What You Mixed With?

Someone asked me yesterday if she could trouble me with a personal question.

"I've been staring at you all afternoon and I can't figure this out exactly ... What, um ... is your ... race?"

At times exasperating-a genuine conversation faux pas, and ridiculous when received at work-this question appears to be looming over my head like a giant cartoon bubble.

Guess correctly-win a prize!

Once, in second grade, a group of girls cornered me on the playground and asked, "Who was the lady picking you up every afternoon?" When I feebly replied that she was my mom, they called me a liar and kicked sand in my face.

No need to cue the violin-I'm not looking for sympathy.

Since my freshman year, many people on campus have asked me why I'm constantly preoccupied with the whole "race thing." I'll tell you why: a lifetime of whispers, pointed fingers and stares have left me acutely aware of my ethnic identity. As a result, it's nearly impossible for me to ignore it in everyday situations.

When I arrived in Berkeley four years ago, I found myself amid a whole slew of novel racial problems. I was living with a half-Jewish girl who thought the braid hair, worn by the likes of pre-weave Beyonce, was real. Seconds later, the black chick across the hall came in, and the very first thing out of her mouth was "Are you mixed?"

How original.

Early on at Berkeley I found a friend who, like me, was of mixed racial descent. We mused over some fundamental questions: "Who are we?" and "Could we really marry a white guy?" Suddenly, we'd see ourselves as those minority moms picking up kids at school who were too ashamed to tell their friends about us. Instead, they would say we just tanned easily.

For a while, exposing people's obvious and sometimes inconspicuous heritage was a way to pass the time. I'd sit in the dining commons and cause controversy by whispering to my floormates, "You see the girl two tables over? Half-black parent-hands down. See the tint ... the curl ... right there." Eventually, people started to think I was crazy when I began to question if a frequent visitor to our floor was really half-Japanese and not half-black because of the size of his ‘fro.

By my sophomore year, I started misidentifying people. I'm sorry, but I would have never guessed Aborigine-how many do you know?

My point exactly.

By the time I enrolled in my "People of Mixed Racial Descent" class, I was more than ready to mingle with my fellow mixed brethren and feel accepted, nay-connected.

Blasted expectations!

I still like to believe people with mixed-race backgrounds share something in common. I seek these kids out, befriend, flirt and, yes, occasionally stalk them. I fantasize we'll skip hand-in-hand, ignoring each other's identity, finally free to eat barbeque with chopsticks or blast country music. We can be those two brown spots in a Danish language class, never passing judgment on each other.

While I had led myself to believe that all kids of racially mixed background felt the same, the number of labels in my class were bewildering. We weren't just "mixed," we were half Mexican, a quarter Korean or more Lebanese than Irish.

By the end of the semester, I was ready to join the Klan and put an end to any more race mixing. If I had to hear "I'm just a human being" or, my all-time favorite, "I like being exotic!" one more time I was going to be riding on horseback down Telegraph Avenue in a white sheet lighting crosses.

So as the class sputtered to an end, so does this column-nothing is cleared up.

The same strange thoughts consistently flash through my head. I consider not going out with someone because I don't know what they make of my heritage, and I'm not comfortable with any of the possibilities. It's peculiar, I agree. A black teenager on Durant Avenue wanted to know if anyone has ever told me I'm beautiful. Yet, as I laughed it off, I couldn't help but wonder how a white-dominated society and P. Diddy's music videos have shaped his idea of beauty.

I'm no wiser on the subject, no more convinced of a unified rainbow nation and, trust me, I'm not whining. That's just my reality. That's why when an older white gentleman offers to buy my gas at the 76 station, all I can think is this must be some sort of antebellum fantasy that he's been dying to live out.

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