“Are you Spanish/Latina?” No.
“What are you then?” Human. I am human. Or would alien be less confusing?
“Where are you from?” Earth, Solar System, Local Interstellar Cloud, Milky Way Galaxy, Known Universe.
“You look so…different. Exotic, maybe?” I’m not a tourist attraction, nor am I some sort of animal species to be gawked at like I belong in a zoo.
“Is your hair real?” No. It’s all in your imagination. Seriously? Just because I have a nice head of thick, long hair does not mean that it isn’t growing out of my scalp.
“Can I touch it?” Absolutely not. Paws off.
It really gets under my “outlandish” olive-toned skin that people assume that I’m something “other” just because of my features. When meeting someone new, it’s not at the top of my list to explain my racial make-up and where my parents are from. But to others, the go-to question—which I swear is a visceral reaction to the combination of my skin tone, facial features and hair—is always the same.
It’s an innate human characteristic to want to label things and place them into neat little categorical boxes that are fixed and well-defined. Race, culture, heritage and personal identity are some things that just don’t fit the way we want. That’s why I get the quizzical looks and awkward stares; I don’t fit into people’s preconceived notions of black, white, Hispanic/Latina or any other race.
But what is it exactly that makes someone black or white? It can’t be skin tone alone. In 2010, a white baby with blond hair and blue eyes was born to a Nigerian couple who had emigrated to London. Earlier this year, a set of twins became a sensation because one is a fair-skinned redhead and the other is curly-haired and caramel-complected. No one believes they are related because, you guessed it, our preconceived notions of black and white prevent us from seeing the bigger picture that there is one human race.
Race is a socially-constructed sorting machine born out of the human desire to label and categorize. There is no scientific or biological basis for race other than genetic traits that manifest as eye color, skin tone etc., that definitively proves that one race is different and separate from another. We may have distinct languages, customs, religions and everything else that defines who we are in our culture, but these things don’t necessarily make us foreign to each other in the sense that we are all human. If we tried to contain each race to their own, we’d end up recreating the Holocaust or reliving the Progressive Era in U.S. prior to WWII, in which eugenics was all the rage.
No one’s skin is black or white, anyway. It’s not possible. Skin color ranges from dark, dark brown to a pale, pasty cream. And even if we were black or white, or we were orange, purple or green, we’d all still be considered human. Even so, scientists figured out that we have invisible stripes that run up and down our arms and legs, twisting around our sides, backs, heads and torsos. Blaschko Lines, named after the dermatologist who first described them, resemble tiger or zebra stripes and are only visible under UV light. All humans have them, as they are remnants of our growth from single cells.
People have assumed I’m Dominican, Puerto Rican and even Egyptian. No, silly. I’m a walking melting pot with a dash of German here, some Jamaican and Arawak Indian over there, a dollop of Scottish, a sprinkle of Nigerian and several scoops from a bunch of northern European countries. Just like everyone else—and I dare you to admit it—I’m a little bit of everything. I can’t help what color my skin is any more or less than I can control what color the sky is. Melatonin just doesn’t work that way.
Am I incapable of having “nice” hair just because I’m not fully black or fully white? Does my complexion remind you that much of some weird species of lemur from Madagascar that I’m “exotic?” Am I something “other” than human? I think not. I’m just another piece of the beautifully intricate and complicated puzzle that is the human race.
