Thursday, December 17, 2009

Can you guess my race?


In class this week we discussed race. The activity we did online where we had to place people into different races based on a small picture was eye opening. We hardly placed any of the people into their correct classification. My one friend, who is black (far right), gets mistaken on what race she is often. People will ask her if she's part Asian, Filipino, or even Caucasian. She told me the other black kids at her school don't accept her as one of them because A) she hangs out with more white kids and B) they think she is only half black. One time she was at the gas station and the cashier asked her what race she is. Her response: "I'm black". The cashier was shocked and asks her: "Are you sure?" Of course she's SURE. Her only response to that man was: "What the hell??" She couldn't believe that someone would be so ignorant to not even believe her when she tells them the truth of her race. There are many different degrees of black. There is coffee bean black which is the darkest of all, mostly native Africans, and there is all the way to mocha black which is so light it's more of a milky chocolate. She said that on her dad's side of the family there are people that have even lighter skin tones than she does, and they're still considered black. Her one uncle is actually albino so his skin appears white in pigment even though he is really black. Same goes for Caucasian and Asian. For white people the spectrum can go from olive-like dark skin all the way to pasty ghost white while Asians can be anything from Korean to Chinese to Japanese and still be simply classified as Asian. I can tell how frustrated my friend gets when people question her race, in fact I even get mad for her. To me, since I know her well, I can CLEARLY tell she is 100% black. She even invited me over for Kwanzaa this year so I can get the full African experience with her and her family. For me, even though I am not largely Native American, people tell me all the time, "No you're not". Truthfully, I am Native American but others just have a hard time believing it because physically I don't look the part. Sorry, just because it's in my blood doesn't mean it's in my skin too...

1 comment:

  1. The color of one's skin does have a very powerful effect on the way other people treat you. My dad gets pulled over by airport security ever so often because the TSA thinks he's from the Middle East, when in reality, he's from Canada with Romanian ancestry. Hardly the Middle Eastern personified.

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