Urbantimes

My mother is Irish. My father is Jamaican. I am black and white. Growing up bi-racial has been a consistant struggling point throughout my life, and everytime I think its something I do not have to discuss or deal with as a problem, it appears again. 

Because of the consistency of this subject throughout my entire life I decided to make this my main focus in my college studies. I wanted to understand peoples’ fascination with my racial background, both negative and postive. Why did so many people want to point this out and use this to define who I was, to “figure me out”, to use it as judgement. I have had peers my entire life use my ethnic background this way, and I know that there are people out there who believe that my parents choice to procreate children of these two races on such opposite sides the racial line is wrong, I just never thought that scrutiny would come from within my own family. Let alone my sister.

I refuse to stoop to her level and completely rip her apart publicly online (oh but how sweet would that be) but I will discuss the happenings of this weekend briefly. It started with her making snide comments, such as “you have white girl hair” etc. Things that to many might not seem like a big deal, but remarks like this are just stabs at you that eventually can just kill you internally. My sister is younger and tries her best to overcompensate her blackness by downing me and making me seem as white as possible. The weekend ended in complete and utter anger, hate and disgust. She tells me I deny that I am black, I tell her that sleeping with black men is not what defines your race. She tells me I think black people are trashy, I tell her No, you my sister are mistaking being trashy with being black. Being ghetto and overly eccentric does not make you black.

You have the same parents I do. You are just as much my father, my mother as I. You are no blacker than I. You are just as white as I. Judge me personally, hate my style and my characteristics. But do not tell me what I deny and what I am not because you are not comfortable with what you are or what you are unable to personally achieve or convey. I can be the whitest of the white, but my dear little uneducated ignorant judgemental sister, that will not make you  “black.

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