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Despite having pale complexion, my curls show that I am Black. One drop is all that is required. I can’t simply check off one box because I’m half Black and half White. And I’m not the only one—the number of Americans who identify as multiracial has increased recently.
I am too white to be Black and too Black to be white.
In settings like the one my friends and I visited on July 5, I seldom ever feel like I belong: I could count the number of Black people in the busy, red, white, and blue-decorated pub in New Jersey. But I was outraged that night.
The term “mulatto” is an unpleasant and outdated way to refer to someone who has both Black and white parents, as many of my acquaintances were before the holiday weekend. During slavery, the term “mulo,” which comes from the Spanish word for mule, was used to compare multiracial people to the hybrid animal and to defend their social and legal enslavement.
In the pub, a white man approached me and gave me a shoulder tap. Before saying hello, he inquired, “Are you half Black and half White?” I rolled my eyes and said nothing.
He continued by declaring, “I love mulattos,” before going even beyond and expressing in obscene sexual words how much he would love to do to one.
I’m sorry. What time period are we in? I felt as though I was being dehumanized, sexualized, and ridiculed.
According to Ann J. Morning, a professor of sociology at New York University whose work focuses on racial classification and multiracial identity, its use today is particularly disparaging because it truly harkens back to the time of slavery in the United States.
He repeated the insult while pointing at my multiracial friend, which was an intentional act of bigotry intended to agitate us both. Despite his and his companions’ laughter, we remained silent.
I am aware that racism has been in the US since before the country was established. However, it’s confusing to hear that from Gen Zers like me. It is quite unnerving to know that they find amusement in it.
It is not uncommon to hear demeaning language like this. Donald J. Trump called criminally charged immigrants “animals” rather than “humans” at a campaign rally in Michigan in April 2024.
“I think we’re really seeing a turning back of the clock, a return to sort of these past, older ideas about race, and especially about racial superiority and inferiority,” Ms. Morning stated in reference to the present political climate.
Whether he was aware of it or not, the man’s offensive remark echoed a lengthy history of racial fetishization, dating back to the time when European colonists treated Black people like property and hypersexualized Black women to excuse the violence they inflicted on them. According to Ms. Morning, enslaved women were constantly subjected to sexual abuse.
Ms. Morning described separate auctions for so-called lovely girls and said that there was a sort of sub-industry of slavery that entailed selling exceptionally light-skinned women explicitly for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
I therefore heard the weight of that history in their words at the bar.
Along with octoroon, which means one-eighth African blood, and quadroon, which means one-fourth African blood, mulatto was once a census racial category. According to the Pew Research Center, the 1870 census defined mulatto as anyone with a discernible African ancestry.
According to Ms. Morning, scientists added these categories to the census as a pseudoscientific defense against interracial mingling, attempting to demonstrate that multiracial persons were an infertile and doomed class.
The perceptions of race in our society are ever-changing. Since the first census was conducted in 1790, racial groupings have altered in almost every one. New Hispanic or Latino and Middle Eastern or North African boxes will be added to the 2030 census.
According to Ms. Morning, race is a political and social classification system that mankind created to assign individuals to various merit groups.
Healing A Painful Family Divide
Given her English and Irish ancestry, my white mother is most likely a descendent of colonists. My father is Black and sprung from slaves. I am both.
I’ve lived in mostly white environments my whole life: I attended a private university, worked for a company, and attended a tiny, progressive private school in the Minneapolis suburbs.
My dad is on the other end of the political spectrum, and my mom is a conservative, so I grew up in the midst of opposing beliefs. When I was seven, they were divorced.
In 2020, just ten minutes from my high school, George Floyd was murdered, and my relationship with my mother was on the brink of disintegration. For the past four years, we had been unable to comprehend one another.
But I knew I needed her as I was heading off to college. The bond between a mother and her daughter is priceless and unique.
In 2021, on a warm Sunday afternoon, I thought about how politics had split our family. I was embarrassed and questioned whether I had been a bad daughter.
My mother held me for the first time in a long time after I apologized to her. We were dependent on one another. Our goal was to mend our friendship. Finally, our love for one another won out.
I now see that the most profound division in this nation is not between conservatives and liberals or Democrats and Republicans.
How we choose to treat one another is one of the core causes of racism. Do we react to our differences with empathy and love, or with hatred and a need to exert control? Our culture is defined by this.
I adore my mom, and I know she has no animosity toward any group of people. Racism, however, is not always about hatred. It may also result from inherited patterns or unquestioned habits. When my mom married my dad, she was disowned by my grandfather and uncle, both of whom are now deceased. Thinking like that doesn’t simply go away with time.
My mother recently commented, “I worked hard to heal that terrible and destructive way of thinking in my family and make a generational change.”
When her family finally warmed up to me, they always liked me. But was it because, as people say, I’m attractive, soft-spoken, or have lighter skin? Or perhaps their opinions actually did shift.
Racism is ingrained in us all and is taught. It is a part of the structures that govern our life.
Having a strong desire to destroy it inside our communities and ourselves is the only way to conquer it.
Thank God it only takes one drop. The fire for justice that I inherited from my enslaved ancestors burns brighter than the racism of my white ones.
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