by Shannon Hilson

Created on: February 05, 2008

Speaking as a woman of mixed racial background myself, I personally feel that the real identity crisis is not to be found within my own psyche or background. It's in society's perception of me and others like me. I myself am perfectly comfortable not fitting into a preconceived ethnic box. However, society really does still seem to value its boxes, and anything or anyone that can't be comfortably categorized seems to present difficulty, although I still have trouble really understanding why.

When I was very little, I don't recall ever feeling any kind of confusion as to who I was or why I looked the way I did. It seemed simple, in fact. Mommy had white skin and straight hair, while Daddy had dark skin and curly hair, so it made perfect sense to me that my brother and I had light brown skin and wavy hair. It was just the way it was, and I didn't see any difference at all between MY family and other families where everyone was all the same color. After all, people came with all kinds of different hair or eye colors. What was so different about skin color? My young, innocent mind simply assumed that other people had the same attitude, since I had yet to have any experiences to suggest otherwise.

I didn't begin to learn that the attitudes of others weren't like mine at all until I was old enough to attend public school. In those days, mixed race children who actually identified themselves AS mixed presented a huge problem when it came to statistics. There was no "other" box to check if you didn't fit into any of the categories presented on a form, and you weren't allowed to check more than one. You were expected to pick one race from your multi-colored background and decide that's all that you were, so you can imagine how well it went over when I would simply refuse to.

I was often kept after class or punished for refusing to "just pick one", but refuse I did. After all, I was MORE than one, and I had always been taught to be proud of who I was and where I came from. Complying with the wishes of those around me would mean denying one of the parents I loved dearly, as well as a huge part of who I was, and that's never been something I was willing to do just to make some bean counter's job easier. It may have been just about making a pencil mark in a box to my teachers, but for me it was about my identity.

Society's problems with my way of thinking eventually began to surface for me in my personal life as well. It was just as socially unacceptable to claim to be "mixed"

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