Additionally, I too have been asked ALL my life about my racial makeup. I have been asked if I am white and black; chinese and black; hawaiian and black; filipino and black; indian and black; and so on. I am of east-Indian, panamanian, black, and white descent. I never really know what to answer (because I don’t want to confuse anyone) and when I tell people that I am just black, I get looked at cross-eyed.

my wife, being filipino, has had to get used to the constant questions from well-meaning strangers or patients (she’s a nurse–yes, she’s a living cliche, a filipino nurse)–questions like, because she’s not white, what are you? where are you from? she would generally answer politely, but was never terribly thrilled to be discussing her identity with strangers and patients, folks who don’t generally ask those same kinds of intrusive questions of her white counterparts.

perhaps she’s gotten used to these conversation starters by now, but i know it used to bother her very much when she was younger; she would say, quite frankly, later on, in private to me, i’m an american, goddamn it! what the fuck do they think i am?

have you ever seen the movie “breaking away?” it’s a classic. the main character has convinced himself he’s italian, but he’s really just some dude from indiana who can ride a bike really well. by the end of the movie he falls in love with a french girl and suddenly he’s doing all things french; but, in reality, he’s still just some white dude from indiana who can still ride a bike very well.

I later had a discussion about this with a girlfriend who had a similar encounter with a Hispanic friend. We concluded that we (blacks) are the only group of people that deny our racial makeup based on our ethnicity, culture, and land of residence. You will never hear an Italian, Irishman, Englishman, and etc. say that they are not white because they are from a specific place. They accept that they are white.

I cannot recall the number of times that people have told me that my race is Jamaican. Are you serious? I’ve been told that I am not black and that I don’t look Jamaican. What is that supposed to mean? Hmmm!

It makes me think of one of cousins who’s mother is mexican and father is black but based on physical appearance he looks distinctly Mexican yet he completely identifies as a black man and if you would only need to spend 5 minutes around him to get that. But he understands how people view him based solely on initial sight and how they treat him is sometimes based on their expectation of who they think he is not who he actually is. Being around him an other members of my extended family makes me really think and redefine what I thought it meant to be black, I understand their truly is no monolithic definition of blackness. Race is social construct but we are all in one way or another mixed whether it be through ethnicity or culture.

Strange thing is, it is not only whites who do that- the black dark skin/light skin divide also happens within our community because of the construction of white supremacy and its legacy within our own communities as we struggled with the realities of economic and cultural assimilation.

A video that I recommend people watch aired on MSNBC (at Howard) a while back about the impact of these racial constructions on children’s self-esteem and lives – the Kenneth doll test and a brilliant dialogue is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24076709#24076709

I think part of the problem is that the meaning “race” has transformed so significantly throughout history and has come to be confused with culture. there are filipino men who might consider themselves black.

If we really know our history, then we will know, everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) is of mixed heritage (heritage- in its dynamic meaning- has little to do with race as we have now defined it- if there is a definition anymore…lol). In fact, as much as race has become part of our dialogue, we have failed to properly interrogate its meaning.

Race is not necessarily biology; sometimes we have confused those elements of racial construction (what has become hue and its cultural and economic attributions) with cultural heritage (which extends beyond the physical display of genes or phenotype).

I say this not to downplay the historical significance and reality of race, but to interrogate what is often left undisclosed about the MEANING and TRANSFORMATION of the word “race.”

you have issues