Afrikaner Dutch | African-American
Photo credit: provided by subject
I've never identified myself racially. The division of race has always been thrust upon me by society. I'm mixed; if beige were a race I'd be it. I don't have a religion; we were trained to believe religion was evil and that all hope and morality is context based. I am more of an existentialist when it really comes down to it. I define the purpose of my life. I believe the adherence to that comes from never feeling like there was a place at the table; so I must build my own.
I'm a non-binary, pansexual, Brown middle child of 7, from a completely White family; all from the same Mother. My Mom is an Afrikaner, from the Dutch lineage. My biological Father, I don't know much information about. He is a Black man from the Washington D.C. area with suspected roots in Sweden and West Africa.
My Mother worked for an optometrist at the time, doing the whole formidable single Mother thing. Hustling us off to school, cooking meals, never breaking always working hard as hell. My biological Father came into the store she was working at and started flirting with her. He was in culinary school at the time and offered to cook her dinner like he was some big shot. Little did he know she was a world travelled chef. She laughed at him and told him she could out cook him any day. They met for dinner. She out cooked him.
They dated for a while. She got pregnant, he disappeared to work on cruise ships for the next 2 years. When he got back I was in the hospital for bad lungs and a weak immune system. There was a legal battle for back child support, after about a year he gave up parental rights to my Dad who adopted me.
My Mom and Dad were both blue collar people in America, but at the same time they were both part of the liberal counterculture. My Mother being a White South African who grew up during apartheid had some questionable views on race but it was never framed that way. She frowned upon interactions with people of color. She never voiced it but you could always tell by her behaviour or a nuanced thing she would say.
I grew up deep in the woods in a homestead commune situation with an assortment of brothers and sisters. My Mother enforced several things we are NOT half or step siblings. We are siblings no matter what everyone else says. Also, my color was ignored. It was never talked about but like an elephant in the room type of situation. It just wasn't relevant; we were a family and my Mom did everything she could to make it normal. She was very vocal about sex and talk to us a lot about sexuality but not in liberal way. She was a champion for women and learning about women, she often found men sexually irrelevant. And homosexuality was not overtly disdained but nothing positive was ever said about it, ever.
Being an immigrant, my Mom was influenced by the American dream and she pushed us all to schoolwork really hard. Everyone broke under the pressure, except me, for a while. She wouldn't let us learn her language, but she forced an understanding of the English language that surpasses native speakers down our throats.
We were poor. Most of our days not in school were spent barefoot playing in the forest completely unsupervised. I look back on it and sometimes feel like she was training us to live in a world that most people don't even know exists. We had mad hatter tea parties in the back yard with extended ‘family’. We spent hurricanes without power fishing from the flooded river and cooking on open fires.
I got special treatment. I was called the Golden Boy. I was told that I would have to work harder than everyone else because that's just how the world worked. Everyone else got to be an artist, except me. When I got in trouble it was always harsh, I was restricted from friends and television for about a year once. I got a C in a class and had a smart mouth with the teacher. First time, I'd gotten a C.
I don't speak much of my Dad’s influence because he was around but he worked a lot. Our household was ruled by the matriarchy. I would say he brought the music. He was a grunge punk rock guy back then. Him and my Mom would blast NOFX, NIN, Tool, then shift into The Cure, Enigma, Depeche Mode. Music was always different always all over the place. He was the good time guy back then, the push over. We went to him with things we knew Mom would say no too. I'm proud of him because he was a young white dad with an adopted Brown son, his first kid and he never let me feel out of place.
Food, I don't believe any American child could've eaten better than we did. My Mother is a genius when it comes to food and spice profiles. We would line up in the kitchen blindfolded when she would cook. She would hold spices in front our faces and we would have to know them by smell. Moroccan, Traditional English, South African, Philippine, Indian, my Mom could and did cook everything under the sun. If you didn't like it, too bad, the meal would wait for you to eat it. And on Fridays...we had to fend for ourselves. We would have to cook for ourselves and do our own laundry.
My predominant culture is unfortunately White American. For the longest time, I didn't realize I only thought White was beautiful. I never dated or was intimate with anyone who looked like me and I drastically internalized the fetishization of other races as acceptable. Honestly, now I steer clear of involving race in the choosing of anything.
I hid my sexuality from my family for a long time. I would say I'm currently hiding my gender identity from them as well. My family doesn't have a place in my life very much anymore so I don't find it necessary to inform them of who I am.
My South African Grandparents were racists, I never met them. Truthfully, I don't care what the people I came from think. I am proponent of interracial relationships, but I think if White people want to date outside their race they need to make sure it's done for the right reasons. Fetishization is such a prevalent motive in a lot of interracial relationships that I'm now sceptical of any White person who dates outside their race. I also think that being in an interracial relationship means having hard conversations about hierarchies of privilege and being far more open to providing a higher level of support.
My parents on the other hand act like interracial relationships are novel when it's in regard to everyone but me. My Mother had more of an opinion when I was involved with a Black man than any White woman ever.
Most of my challenges lay in people thinking I'm not enough of one thing to be considered part of it.
People not believing that my family is my family in emergency situations.
Dating women is difficult when they find out you're pansexual or non-binary.
Everyone always assumes I'm a different race than I am.
Documents don't accurately identify me.
Black people think I'm too white.
White people think I'm ‘ethnic’.
Casting doesn't know where to put me or how to light me.
The positives are that:
I'm an unknown. I get to create my own identity and be my own person because I don't have people or stereotypes that I easily fall into. I have the gift of invention and the ability to see into two worlds.
No sunburn.
I get to explore because I don't have the burden of thinking I have to fit in.
In my mind, I'm what America is supposed to be. I am the product of the great American Melting Pot and this is as close as I will get to being a native to anywhere. As a child, I did not see color until the world outside my home made me. Now that I am an adult, I see the rainbow but it's still all the same light, it's just going through a prism now. As I evolve I hope to feel less like two paints that have run together and more like a bridge or bond between worlds. I think we are reaching a level representation that better reflects the people. My hope is that as we continue to stake a claim in institutions it will feel less like being a novelty demographic. The more representation we have the more we get to explore how the POC experience isn't a monolithic one.
If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would want to come back as a wild dog. A wild dog has no fear and no bounds. It runs free and lives with its only purpose is to live. It rolls in the dirt basks in the sun and tests it mettle against the elements. It's just a wild piece of nature caught between being wild and long-gone domestication. I would want that freedom, that sense of belonging. To run through the woods and never feel out of place; never having to experience what it feels to be unnatural.
I'm an actor seeking to carry the stories of the unseen and the unheard. I find being mixed the greatest privilege and intend to use it as the superpower is. One must address the systemic inequities as a start and move to the psychology and traumas that get passed through culture generation by generation. I think a lot of people don't understand how much instability and fear change a person. If more people understood how pervasive that backbone of racial inequality is we would make great strides towards compassion and growth.
The pandemic has been a wild ride for me. I find myself being in the rare subset of people who thrived during the pandemic. Coronavirus helped me realign my movements, create more art, heal and assimilate traumas into my identity. It also gave me the opportunity to reconnect with dear friends. As the pandemic continues, I've become healthier and more aware of the impact of my personal choices on the communities around me.