How I Made Peace With My Biracial Situation

My experiences of how I found peace in who I was

Throughout my life, I’ve lived in multiple places throughout Georgia. From small-town to small-town, life has surely been a ride. Throughout all my experiences, I’ve had multiple friends of many different races because in reality, the harsh truth of racism and discrimination doesn’t register to anyone at a young age. Racism is taught. I had friends from the white community, black community, asian community, hispanic community, etc and it never dawned on me that these people were in no way, shape, or form superior or inferior to me. This idea had never even attempted to grasp my attention growing up.

Now as a child in elementary school, I had heard a couple of racial slurs tossed around but it didn’t really stick out to me what they were or what they meant. When I go down memory lane to remember the first time I experienced anything like this, I distinctly remember a sunny recess when I was in the 1st grade. During this time period, I had a group of black friends that I always clung to. We three were the fastest runners in our first grade class. On this day, we were challenged by a group of fellow classmates who happened to be white and considering that me and my friends were the fastest at the time, of course our pride didn’t allow anything else but for us to openly accept this challenge. Shortly after that, I remember me and my friends defeating these fellow classmates and walking off the asphalt with the sweet joy of defending our title. And then I heard it, a word I have never heard before from these fellow classmates. As a biracial kid, I’m sure you can connect the dots as to what that word might have been. When I heard the word, I wasn’t disturbed or distraught by any means due to the fact that I had never heard this word before. If I had to describe the way I felt, I would describe my reaction as genuinely curious. My friends on the other hand knew EXACTLY what these kids had let come out of their mouth, and it was obvious that this word was not a word that you would want to say at the dinner table.

After school that day, I arrive back at my house and am still pondering on this foreign word and why my black friends had shown such a negative reaction towards it. I reached a point to where I thought it was a new “slang” term that I wasn’t quite familiar with at the time. With this limited knowledge, I used this word around my mother. The reaction on my mother’s face was very similar to the expression that was on my friends’ faces, and I knew that this was not in fact a “slang” term. My mother gently told me to never say it again, but still left me clueless as to why this word was forbidden.

Fast forward to a later time, I was home-schooled my 2nd grade through 4th grade year. During my home-schooled years, I learned about the Civil Rights Movement and the heroism of Dr. King and the events that took place during those times. I learned about the bravery of Rosa Parks the horrors of American slavery. In addition, I learned about how the Civil Rights Movement ended in victory for the black community and how Dr. King and many other leaders had led the black community to freedom. Lastly, I learned about the purpose of this forbidden word and when this word originated. With this knowledge and the safe shelter of being home-schooled, I considered these horrid pieces of history as simply just history and nothing else and that racism was merely an idea that was lost in history.

Fast forward further, my mother had decided that me and my sister were ready to go back to public school. I was nervous, but very excited as well. My 5th grade year was going as well as any other 5th grader’s would until I developed a little crush. This crush of mine was a white girl in my history class, and boy did I plan on shooting my shot. When I finally built up the courage to talk to this girl and ask her to be my girlfriend, she states something that I will never forget. My crush told me, “you are cute, but you are the wrong color.” I was completely lost in confusion. I remember thinking to myself over and over again, “Didn’t the Civil Rights Movement put an end to this?” or “I’m not even black, why would she say this?” After this event, it dawned on me that this issue was still very much present in modern society. I was heartbroken, and many more similar experiences occurred in the future. This was the moment that I became aware of my skin color.

From that moment on, I always felt out of place. I had subconsciously developed a mindset that I didn’t have a crowd to fit into. I recently heard a line from a song by Earl Sweatshirt that stated, “Too black for the white kids, and too white for the blacks” and that is the best way I can describe the feeling that I felt. I had never had any of these experiences with black kids, but with the mindset I had developed, it was a fearful assumption that I didn’t want to find out was true. With this mindset developed at an early age, I dealt with feelings of insecurity, loneliness, and self-hate earlier than any kid that age should have to deal with. I had no pride in who I was, nor did I want to be proud of who I was.

From that moment to the present day, I’ve been addressed as biracial maybe twice. All races alike refer to me as a “black” man, and as a kid struggling with my race, I didn’t like that at all. Maybe some of you biracial men and women feel the same way that I did, it’s tough. That feeling of belongingness never left me, and I was in search of belonging to a group or tribe.

In my high school years, I became very interested in the Civil Rights Movement and the leaders of that time. During this quest for knowledge, I started to slowly become secure in who I was as a man of color. As a kid, the movies I watched and stories I read were all based around white heroes and/or characters. I grew up in a Baptist church that believed Jesus Christ was a white man, therefore I grew up believing Jesus Christ was a white man. Little things like this psychologically molds your mind into believing that being anything other than white was an inferiority. With the love and acceptance of the black community, I felt like I belonged. Black men referring to me as, “young brotha” and being referred to as a “fellow black person” by fully-black peers was a blessing to me. The insecurity shifted from, “not being white enough” to “not being black enough.” I still struggle with that insecurity as I’m sure a lot of others do, but during these trying times, I am finally proud to say that I am a proud man of color.

Of course this is not an anti-white article, nor is it an article telling people to pick one race over another. This is simply just my story of how the black community has accepted me in and given me a sense of belonging. This article is presenting the power behind the black community, and what it has done in my life. This article was created to help others that might be dealing with the same insecurities that I dealt with and still deal with. But most importantly, this article was created to encourage others to be proud of being black.