Fact: No significant percentage of Americans goes without social welfare of any kind:

Reblogged from Choosing Pancakes

I don't know how to handle the term "mixed"

Specifically in the context of persons who usually are not close to me in any way who feel the need to ask me,

"Are you mixed?"

or are so audacious as to presume a mixed racial background and bust right out with,

"What are you mixed with?" 

I'm sincerely unsure whether the sirs and madams who ask these questions understand how problematic they are. 

First off, dogs are mixed. I am not mixed. Nor am I a mulatto, a mudblood, a mutt, a half-breed, a quadroon, or an octaroon. (Click here if you're confused by any of these names.) If you phrased the question as, "Do you come from a multiracial background?" I suppose that the truthful answer is yes. If you were to move backwards through my family tree, you would discover multiple people of non-African descent. At the very least, you would discover German, Portuguese, and American-Indian ancestry. There's a good chance you'd find some White guy from Canada in the not too distant past (my dad's dad's dad), though I don't know for a fact that this person was White or what his nationality was, and will never know because no one living knows. No matter which side you go up or what branches you go off exploring, all over my family tree you will run into question marks. Things no one knows and no one can know. 

So, am I mixed? Technically, yes, I suppose. Historically speaking. Not recently. Not primarily through choice. I only know that the German (my dad's mom's mom) was an un-forced mixture. Thus I will claim that, if pressured, but I feel no obligation to recognize small percentages of my racial make-up formed through slavery, oppression, or other relations I am not sure were consensual. I feel especially unobligated to do so because the overwhelming majority of multigenerational African-Americans--Imani Perry's term for those of us who descended from slaves--share a similar history. Rather ironically, Blackness constitutes "otherness" to White America, while simultaneously containing Whiteness nearly definitionally. The question marks in my family tree are a trademark of life as a descendant of an enslaved population: if you wanted to say that the only Black persons allowed to identify as such are those with nary a White face on their family tree, the only Black people in America would be recent African immigrants. My mom's mom's mom was a dark-skinned woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. This is our history. So to those people who claim that I'm doing a disservice to American history and my ancestors' legacies by not identifying as multiracial, I say that you're doing the same disservice to American history and adding injury to current Black populations by not allowing us to incorporate our complicated racial histories into one story of preservation, rather than of domination and dissipation.

Am I mixed? Technically, yes, I suppose. Historically speaking. Not recently. Not primarily through choice. But I will never ever check that on a box. I will never say this of myself. I identify as a Black person. I interpret my Blackness as inherently containing elements that aren't Black, and I would appreciate it if you, people who question my monoracial identity, would accept my interpretation. How dare you seem incredulous when I respond that I'm "just Black"? How dare you try to say, "No you must be ________"? You don't know me like that, and I am allowed to identify however I please. If I screw up your schema of what a "just Black" person "should" look like (or act like or feel like or be like), then well, I'm not sorry. 


Also, my friend @iribobiri came up with the best response ever to the second question. I promise this will play out in my life at least once:

Ignorant person I've recently met: What are you mixed with?

Me: A wire whisk.

 

"How to talk to White People about Racism"

This is reblogged from The Good Men Project, and I would like to rename it "How to Talk to Ignorant People about Life," because it is a widely known fact that not all White people actually need talking to about race, and there are people of every social category imaginable that need talking to about SOMETHING.

"1. Do not debate. Declare.
I’ve come to realize that debating is just another derailing tactic.  If you come across a white American who wants to argue, cloud the issue, split hairs, etc., then you’ve reached the end of the conversation – period.  Social justice is not a cult; it’s not your job to “convert” people.  They have to choose to either be a decent human being or to support the racist colonialist system that is America. (<---- THIS. RIGHT. HERE.)

• If they talk a lot about their “opinions”, end the conversation.
• If they ask you if you really do experience racism, ask them why they’re asking you that.
• End the conversation if they start with lines like,
  • “I can’t imagine”
  • “I refuse to believe”
  • “I just don’t see”

And no, you do not have to be nice about it.
2. Racial discussion is not an “exchange” of ideas.
This isn’t about what we can learn from each other – this is about you learning from me, and you’re already behind by four centuries.
3. Do not end racial discussions on a positive note.
If white people end racial discussions on an optimistic, the-future-is-bright note, they’re happy, they feel absolved, and they tell themselves that things “will eventually work themselves out”. That’s why they have to leave these discussions bothered, troubled, and deeply perturbed.
We don’t get a slow, gentle, candy-coated introduction to the pains of American racism.  Never have.  White folks shouldn’t get to either.
4. Maintain realistic expectations.
What leads to frustration is most of us operate under the misguided notion that intelligence is all someone needs to learn something.  Learning, in fact, requires additional components to intelligence, like consistent practice, research, recall, overall self-discipline, and a need for the absolute truth of things. White privilege conditions much of this out of most white Americans by the time they hit puberty.
5. Stop being afraid.
You don’t need white Americans to like you – if they cross the line, make them uncomfortable. We have already overcome and survived a lot in this country and contrary to popular belief, we did so with an overwhelming lack of support from white America. So do not doubt your worth or tone down your voice or temper your strength.
If you’re being dehumanized socially, assert yourself and walk way.  If you’re being dehumanized occupationally or academically…lawsuit.  Tolerance is a bullshit term, and we need to stop tolerating from hereon out, online and in real life – period.
6. Stop referring them to Tim Wise.
Since referring white people to Tim Wise as their introduction to social justice hasn’t had the necessary effect, stop doing it. Instead refer them to David S. Reynolds’s “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights” (2006)."