July Meandering Deep Thoughts Part Deaux Post #20 - What does the color of your skin have to do with it?

I am a biracial child and this is the way that I self-identify myself. My father is white (French-Canadian, Irish, and German ancestry) and my mother is American Indian (Menominee and Bad River tribes). According to a few people, I supposedly look like I have "little something" in me. I think I look white, or rather my appearance favors my father's side of the family. Even my mother would admit that I am the fairest of her four children. Apparently by the society's standards, you are whatever you look like:

While participating in a diversity training activity in an AmeriCorps program I was in after college, we were asked to step to one of two sides of the room. The white participants stood on one half of the room and the non-white participants stood on the other side. I refused to participate. I did (and do) not identify myself with either side of the room, and I didn't want them to make me choose. Making me chose, would be an insult to one of my parents. It was surprising to me to find that the organizers of the activity, didn't have the MANY biracial participants involved when planning the activities. It still irritate me to this day.

Even when in college, while attending events in the Multicultural Student Center (MSC), I would be asked why I was there: Was I a House Fellow that needed to attend to better understand the students of color of my dorm? Sigh. Following this event, I found myself almost defending myself at future MSC events. It was just a notch below shouting, "My mother is brown!"

At work, the Board of Directors had noticed that there wasn't a great representative of diversity in the program over the years. Another staff person, who is white, was asked to lead the discussion to strengthen and increase the diversity of the program. No need to ask the only nonwhite person on staff to help out or provide feedback!

However, I am not innocent of this judging/classifying by skin color. My family has had plenty of discussions about who should play Native American in movies. Can it just be anyone with brown skin? Would a fair skin biracial person (such as myself) be OK? I found myself saying, that if someone with fair skin were cast in a Native American role it would probably upset me, even if they were tribally enrolled.

After my mugging, I did my own little experiment. I would tell the story of the mugging and deliberately leave out the race of the teenage boys. Majority of the people I would tell the story to would take it upon themselves to assign a race to the muggers.

I wish I could say we live in a "post-race" world but just reading the comments that are left behind from news stories on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman and Darrius Simmons/John Spooner cases, we don't. Being perceived as white by others, I at least get to kid myself every once in awhile into thinking that there is no racism in the world. That is one of the privileges of being white, you don't have to think about race (but you are more than welcome to talk about it). Being any other color, you are reminded everyday that you are not white. And others will make automatic assumptions about your life/actions simply based on the way you look.