“Where are you from?”
This question comes out of nowhere but I’m never surprised. When you are mixed you get used to people trying to pin down your ethnic background. Usually they are too embarrassed to ask directly so instead they back into it with a less offensive question. As kids, my sister and I were constantly fielding that question from curious store clerks, teachers, and friends.
The problem is, it’s not a simple answer. The best way I can put it is that I’m mixed my parents are mixed and their parents are mixed–after that frankly I lose track. Unfortunately, that’s usually not good enough for people. “Mixed with what?” they want to know, or “Where were your grandparents from?”
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this question is so important . For many people ethnicity is part of identity. By understanding your race people feel like they understand you.
“That’s racial profiling,” my sister likes to say half jokingly. But as any person of colour will tell you, race is important. It affects how people treat you, who you identify with, and most importantly, race is often tied to culture. So what’s it like for those of us who tick the box next to “other race” on the census? Well, often it can feel lonely.
My friend Megan MacKay says she felt like an “alien” growing up. Her dad is white, but her mom, who was adopted, wasn’t always sure about her ethnic background. That meant Megan wasn’t always sure about her ethnic background. She thought she was part Indian for a while but now she identifies as part Lebanese.
Growing up in “the middle of the woods” with mostly white family members in a mostly white town wasn’t always easy. Megan was picked on by kids who didn’t understand her background. She coped by spending time with the Lebanese community in her hometown in P.E.I. and by learning to adapt to the expectations of people around her.
For my sister, growing up mixed meant that she never quite fit in. For example, she was never fully accepted by her black friends but some of her white friends treat her like “the token black girl.”
“They think they can talk gansta to me and they assume I know how to braid hair,” she says of her white friends. “But black people don’t feel like I know where they are coming from either.”
Now when people ask her where she’s from she answers like I do, “I’m from Haiti.”
When I tell people I’m from Haiti, they often don’t believe me. Although they don’t say it, I can guess what they are thinking. “Aren’t Haitian people black?”
The irony of not being “black enough” to be Haitian is never lost on me whenever I’m subject to racist remarks (and yes that still happens, in the 21st century in Fredericton).
I used to ask my parents about my ethnic background all the time. I wanted to know exactly where my great-grandparents came from and what they looked like. Recently I’ve stopped asking. While I’m still curious about my ancestry, I no longer struggle to understand my ethnicity. I am mixed and rather than dissect this, I choose to celebrate it.
When I ask Megan what she would tell her kids about their racial background, she says, “I’m going to tell them they are Canadian and they are a mix of different things, but that’s what Canada is supposed to be.”
I think I’ll take a cue from Megan. After all, this is the place were all cultures and races come together. Yes it’s a mixed bag (no pun intended) but I’m proud to be something in the middle.
