIAL ARE NOT ESCAPING FROM THE BLACK RACE NOT IN LESS THEM GO AROUND SAYING THAT THEY ARE NOT BLACK THEY ARE WHITE. I'M HALF BLACK AND HALF ITALIAN, OF COURSE MY MOTHER PUT ON MY BIRTH CERTFICATE BLACK BECAUSE WHEN I WAS BORN THERE WAS NO OTHER CHOICE BUT BLACK , WHITE, ASIAN, OR SPANISH. YES, I WAS A VERY WHITE LOOKING BABY, BUT AS I GOT OLDER I FELL MORE TO MY FATHER'S GENES EVEN THOUGH I STILL LOOK MIXED. I DON'T DISREGARD EITHER ONE BLACK OR WHITE RACE, I LOVE BOTH OF THE CULTURES THAT LIFE IN ME. AND YES I AM PROUD TO SAY THAT IAM A BLACK WOMAN BUT, IAM ALSO PROUD TO SAY I AM ALSO ITALIAN.

"Re Jacqui's comment below - she said it all!! It's like we have a sixth (and seventh) sense about what people are really feeling/thinking!But when did this "million mulatto march" happen? Or is this just a joke? I live near DC and would have happily joined it if it did happen!"

I have identified as Black during most of my life, but have found it very strange to be accused of wanting "to get a leg up" on black folks by identifying as "bi-racial". I don't understand why my black friends become so incensed by my need to identify as what I truly am -- bi-racial. This wanting to get a leg up business is, for bi-racial people, incredibly ridiculous. If I (or we who identify as Black and look White) really wanted to get a leg up we would simply just pass for White!! The notion strikes me as completely irrational. At least for my part, I could easily "pass for White," but that is not what I want to do. This topic is particularly troublesome for me because I lost a friend of 15 years over this very issue. She made jokes about the bi-racial march on Washington -- calling it the "million mullatto march" and laughing hysterically. She told me I must be confused because I had trouble identifying myself as Black on census, college, & job applications. Throughout my life, I have been shocked into bigoted reality by several of my Black friends with such comments ranging from the midly irritating "you look like you should be snobby," to the extremely offensive "you're all mixed up". But, don't get me wrong, my experiences with White friends & co-workers has been just as alienating. I've had White Vice Presidents come into my office and throw around the "N" word like it was a part of the approved corporate statement and I've had more "what are you" questions from White people who needed to know the answer before they could talk to me. I've heard more "N" word jokes from White folks at work than I ever knew existed and I've heard Black folks described by Whites as lazy, stupid, people with bad credit. It's amazing the amount of bigotry one can witness by slipping into and out of Black and White worlds. The few friends I have left in my life are the ones that somehow in this extremely bigoted country we live in have managed to appreciate people for just being people -- black, white, bi-racial, or whatever. They seem hard to find! Obviously, I'm thrilled to have found this particular site.

I have reached a point where I am considering ending (or at least putting on the very back burner) a friendship that I have had for about 3 years. I knew this person in middle school; we met up and renewed our friendship. At the time I was very happy; here was someone that I had a shared history with.

My friend is black; when we were friends in middle school I did not think that race was that much of an issue. Now that we are adults everything has changed. I cannot count the number of times I have heard ignorant comments such as "dumb white people." It's not as if this person doesn't know what my background is. Once, I went to her house to watch the X-Files and her husband and a group of his friends were there. Some creature on the show ate a dog, and one of the friends goes "Well, we now know that the creature is filipino" Thanks. My grandfather was filipino and I'm quite sure he didn't feed dogs to my mother or my aunt. I got up and left.

I once showed my photo albums to this person, and the only comments she could make is "who are the white people?" I guess that should have told me everything I needed to know. This person was totally incapable of understanding, much less embracing, my multiracial background. When one of my asian cousins got married, I made the comment that I was glad to finally meet my asian relatives so that I could explore that aspect of my heritage. My comment was greeted with a short tempered sigh and change of subject. It's like if it isn't black, it doesn't exist. Another thing that I find interesting is how she and her sisters absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I have any heritage that is white. For example, even though my half-filipino, half-white mother was legally classified as white, they refuse to acknowledge that. It's like I can't possibly be white because they like me (I think). This situation is the total opposite of what I think usually happens when we talk about racism against people of mixed backgrounds; tradition likes to tell us that it is always the whites who disown and discriminate against the black family/heritage of the mixted person. But here this is not the case. If the roles were reversed and this were a white person making these ignorant comments about blacks, then all hell would break loose.

This person also doesn't support my attraction to men that are not black. It's like she are trying to make me over to be just like her; that the 24 years I lived before I renewed my friendship with this person just didn't exist. Since my mother is deceased it is not possible for me to illustrate what kind of life I had; I often wonder if it would be somehow easier if my mother was still alive.

I don't feel comfortable bringing anyone I am seeing to visit or even meet her because I don't want to be judged and I don't want to expose this person to that kind of discrimination. It's horrible. I've let myself become stuck in a friendship rut. Obviously I want to change things but I am loathe to let this friendship go. Talking to this person does no good; she has no desire to hear what I am saying, much less try to understand it. I am very sad because of this.

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the topic, but I think that on a deeper level my relationship with this person and her family represents my only contact with the black community, the only place where I can expose my "blackness". My black relatives live all over the country and I have never been very close to them, so I have almost always had a "play family." Leaving this relationship behind would mean leaving behind my contact with the black community because most of my friends and associates are of other races. I wish they could understand, but I cannot continue to exist in an emotionally barren relationship where all support is withheld because the people I interact with aren't the "right" race.

I wanted to ask Gary Alexander a question--I have heard of the "one drop rule"--but I have never heard of the phrase "hypodescendancy". What do you mean?

(Moderator's Note: You may get a quicker response if you contact him through his email address below.)

If anything I think I used to escape my whiteness. I went through this pro-black and anti-white stag when I was younger that was crazy. The only white people I wanted to talk to were my mother and her family. Also a couple of my white friends were okay. How silly is that???? I have always wished that I was one or the other and not both. This wish was to be black because I thought it was cool and I had beasically only recieved white racism when I was younger. I was born in 1968 and blacks, in my memory, were okay with me. It was certain whites that made fun of how I looked and my mean big black daddy who used to scare everyone because he was sooooooooo tall. He is 6'7 and very domineering. So for me escaping blackness was not what was going on, in my subconscious I was trying to escape whiteness. When I say I am black, some people ask me why I do not say I am white as well. I respond that anyone can see that. Some people respond that they knew I was biracial - YEA RIGHT!!!!!!!!

I'm particularly pleased that this topic is available for discussion in this forum. No one has ever accused me of trying to escape from any portion of my racial background, but there have been times when I have questioned my own motivations. While growing up, there were times when I found myself attracted to people, places, and things which were generally regarded by the black people I knew as being completely alien to the black community. Looking back at it, I think that a lot of this had less to do with the lack of melanin in my skin and more to do with the kind of life I wanted for myself. I don't think I was rejecting blackness. I think that I was reaching out for something beyond the bounds of the black community I lived in; something that gave form and substance to the vision of life I had for myself. What I wanted wasn't necessarily better or worse than what most of my black friends wanted, just different. Still, I had many moments of guilt. There was this sense, however misguided, of having betrayed something, or someone. Then, I began to realize that if I was escaping anything, it was those elements of life in my community with which I had no identification and no interest. Maybe they were really quality of life issues, I don't know. I do know that I no longer have any patience with the kind of thinking that supports the one-drop rule of hypodescendancy, no matter where that thinking comes from. For myself, it's not about escaping blackness or whiteness, for that matter. It's about serenity, and being secure and at peace with myself. Forums such as this one are a part of helping me to reach that goal.

Along with being perceived as "elitist", my black relatives accuse me of this constantly. When I was born, my father listed his race as "White" (how, I have no idea). Since he left town when I was seven, this is how I identified. My mother told me that because of the time period I was born in (1970), she and my father did not want me being stigmatized with a biracial or mulatto legal identification. That act by my father has caused a rift between me and my black half-siblings that has yet to be bridged. They accuse me of wanting to escape being black, trying to pass, etc. Since they are older, they do not understand the multiracial environment in which I grew up.

My late mother made no attempt to hide my "blackness" from me, but when questions of racial identity came up, she told me to identify as "everything", "universal" and so on. My mother was very proud of the fact that I had "all the races" in me, caucasoid, negroid, mongoloid and native american. This did not help me in public school, which in the late seventies/early eighties was segregated by student choice.

Only recently was I able to feel that I could go anywhere without needing to give an explanation to anyone about my lifestyle choices. Most of the explaining that I felt I had to do was to black people who could or would not accept me because of the way I look, the way I talk, the music I listen to and the life I had growing up. I was finally able to stop internalizing the racism I experienced from that group and from my black family, and to cultivate a broader perspective.

The important lesson I gained from struggling over self-identification and trying to "belong" to the black community is that I am no longer ashamed to reveal my black heritage to my white/other counterparts. The sad thing is that my black relatives and some acquaintances accuse me of trying to deny them.

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