Three years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to answer this question. It’s a question that I’ve gotten so many times throughout my life I’ve lost count. It’s a question that made me confused, with an answer that left others uncomfortable.
I was 18 when I found out my race through a 23 and Me DNA test. As someone who others called “racially ambiguous,” I didn’t know what I was expecting. I grew up in a 94.7% white town, adopted by a white family, so I always knew that I wasn’t completely white.
I would be working at a grocery store, and Hispanics would come up to me speaking Spanish. I’d always shake my head and reply with, “Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”
Black females would come up to my mom when I was a toddler and scold her, saying that she was doing my hair wrong. My mom always reasoned, “everyone just wants to claim you as their own.”
But I didn’t want to be claimed. I was already claimed and raised in a community where I had to chemically straighten my hair in order to fit in. I was raised in a school that when they played slavery videos, I made sure my hair was in a bun in case students were wondering if slaves were my ancestors.
“What are you” seems like a harmless question until the person answering has to explain why they aren’t sure what they are. Why they don’t have a family history to talk about.
When I found out that I was half black, I didn’t know what to think. I placed the DNA test results in the back of my mind and only reopened them when my half-sister reached out to me. Finding that blood connection with someone who shared my features was enough to make me embrace my identity.
That reassurance of seeing someone who looked similar to me was all I needed to accept who I was. Before then, I was lost. How could I accept that I was black if I didn’t grow up in a black community? Am I even black enough? Isn’t racism still an issue in America? Do I even have a right for it to be my issue? I was 42% black.
“What are you” is a question that used to make me mad. Why did they want to know? Why did it matter to them? But that question is now something I can confidently answer without hesitation. It’s a question that connects me to the blood of my biological family.