English | African American [full ethnicity in story]
English/Scottish/Irish/German/Cape Verdean/Belizean/Jamaican | African American/American/ Tuscarora
I would identify myself as a Black woman who happens to be mixed. I say happens because being mixed has not always been at the forefront of my identity, while being Black has been due to the context of my upbringing. All 4 of my Grandparents are mixed, as were their parents. My mother is from Liverpool, England, and is fifth generation mixed British. She is Cape Verdean, Belizean, Jamaican, English, Scottish, German, and Irish. My Father grew up in New York, and is African American, White, and Tuscarora, but would identify as Black. My Grandmother is the one who is Tuscarora, which is a Native American tribe in North Carolina - one of the first places in the Americas to be settled, and one of the first nations to be destroyed. North Carolina, where both my Grandparents grew up is in the South, which during their time had a very strong racial divide between Blacks and Whites - there was no room to be ‘other’. Therefore to avoid giving natives their ‘due’ (i.e. reparations for genocide and stolen land etc.) the U.S. government had the practice of classifying natives as Black.
A huge positive of being mixed is being able to go pretty much anywhere in the world (except Asia) and look like I’m from there, traveling is easy. Additionally people feel comfortable around me and usually open up with ease because I look like I could be one of their cousins.
If I were to be born again I’d want to return as someone with mixes being a little more proximate. As I said before, all of the interracial/ethnic marriages in my family took place in the generations before my Grandparents. Thus since then it’s just been a beige person marrying another beige person and so on. Due to this the distinct culture, the languages, the food, the traditions get lost with being so mixed. This is not to say what did survive isn’t as valuable, I’d just like to know what it feels like to have less choice, less things to draw upon when you’re explaining your identity.
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