I Passed for White and Straight, Even Though I'm Not -- How Looks Hide My Identity
http://www.alternet.org/i-passed-white-and-straight-even-though-im-not-how-looks-hide-my-identity
I first became aware of my passing as a young child confronted with standardized testing. My second grade teacher had walked us through where to write our names in capital letters and what bubbles to fill in for our sex, our birth date and ethnicity. But in the days before “biracial” or “multiracial” or “choose two or more of the following,” I was confronted with rigid boxes of “white” or “black” – a space that my white father and black-Italian mother had navigated for some time.
But even at 8 years old, I knew I could mark “white” on the form without a teacher’s assistant telling me to do the form over with my No. 2 pencil. I could sometimes be “exotic” on the playground to the grown-ups who watched us for skinned knees and bad words. But with hair that had yet to curl and a white-sounding last name, I was at first glance – and many after – a dark-haired white girl with a white father who collected her after school.
That girl came with me to junior high and even high school. Even as my hair became wiry with puberty, the frizziness soon a universal topic in the girls’ bathroom as girls began their marriages to the straight iron, I became aware that I read no differently. Another curly-haired white girl who wished that her hair was straight.
School records could be curiously inconsistent, occasionally marking me as “white” and sometimes “other,” my recorded ethnicity changing year to year as I would pass and then suddenly not.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I guess that's a benefit of NOT having to constantly think about how our actions set up avoidable obstacles. 
I'm forty- bi-racial - and had blonde hair as a kid . . . that fair. Like many bi-racial kids- we get a bit darker and curlier as we get older. 
There are very concrete experiences that only a woman with my 'family dynamic' can HAVE experienced.
This woman's experience was probably very much like my paternal grandmother's experience - but she went out and found the darkest black man she could find to marry in 22. Her reasoning to do that was because of how she experienced the world in the deep South as a child in the turn of the last century.
My experiences born abroad, spending my formative years in the military culture in a foreign land - and my 'culture shock' even coming back to the North East in the late 1970's as a 4 (almost five) year old - are imprinted in me.
Yes - in an ideal world - it SHOULD be Human Race.
But in America - I don't have that luxury. I simply don't. And it's not my fault - or the fault of any minority Americans. The Dominant Culture must ALL change - and then we can. Until then - we can't have our voices or experiences down played. Because our voices speaking up and out - well that's what will make the dominant culture stand up and take notice of the 'card' they placed in the deck. 
You know?
It's like the person who says: You better not cheat me!
The person who is fearful . . . does what they accuse or anticipate others of doing.
My race is well - all over the place.
But I know when dealing with certain people in the dominant culture in America - they want to peg me into a specific one. They have no idea what my mother looks like. They have no idea what my husband looks like. And it wouldn't matter anyways to them - because well - they did the pegging.
That said - I've experienced America in a very specific way which well - colors my world view.
Re Last sentence - It's something my mother has impressed on us (a 67 year old caucasian woman) - and well - it's true.
The Dominant Culture in America is that of white descendents of Europeans. Their ancestors (mine TOO ) put the race card in the deck by policy, beliefs, and behavior. Those policies, beliefs, and behaviors are still in existence today - the minority populations merely react to it. Everyone teaches (I hope) their children to be respectful - yet cautious of the authorities. However, I'm certain my nephews had a stern talking to by their father, my father, their mother, grandmother, etc. etc. about how they specifically must interact with the police.
It's not their fault (my nephews). They didn't do it. They didn't make that police man/woman believe what that police man/woman believes. But they must adjust to that reality in order to survive that person working on behalf of the dominant culture's belief system. Yes I wrote, "survive".
That's just one example - but it's one of many. I certainly hope at DU I don't need to give a full dissertation on the state of race in America. 
I shouldn't have to that at this site.
I don't want to give one either.
And here is my precise c/p statement -
The we are the Powers That Be ANNNND we are the Dominant Cultural force that is most visible and prevalent in America?
I never said which one of us are you.
I'm mixed raced - direct product of a black/white marriage that was till death do us part. . . I'm currently married to a man off the plane from Italy.
Perhaps I interpreted what you wrote upthread wong - I'm always interested when I hear/read - Actually it was black folks and their organizations that created the system.
It's such a 180 from what many black Americans have experienced - I.E. I'm personally shocked when I find out I have had that much power and was responsible for the formation of black organizations, HBC's, etc. etc. I mean - I haven't even been on this earth for 40 years - so it alway shocks me when I find out I'm responsible. I didn't know I put the race card in the deck.
That's all.
But I thank you for educating me on that.
Uh - 
Sorry - just not used to reading or hearing it unless it's from an uneducated person over the age of 80.
I always thought it was funny (thinking back to reruns of all in the family - A.B. used it) -
Like what? My mother has no color? Is that why she's out there baking with baby oil? But my father does - so he wears a hat?
It's not easy being mixed race!
If you really read my post . . . Really read it. Closely . . .
We have a history you and me. . . so I'll leave it at that. My best wishes on your journey through this world.
Off topic - if you've never seen The Chappelle show - try and catch it in old reruns on the Comedy channel. Paul Mooney - friends with and a writer for Richard Pryor appears on and wrote for Chappelle - he also wrote for Sandford and Son. He had a book come out two years ago - "Black Is The New White" - if I recall correctly - he wrote that episode/line.
ONLY Mooney could make that observation! Same man that said he never "knew" racism (he's in his early 70's now to put a time reference on it) until his family left Louisiana when he was a kid - and moved to Southern California in the 1950's. And he is scathing to Liberal thought and so-called bastions in that book. Just scathing - yet accurate.
