After my "Old World Blood" post, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit one of my first few posts nearly three years ago, "Tragic Mulatto". Many people never read it because I had just started blogging at the time, but I figured it would be good to give you an edited, remixed version. I deleted a lot and added a little. Hopefully this will help to continue the dialogue about race within the black community. Shout out to RC and TG who inspired this post.
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What happened to the days of black folks just being black? Nowadays everyone wants to be “mixed”. Is it more exotic? More sexy? More attractive?
The stretch to be “mixed” allows people to remove themselves from the discriminatory world of blackness (Tiger Woods), or from the guilty world of whiteness (like First Lady Laura Bush who claims she is “mixed” because she is part Native American). If Tiger can identify as a “social construction combo”—well, then no one should call him a nigger… but they do. No one should make jokes about him being lynched… but they do. On the other side, for white Americans not identifying as white, they are trying to avoid the guilty world of American whiteness... they can't be racist because Navajo is in their family!
Everyone wants to be a tragic mulatto, not even knowing what it means. Mulatto is a combination of a donkey and a horse mating, which creates a mule—mules are sterile. The chart above gives a break down of race psychology, which was created by pseudo scientists to make as many intra-racial divisions within the black community (and many parts of the Caribbean where to this day certain groups proudly identify as mulatto—they usually have more money and power) as possible, obviously it still works today. These are legal terms that dealt with social control and the direction of labor in a slave society. I am mortified that some people are still stretching to use different (biracial, mixed), or the same versions (Creole), of these words.
In America your experiences as a man, woman, black, white, hetero, homo, bi, trans, poor, middle class, etc. shapes who you are. Take me for example, my father is black American and my mother is white. I don’t identify as being biracial (I refuse to identify with a term that didn’t even exist when I was born), mixed (you “mix” a can of paint or a dog), or god forbid, mulatto (I’m not a combination of a donkey and a horse, nor am I a slave).
I identify as black person with a white parent, like Bob Marley, Faith Evans and others. Even with Halle Berry's makeup from Queen -- I still could never pass for white. My experience is being a black man in America, who has endured incalculable amounts of racism. I was never looked at as a half and half slash. Moreover, once I understood what “race” was, I was never “confused” or even had racial identity issues—I knew I was black and so did my mother.
I’ve had some folks argue: “Why don’t you embrace both sides?” How does one go about “embracing both sides?” Should I play my Courtney Love a lil’ louder? Read up more on Jessie Redmon-Fauset? Buy some Mariah Carey CDs? Is it really me “not embracing both sides” or is it me not identifying with what others want me to identify as?
I’ve had some claim: “You’re not full black!” As if any black Americans are full black. There’s no such thing as any of us being “full” any race. African-American Studies 101—being “mixed” in consistent with the black experience. When New Yorkers tell me—you look Latin! I say, “No, it’s just that Latinos look black!” You know why? Caribbean Latinos are just as “mixed” as any other sector of the black community.
I’ve heard this one many times from black folks: “Well, if this was slavery you would be in the house and I would be in the field!” This is important; the light-skinned house slave is a myth. House and field slaves rarely had to do with skin tone; it had to deal with the relationship with the master. If you were a good, obedient slave you could make it to the house. You didn’t get a pass simply because you were light-skinned. In my situation, my black, light-skinned azz would’ve never made it to the house because my mother is a white woman. I would’ve been lucky if I would’ve lived five minutes outside the coochie when they saw a brown baby pop out of a white woman. Here is a great
link debunking the myth of privileged mulatto people in slavery.
Many people want to turn me, and others of my back round, into the classic tragic mulatto. I’m not tragic with my racial identity. This isn’t a scene from Imitation of Life—my theme song isn't Mahalia Jackson’s “Trouble of the World” with me running to a casket screaming “Mommaaaaaaaaa!” This isn’t an excerpt from Queen and I will not be hollering, “I’se nig’ra! I’se nig’ra!”
Yes, there are people who are confused with their racial identity, however, I know people who have two black parents, but being that they were raised in a white environment they have no connection with black identity and experience “confusion.”
People are criminalized when they trust their reality. When separate labels and regurgitated identities are cherry-picked, it only pacifies, miseducates and silences. It seems as if being black is a lost cause for many… maybe we all need a little taste of Jim Crow to get us back in order—isn’t that what Creoles needed?
Labels: LIGHT-SKINNED FOLK, Race
