Mixed Blogger | Mixed Roots Stories

Fringers Part II

Despite feeling comfortable verbally sharing my story with friends and students it has taken me 15+ years to publically write about it despite numerous kind nudges from others. Somehow “putting it out there” in written form has always been somewhat of a foreboding experience that has kept me paralyzed in fear—that others may respond critically and perhaps like so many times before that those I identify with will reject me. So it is my hope that these words will encourage others to share their own truths, shake off fear and move forward embracing the freedom that comes from breaking free of silence…

Part II.

“From Turkish to Mixed”

As a child, I knew that my dad was from Turkiye and that this meant I was “Turkish.” At such a young age all I could equate “being Turkish” with was being forced to wear “weird” clothes in cultural festivals once a year, receiving gifts and letters from my babaanne (father’s mother) that went unread until they could be translated and playing with my one Turkish friend (whose mother my mom became close with while taking language lessons from her).

I carried around this identity without much thought for most of my childhood. Once my mother married my stepfather and had my brother, we interacted less and less with the Turkish community. With my mother working full-time and commuting 3-4 hours a day my Turkish identity only surfaced occasionally- most frequently at cultural events for school or when I brought store-bought baklava to potlucks.

Around middle school, this identity started to take on more meaning for me. Having been raised in predominately white, middle class, heterosexual, Christian spaces where most knew little or nothing about my father’s background no one ever queried much into the racial/ethnic identity I carried due to my fair complexion. There was often confusion around my last name differing from the rest of my family and my relationship to my younger brother whose blond hair and blue eyes stood in stark contrast to my own, but not to the extent of questioning my “whiteness.”

While I knew my mom, brother and stepdad were white, I personally had never given much thought to my own identity nor identified as “white.” I began to get frustrated that I did not know an entire half of my family—that I could not communicate with them without assistance, that I knew nothing of their culture, religion or location and I began to reject my “whiteness” and to solely identify as Turkish. As I entered high school I became increasingly angry at the lack of understanding I had of my family and self. In an effort to help, my mother contacted the family of my childhood Turkish friend and informed them that I wanted to learn more about my dad’s culture. They immediately invited me to participate in a Turkish fashion show. Excited I went to their home only to come back in tears as her mother had spent half of the rehearsal telling others to speak in English for me. Rather than feeling a sense of belonging and solidarity, the experience only further solidified that I truly was an outsider in both worlds.

When I returned to school after the weekend, the assistant principle, who happened to be at the fashion show, decided to pull me into his office to question my racial/ethnic identity and tell me about his Turkish immigrant wife before asking me to be a buddy to an incoming Turkish international student. Surprised and agitated I tried to explain that I was American and had little connection to my Turkish heritage and that any student on campus would be about as much help to the new student as I would be. The student either never came or something I said convinced him that it was not something he should further press me about, as I never did meet the student.

While I’m sure he had the best of intentions and likely thought he was being “progressive” by learning about his wife’s culture and trying to connect people from the same racial/ethnic background this interaction simply illustrated to me that he considered all of “us” to be the same and was yet another situation in which my lack of connection to my heritage was exposed.

Throughout high school, I continued to wrestle with my identity. The first two years I began to make new friends, most of whom identified as Mexican, Black or biracial. Within this group, I felt more comfortable exploring and expressing my emerging racial/ethnic identity. However, this was not without it’s own bumps in the road such as when discussions about “white people” arose. I sometimes shared certain sentiments, but felt conflicted. I would remind my friends that my mom and stepdad and brother were white and I was half white as well. This was usually met with a comment such as, “Well you’re different because you’re mixed.” I’d sit there thinking, “You’re still talking about my family…” Eventually I started to realize that my stance of rejecting whiteness via distancing myself from white people was incompatible with loving my family and myself.

My junior year of high school I began an early college program and started attending community
college full time. I remember one of my first courses was post civil rights history. The professor had us do an assignment that required us to interview family members about our cultures and history. Unfortunately, I was only able to complete half of the assignment. Once he found out that I knew little of my dad’s heritage and my own culture he went on a mission to “help me find it” and avoid assimilation! That day, we went around the entire campus until he found another Turkish student and left me with her. We had a polite but awkward conversation, which did little in helping me “find my culture,” but did serve to further highlight my status as an outsider.

After the awkward encounter I quickly found my way to the multicultural center, which soon became my home away from home (I literally slept there in the morning before classes to avoid traffic). I began to gain an eclectic group of mostly African and Middle Eastern international friends, two of whom were other bi/multi racial women. One was of a Turkish Pakistani background, but was raised in America and another, Amnah, shared almost the exact same story as myself except her father was from Dubai and she phenotypically did not pass for white. I was elated to finally have a friend who understood what it was like to be raised in a white American household, while wondering about the other half of your family and identity. Amnah and I quickly became close friends and sought out a cultural organization to join.

At the time, there were few cultural student organizations on our campus. The closest one to being multiracial was the Muslim student union, which was comprised mainly of international students from numerous countries. However, being raised in Christian households, Amnah and I didn’t see this as a group in which we would fit in. Despite neither of us identifying as black, many of our friends were in the Black Student Union, so we decided to ask if we could join. While we may not have identified the same racially we connected with many of our friends in the BSU as most of our parents/families were recent U.S. immigrants.

Once a year the multicultural center nominated a set number of students to attend the annual community college students of color conference. It was through these conferences that I found my way to the multiracial community. The MAVIN Foundation was just taking off in Seattle and they held a session at the conference. It was the first time I had seen a session description that I could really relate to and was elated. However, the students of color conferences were not all filled with fun, camaraderie, understanding and laughter. They were also places that brought out pain, frustration and reaffirmed boundaries.

I can still recall one particular incident in which I was reading a book in the hallway when another attendee approached me and began to engage in conversation. Unbeknownst to me he was conducting an authenticity test under the assumption that I was a white girl wearing a “black” hairstyle. Once he found out my racial/ethnic identities he began to go on and on about how he was wrong and how “my people” were actually one of the most targeted and oppressed groups due to the anti-Middle Eastern sentiments shared by many Americans post September 11^th. That evening he expressed his interest in dating me. I found it interesting and perplexing that despite being the same exact person, within a matter of minutes, in his eyes I suddenly went from being a white girl engaging in cultural appropriation to a mixed girl who was beautiful and acceptable for a man who believed in Pan-Africanism to date. Reminded of the old familiarity of high school lunch conversations, this was not the first or last time I’d be told that one part of me redeemed the other. Those giving the “compliment” never seemed to understand how it could be interpreted otherwise and I could not understand why it still sometimes felt affirming.

When reflecting on these experiences I often recall a conversation I had with a friend during which she said, “Your race is part of who you are, but it is not all of who you are.” I think that was the beginning of my realization that being a fringer was okay. Not fully understanding my culture was okay. Letting go of societal labels and expectations of who I was and should be was okay. There would be many more uncomfortable and life changing experiences to come, but I was the only one who could define myself and regardless of who or what others perceived me to be, all that mattered was that I knew who I was—a mixed, frequently white passing, second generation American sociologist, who knows more Spanish than Turkish, loves spoken word poetry, 90s R&B and Rap, boxing, is still a fan of The Seattle Super Sonics and Allen Iverson, watches obscure documentaries, wears giant earrings and is obsessed with dog advocacy. I am a kaleidoscope of the sum of my social identities, experiences, interests, and talents, yet none of them alone adequately define me. I am happily indefinable.

Naliyah Kaya is the Coordinator for Multiracial & Multicultural Student Involvement & Community Advocacy at the University of Maryland College Park where she works closely with Multiracial/Multiethnic and Native American Indian/Indigenous student groups, serving as an advocate for the needs of these communities. She currently teaches TOTUS Spoken Word Experience and Leadership & Intersecting Identities: Stories of the MULTI racial/ethnic/cultural Experience.

As a poetic public sociologist, Naliyah utilizes poetry as a medium for teaching and social change. She encourages students to engage in artistic expression as they examine their own identities, beliefs and values and as a form of activism in promoting social justice. It is her hope that through this process of self-exploration students will embrace cultural pluralism, find commonalities across differences and engage in research and dialogues that seek to benefit the greater good of society through positive social action.

A native of Washington State, Naliyah grew up just outside of Seattle. She earned an A.A.S. from Shoreline Community College, a B.A. in Sociology from Hampton University, and received her M.A. & Ph.D. in Sociology at George Mason University. Her poetry has been published in Hampton University’s literary magazine The Saracen, George Mason University’s Volition, Voices of the Future Presented by Etan Thomas and Spindrift Art & Literary Journal.

Learn more about Naliyah and her work on her website.

Fringers

Fringers

We are

cross-cultural babies

border straddling youth

intercontinental adults

We are infants formed out of true

sometimes forbidden

love, tours of duty and pleasure travels-

brought back like souvenirs

We are the children that have hidden our cultures and stories

inside diaries and memory boxes

filled with words

that have flown over seas

and traipsed across our minds

We are daughters of fearful mothers

who change our names

to prevent separation

via our fathers and their citizenship in other lands

So we wait patiently until our 18^th birthdays

to reclaim our names

before jumping on planes

headed towards our heritage

landing in unfamiliar spaces

met by faces we’ve only seen in pictures and dreams…
I have always been what my best friend’s mother refers to as a fringer. In fact, the majority of my inner circle is comprised of fringers- those of us who occupy peripheral spaces moving in and out of groups, yet never fully fitting into any one. Growing up this term resonated with me as I sought to unpack and frame my untraditional mixed experience- that of an American born daughter, raised by her biological mother, who often identifies more with transnational adoptees than other American born biracial/multiethnic individuals. Throughout the following entries I highlight some of the things that have marked and shaped my transnational mixed experience.

…

Part I.

“Reclaiming my Name”

I would assume—unless given a name that caused you to be bullied throughout school— that most people don’t give much thought to their name outside of asking the meaning and how it was chosen and/or considering changing it when getting married. I dwelled on it. As far back as elementary school, I can recall it being a point of contention between my mother and me.

My mother’s family−a blend of German, Irish, Scottish and Welsh –came to the U.S. a few generations ago. To the best of my knowledge they all identified and presented as white. My father is Turkish and was the only one in his family who decided to live in the United States. I am not sure how far back our family ties to Turkiye or that region of Asia go and with family members displaying a variety of phenotypes (my dad is often mistaken in the U.S. for Mexican, Native American, Asian Pacific Islander) our racial and ethnic ancestry is anyone’s guess.

My mother met my father through an international pen-pal group. He was often in and out of the U.S. as a young adult so much so that he eventually became a dual citizen. My mother would come to find out many things about my father that informed her decision to raise me on her own and to give me an alias last name. Like many American women who had children with recent immigrants, my mother lived with the nagging fear that once their relationship was no longer amicable there was the very real possibility that her only child could disappear into a country and culture she hardly knew and in which she had no rights.

Throughout my childhood I was enamored with the idea of having the power to choose the way in which others identified me. In elementary school I dreamt of altering my name—likely more a result of trivial reasons such as the first letter of my last name (*Adams) being at the beginning of the alphabet, which always meant going first for presentations. However, at some point I came to understand that I did not share my father’s last name, and though I knew of him more than I knew him, I wanted what I perceived to be my “real” last name−The name that tied me to my father’s side of the family and my heritage−even if that connection was more symbolic than lived.

The first chance to change my name presented itself when my mother married my stepfather. She asked if I wanted to take his last name as she would and I refused. I was about six or seven and didn’t particularly like the idea of sharing my mommy with someone else. Always a stubborn and independent child I decided that keeping my name was the only power I had to assert my individuality so I was going to preserve it at all costs. My mother respected my wishes and I came to love and respect my stepfather very much, yet I never wavered on my decision not to change my name.

On my sixteenth birthday my mom took me to get my driver’s license. When we got to the window at the DMV I went from excited to livid. My mother had always told me that she’d purposely not given me a middle name so that I could choose it when I turned eighteen (as well as change my last name to my father’s if I chose to do so). It was her way of attempting to pay homage to my father’s culture after she’d heard that middle names were uncommon in Turkiye. Whether or not middle names are used within my father’s family I still have no idea. Upon reviewing my identifying documents and starting the process for my driver’s license the woman at the DMV informed us of some news-I did have a middle name…*Shane. In that moment my mom learned that her idea of putting down multiple last names on my birth certificate had resulted in somewhat of a fiasco. Legally my middle name was a variation of the German name her family had used upon immigrating to America. So now I not only had an alias last name (*Adams), but an Americanized variation of my mother’s German maiden name as my middle name. I was *Leah Shane Adams or as my license stated *Leah S. Adams. Walking out with my driver’s license I simultaneously felt elated and angry. For the next two years I would now have to carry around an ID, which declared to its viewers a name I felt not only less connected to, but was actually agitated by.

In the months leading up to my eighteenth birthday, I was consumed not with planning an extravagant party, but rather with my trip to the courthouse. I spent months researching necessary name change documents and poring over name books and websites to help me choose my middle name. I finally decided on one that I not only liked the sound of, but had a meaning that felt right–felt like me. Being a poet I even decided to change the spelling of my first name and add a prefix to make it “flow” off the tongue with my new middle and last name. When the day finally came, I went by myself to the courthouse and stood before the judge, who asked a couple of questions, before signing off on the paperwork. It was much less ceremonious than I had anticipated (though I’m not sure what I expected). I received multiple copies of the embossed paperwork affirming my new name to the world. That day I went from *Leah (weary, tired) Shane (Americanized version of Schoen) Adams (alias) to Naliyah (to ascend, uplift) Kamaria (moonlight, bright like the moon) Kaya (rock). In that moment, I knew that I had reclaimed a part of my identity that could have easily slipped away and I was proud.

nazar boncuğu talisman; painting by my dad

Over the years I came to realize that the alias name was part of a mother’s love. For my mother that name was my protection—something meant to invoke questions about our relationship should my father have succeeded in his desire to take me to live with my grandparents. It was her antidote to the nightmare and anguish Sally Field’s character experienced in Not without my Daughter, an amulet (nazar boncuğu ) she placed around my entire being. For me it was a daily reminder to fight to preserve my heritage—to refuse to assimilate—to reject the melting pot ideology. As someone who can pass for white, some did not understand why I chose to change my name− “exposing” my West Asian/Middle Eastern heritage after 9/11—why I would willingly make myself a target when I could cloak myself within whiteness or at least phenotypic ambiguity. I think somehow I’ve always innately known that seeking to preserve self is often the same way we compromise and lose it—we lose our capacity to exist wholly, authentically and unapologetically. For me that was never an option.

*Indicates pseudonyms were used

Learn more about Naliyah and her work on her website.

A Higher Revelation

Mother’s Eulogy_2015

On our Mother’s birthday a couple of years ago, I wrote this essay about Minnie. To be honest, on this solemn occasion, no reverence, can truly capture her life’s journey.

Our mother just turned eighty-six. She’s not your normal octogenarian; she still slings baseballs overhand to Zeus, my sister Monica’s Rottweiler, to fetch. By any measure, that’s extraordinary. But, then again, nothing about Minnie is ordinary.

She’s a force of nature; the person in charge. No Leave it to Beaver June Cleaver type; she doesn’t abide the Norman Rockwell paradigm. Minnie is infinitely more independent, immensely more passionate, and unapologetically less servile.

In short, she’s a woman ahead of her time; a spitfire. A woman who doesn’t lament the past; a woman who bridged the generation gaps, who served as the head of the family long before feminism was defined, took hold, and became a social norm.

Our mother grew up on Riverside Drive, a predominately Latino neighborhood in west Tucson, Arizona. It didn’t take Minnie long to learn, that at the time, the Westside part of town offered her few opportunities.

She learned early to cope with adversity and became skilled at adapting to the circumstances at hand. She discovered that life most favored those who relished the challenges it had to offer.

She inhaled her formative years, intuitively aware that her youth was fleeting, perceptive to the fact that her surroundings and circumstances would determine her fate.

Not prone to indecision, she forged ahead, planted her roots on Valencia Road at the southernmost edge of town and, shortly thereafter, started her family.

At the time, Valencia was a bumpy, caliche-rutted two-lane dirt road leading to the Santa Cruz river and the Papago Indian reservation – and as our mother knew, to places far beyond.

Valencia, as Minnie saw it, served as a buffer, a dry, creosote, shrub-laden moat that protected her family from other-worldly in- trusions, delineation from which to launch her children to future endeavors.

As I’ve grown older I find myself reminiscing more about Mother. I remember how she wore her favorite straw sunbonnet while tending to a variety of red, white and pink roses which lined the perimeter of our front yard. Scores of cars would travel down our guardian highway. Invariably, as if pulled by some magnetic force, they would slow to a crawl, and make a U-turn to Minnie’s house of flowers.

Women of all ages, would exit from fancy cars and cross the cultural divide that was Valencia, to talk to Minnie about her roses. Somehow, they all seemed out of place in the desert, their fair hair shimmering in the sun; all pleasantly plump, their pale skins flush red, similarly attired in drab and muted cotton skirts.

I mention Mother’s roses and Valencia to make this point: Minnie knew where and how to grow things. She took hard earth and made things bloom.

She planted and nurtured; she tended to things that created life. She is our family’s Tree of Life. And true to the proverb that one should not judge a tree by the flower it displays. But rather by the fruit it bears, Minnie gave birth to and served as a surrogate mother to family members and friends, too many to mention.

I lovingly remember how she’d break the stillness of hot and dry summer evenings by cranking up the stereo to dance with my sisters, Gloria, Cecelia, Linda and baby Barbara. Each, alternately leading and following, swinging and twirling to a musical montage of Pérez Prado, Glenn Miller, and Motown. A Mother and her daughters, awash in music, wonder, and discovery reveling in the moment and each other. More than a decade later, she was still swinging – frequenting clubs to watch and listen to my Brother Dan’s rock & Roll band.

Another indelible memory was when we’d visit our Abuela and Minnie, and my sisters would tenderly braid our Yaqui grandmother’s regal, floor-length silver tresses. They would hover over her like attentive Indian princesses would a mythological, matriarchal God.

To see Nana imperially seated on her throne, a simple spindly- legged chair in the middle of a humble adobe home, surrounded by Mother and her daughters’ embraces is a recollection I cherish and often revisit.

Then, there was the time I had my high-school buddies over for an all-night poker party. Naturally Minnie sat in, and in her inimitable way through humor, contrived conversation, and an occasional ace-high bluff, figured how best to bet against each player at the table.

When it came to competition, regardless of age or gender, Minnie took no prisoners. She unrepentantly took their money and on one occasion even made a buddy of mine, cry.

As she laid down yet another winning hand and reached to scoop up the pot, one of the youngest players lamenting his luck, subconsciously let out an audible sigh, a visible tear in one of his eyes.

Aware that Minnie had noticed, he squirmed deep into his chair and contritely mumbled, “No…no…Mrs. Wilson, I’m alright, (cough, cough) there’s too much smoke in here, I just got something in my eye.” Nice try, bud. The boy never lived it down.

We played throughout the night until we lost all our chips. I remember the morning sun streaming through the kitchen window shedding light on the dining room table strewn with coins, greenbacks and cigarettes.

I recall Minnie leaning over the table to gather the last of her winnings. She turned to each of us, smiled, and whispered “Boys – never underestimate a woman.”

Trust me. I haven’t since.

But my most cherished memory of Minnie was when I was eight years old. Every day after school, I had to walk down a neighborhood alley in order to get home, and every day the local neighborhood bully would be waiting for me in that alley to taunt and terrorize me.

One day, my childhood tormentor sprang from the bushes, tackled me to the ground and proceeded to kick my skinny little butt. Battered and bruised, I limped home and told Mom.

Now Minnie, being Minnie, ordered me in no uncertain terms to go back into the alley and confront the bully once again. She wiped the tears off my face with a flour-encrusted dishcloth (she was making tortillas at the time) and gently shoved me out the back door.

I shuffled my way back into the alley to confront the bully once more. To this day, I wish I could say that I hammered on that boy, but the truth is, he kicked my ass, again.

But inexplicably, this time the beating didn’t hurt. I discovered that getting the crap kicked out of you – was no big deal.

I got up, my nose bloodied, but unafraid, refusing to admit defeat. On that single occasion, Minnie taught me to face my fears, to take a stand, to pick myself up. And, most importantly, she taught me never – but I mean never – ever – walk down an alley alone.

I haven’t since.

My younger brother Ric and sister Barbara, will attest to the time when without warning Minnie caught them sharing a toke and, just as surprisingly – decided to join them. According to my siblings, she was last seen that day sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet, sheepishly smiling, marginally coherent, listening to Springsteen, munching away on chips and bean dip.

You see, Minnie isn’t beyond exploring her boundaries. She experiments on many levels; her life, after all, has been a series of chances taken and odds overcome.

So when I saw my baby sister Monica’s video of Mom pitching the baseball to Zeus the Rottweiler, I thought, “Eighty-six? What is this woman made of? And all the while I’m witnessing this, Don Henley’s song “I Will Not Go Quietly” kept replaying in my head.

“Too many tire tracks in the sands of time

Yeah, I’m gonna tear it up

Gonna trash it up

Gonna round it up

Gonna rip it up

I will not lie down

I ain’t no tiger

I ain’t no little lamb

Suppose you tell me

Who do you think I think I am?

I will not go quietly

I will not lie down

I’m brave enough to be crazy

I’m strong enough to be weak

I see all these heroes with feet of clay

Whose mighty ships have sprung a leak

And I want you to tell me darlin’ Just what do you believe in now?”

Well, Mom. We, your children believe in a higher revelation. That would be you.

We too, will not go quietly. We will not lie down.

Happy eighty-sixth, and many more – and please, Mom – give Zeus a break.

Frederico Wilson is currently the owner and President of an International Fluid Power Procurement and Sourcing Company; founder of a non-profit organization (under development); blogger at mestizoblog.com, focusing on multicultural perspectives and issues. He is a USAF veteran (environmental/missile inspection specialist); and former domestic and international professional in the Airline, Telecommunications, Sales, and Financial Securities industries. Originally from Arizona, he is a lifetime student of cultural anthropology and applied behavioral science. He attended Arizona Western and the University of Arizona and holds numerous military technical, and corporate management certifications and licenses.

He is of mixed Mexican, Indian (Yaqui Tribe), Euro-Iberian, and Cornish Celtic ancestry. He lives, works, and writes in metropolitan Seattle, Washington.

He is best described by a quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain when recounting the preparation of a Burgundy wine-base rooster entrée.

“So, they take this big, tough, nasty-ass rooster, too old to grill, too tough to roast. Marinate and simmer the shit out of it, before it’s tasty.”

Frederico is the author of a new book, Escaping Culture: Finding your place in the world. Find out more on his website: mestizoblog.com

The Baker Within Us

I’m a slice of marble bread

surrounded by white loaves,

captive in a Baker’s rack,

waiting to be displayed

in the storefront counter.

“Whiteness” in the appetite of man eludes and, at times, overwhelms me. Embedded in every conceivable medium, archived for posterity, true or not. Its myths secure,

legends immortalized,

legacies glorified.

What about the rye and pumpernickel among us? Does not our past, our presence, deserve a place at the banquet table?

By omission, we have gone missing.

Null and void.

Abandoned to maintain

a color coded status-quo.

What is to be gained and lost

in willful exclusion?

All people work and play,

give and take,

rejoice and weep,

sacrifice and endure.

All people are resolute

in their beliefs and fall victim

to an assortment of weakness.

All people,

beautiful and plain,

bleed.

Empathy, not indifference

defines our humanity.

Why intentionally

remove and render moot

the embodiment and deeds of others?

Unless one fears truth of message, assimilation of cultures–Or, moreover, the fear of a new reality, that of a changing demographic, of equal footing and competition for land, home, position, influence and power.

Within the contiguous U.S. borders

and pallid

empowered culture,

we don’t exist.

We’re invisible, expendable.

Our story,

Our family history

hasn’t been told,

truthfully.

As people of color,

we’re marginalized, mere footnotes

in the American storyline,

bereft of accomplishment,

alien, irrelevant and insignificant,

reduced to contrived,

“other than white” census boxes.

My story is much like yours, only different. Our narratives simultaneously coexist under dissimilar conditions. Our lives are both analogous and divergent, but interchangeable without invalidating the other.

The duality of American life;

confounding, yet discernible.

The irony, of course,

is that we’re just breads

of different colors,

braided and rolled together.

More palatable

if baked

into dense textures,

flavors enriched

when served warmly.

Man, like bread, takes time - to rise to the occasion, in need of a leavening agent to ascend.

Bakers know how to make yeast grow and dough to expand. When exposed to extreme temperature, the yeast will die, the dough will never rise.

Man, too, needs no less

an agent for change;

an accepting social temperature

and environment

to grow and fully develop.

Personally, I like all kinds of bread:

light rye, dark rye, pumpernickel,

marble, flat-breads, sourdough,

even plain old “white bread.”

The make of bread borne of the oven

is not in question,

– the Baker is,

and bears a name.

It’s you. And it’s me.

It’s plainly evident

by the powdered residue

on our hands.

How about we share some space

in the kitchen

and while we’re at it,

a little history?

Manipulation of the past is an amplified device. It serves a purposeful conveyance–to increase the volume and channel voice in one direction; to sanction or moderate people and events.

It deliberately lacks

honest perspective and clarity;

and is much too often

uncharitable to the deserving.

If we choose to, we can change all of that.

All it takes is a slightly modified mixture of flours,  some yeast and water, tender but thorough kneading,

a hospitable temperature, and most importantly– consciousness–to provide all of us with the truth

and the sustenance of worthiness.

Frederico Wilson is currently the owner and President of an International Fluid Power Procurement and Sourcinwg Company; founder of a non-profit organization (under development); blogger at mestizoblog.com, focusing on multicultural perspectives and issues. He is a USAF veteran (environmental/missile inspection specialist); and former domestic and international professional in the Airline, Telecommunications, Sales, and Financial Securities industries. Originally from Arizona, he is a lifetime student of cultural anthropology and applied behavioral science. He attended Arizona Western and the University of Arizona and holds numerous military technical, and corporate management certifications and licenses.

He is of mixed Mexican, Indian (Yaqui Tribe), Euro-Iberian, and Cornish Celtic ancestry. He lives, works, and writes in metropolitan Seattle, Washington.

He is best described by a quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain when recounting the preparation of a Burgundy wine-base rooster entrée.

“So, they take this big, tough, nasty-ass rooster, too old to grill, too tough to roast. Marinate and simmer the shit out of it, before it’s tasty.”

Frederico is the author of a new book, Escaping Culture: Finding your place in the world. Find out more on his website: mestizoblog.com

Pocho–Going Rogue

For as long as I can remember, identity by choice or force has wrought conflict and contradictions. Who am I? What am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

My surname implies I’m white, but my brown skin begs to differ. Am I Mexican? My Mother’s family tree most certainly is, but my Father’s Celtic, Euro-Iberian branch bears my Anglo surname.

Am I more culturally European than ethnically Latino? Am I a Native American, rooted to my beloved Yaqui Abuela? To which tribe do I belong? The truth of the matter is that I’ve teetered on the edge of dueling race and ethnicities all of my life. My admission accepted or denied for equally irrational cultural and color coded reasons. My detractors accused me of acting too white; being too dark-skinned; not being Yaqui enough. They ridiculed me for, not speaking Spanish fluently; for, not being from the “barrio”; for speaking “fancy” like a gabacho.

By many, I’m considered a “Pocho” – a half-breed; an Americanized Mexican, who has “lost” his culture. I’m an exile in the land of my birth.

So after a period of dealing with these socially engineered absurdities I decided to go rogue. My previous applications for club admission were less about acceptance than it was about attaining membership.

Membership, after all, has its privileges. Just ask any country club crony, politician, and corporate executive – any member of any union or fraternal organization, or a religious shill.

Race, religion, and ethnicity are no different. Why not join the club and reap the rewards? Ironically, rejection by each group did me a huge favor. Being summarily rebuffed inspired me to find out who I was at my core.

Although I primarily identify myself as Latino, I discovered I wasn’t solely Mexican-American, ‘White,’ or Native-American or any other “pure” or artificially coalesced American classification. To support what I “felt” instinctively, I sought “scientific” corroboration through racial and genealogical DNA testing. My DNA results revealed a wealth of ethnic diversity. I am:

41% Native American;

40% White European;

7% Middle Eastern;

4% African;

4% Caucasus &

4% East, Central, South Asian.

I discovered that the whole of me was greater than the sum of my parts.

I’m an everyman. I’m good with that. I like being whole.

I embrace my ethnicities entirely, not as separate distinctions capable of wielding favor or force. Mine is an inclusive, universal existence rooted in the interconnected conservation and fate of mankind and the planet.

An early proponent of this perspective was Alexander von Humboldt, the preeminent 19th-century Prussian naturalist and explorer of Latin and South America. When asked about the connection between places, people, and culture, he opined:

“The only way to understand the world is to look at it as a whole instead of breaking everything down into isolated parts. The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.”

Amen, brother. Expand your horizon. All human beings, regardless of race, place, and society are interrelated.

Yes, of course, I realize that racial and ethnic lines deeply divide this country. And no, I don’t believe in the cockeyed notion and optimism that we live in a post-racial America and that we’re all simply Americans, kumbaya. Government doctrine clearly lays out what American distinction is: we’re either “white,” Americans by amalgamation or nonsensically, all “others.” All, I am saying, is that I chose not to be racially or ethnically manipulated by anybody or anything.

Identifying me by color or socially engineered dissimilarities is to marginalize my consciousness, humanity, self-worth, and empowerment. Artificial classifications have expiration dates, and I’ve reached mine, thank you very much.

I understand I can’t change how the world defines me, but I can change how I view my world.

To me, self-awareness began with the past. I believe in the adage that, “To know where you’re going, you must first know where you’ve been.” I accept as true that the discovery of our origins and our impetus for ancestral emigration links history with today and today with the future.

It’s the conduit from which independent cultural identity and sensibilities are born, cradled, nurtured and grown.

When it’s all said and done, my life is a multicolored collage of imperfection, as it should be. It’s not a work of art; it’s more a work in progress. Even so, it’s mine to paint. To quote Jackson Pollock, the influential American drip painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement:

“My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the outstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor, I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”

In my “Pocho” eyes, the human race is a kaleidoscope of colors cascading down on the canvas we call a planet. That’s a painting, worldview, identity and life worth exploring, and where it takes me is entirely up to me.

He is of mixed Mexican, Indian (Yaqui Tribe), Euro-Iberian, and Cornish Celtic ancestry. He lives, works, and writes in metropolitan Seattle, Washington.

He is best described by a quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain when recounting the preparation of a Burgundy wine-base rooster entrée.

“So, they take this big, tough, nasty-ass rooster, too old to grill, too tough to roast. Marinate and simmer the shit out of it, before it’s tasty.”

Frederico is the author of a new book, Escaping Culture: Finding your place in the world. Find out more on his website: mestizoblog.com

A Cowboy Thing

Some things are forever intertwined.

It was February, early spring in Tucson – cool, dry and pleasant. A slight breeze whistled through Palo Verde and Cottonwood trees. Barbecue grills were fired up – kids were playing in the streets.

Our neighborhood was bursting with unbridled anticipation, murmurs gaining resonance with the news that the Fiesta de Los Vaqueros Rodeo was in town. Soon, there would be a parade, marching bands, majestic horses, and a celebration of Mexican and American cowboys. For a desert kid, this was a very big thing. Cowboys were bigger than life. But this year, I would not attend. I was at another event, not far from the planned festivities.

I was five years old and too young to be allowed into the ground- floor hospital room where Francisco, my Abuelo, an authentic cowboy – lay dying. He was old now, sick and frail; and his passing not totally unexpected.

Relatives arrived, throughout the day to pay their last respects. They would pass by my twin sister Linda and me in the hallway, compelled by relation, to cup our faces, or pat us on the head as they came and went. All preoccupied with private thoughts, a lapse that left us momentarily unattended.

Given the oversight and driven by a heartfelt desire to see our grandfather, Linda and I didn’t dawdle. We bolted out the building – me in my little-boy cowboy boots and chaps, Linda in her tasseled vest and matching skirt, and into the pomegranate tree-lined courtyards that dotted the hospital grounds.

Too short to peer into the rooms directly, we jumped, hopped and crawled up brick ledges, peering into windows, startling patients and visitors alike. A menacing looking nurse in a stiff, starched, white linen uniform caught us peeking, stuck her arms out the window and attempted to grab us.

Scolding us, she waved her finger and shouted, “¿Qué estás haciendo niños, ¿dónde están sus padres?” (“What are you doing, children? Where are your parents?”).

She was a big woman, with a prominent mustache and crooked yellow teeth, and she scared the bejeezus out of us – but it only served to hasten our search for our grandfather.

We knew our parents would certainly be looking for us by now. One last courtyard, one last hospital wing to check; not this one, not that one. Wait… “I found him,” I shouted. Linda was across the courtyard, tired and walking slowly now.

I crawled up to the window ledge, and there was Francisco propped up in his bed, alone and abandoned, everyone else no doubt frantically searching for us.

I tapped on the window, and he slowly turned my way. At first he didn’t see me, the top of my head barely visible over the window ledge. But I climbed higher; my chin pressed against the glass. And then with a raised eyebrow, he saw me, and his eyes locked onto mine.

The old man still had some magic in him. He sat up erect, smiled, winked, picked up his sweat-stained cowboy hat that lay on the nightstand and waved it high above his head.

From one cowboy to another, “I see you, little man,” he seemed to say. Tears rolled down his weather-wrinkled face. I thought, “Is he happy, or sad?” But he smiled again, as did I. A moment forever shared, frozen in time.

By now my Aunt had entered the room, and my Mom and Dad in hot pursuit were in the courtyard with Linda in tow. They walked up to the window I was clinging to, and as parents are wont to do with disobedient children, swatted my behind. Small price to pay for finding Francisco. I climbed my Father’s arm until he and Mother relented, and lifted us up so we could wave and say goodbye to our Abuelo. Sadly, he died later that day – peacefully – with family surrounding him.

I’ve thought of him often over time, heartened in no small part by my resemblance to the old man. I always wondered how he ended up in the southwest. I discovered Francisco Wilson’s clan had its origins in the Celtic Euro-Iberian Peninsula (northern Portugal & Spain); his ancestors eventually voyaging up the Atlantic coastline to southern England.

Francisco’s father, Baldomero, was the son of a Cornish miner who immigrated to Mexico from the Southwestern Brythonic region of Great Britain in the early 19th century. The Cornish miners were the best hard-rock miners in the world, but depressed economic and metal markets in Europe forced many to emigrate to mining regions throughout the world. Specifically, to Latin American silver mining locations, of which Alamos, Mexico, was one, and where Baldomero lived and worked and where Francisco was born.

Our Celt ancestors were from an ancient civilization, and according to chroniclers, emerged from the lower Danube region. They can be traced back to what are now Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Iberian Peninsula. They sacked Rome in 387-386 B.C. and the following century destroyed the armies of Macedonia in Greece.

Proponents of the Druid religion they believed in the immortality of man. The Celtic Clan, specifically the Cornwall and Cornish peoples, were documented to have lived from circa A.D. 400, half a Millennium prior to the origin of England, until around A.D. 890. They are a distinct ethnicity separate from most of England’s Anglo-Saxons. The Cornish part of our family emerged from this civilization.

The fact that Francisco was Celtic Cornish, a Mexican native and didn’t speak a word of English when he arrived in the United States, was equally surprising and enlightening. (The irony, of course, is that the Cornish people also had their language before their assimilation into the dominant English-speaking culture.)

He eventually emigrated from Mexico to Arizona, a U.S. territory, in 1909 to escape the Mexican Revolution that pitted the repressive dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz against a populist uprising led by Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata. Francisco enlisted in the U.S. Army during WWI and eventually settled to a life of farming and ranching in southern Arizona.

Having discovered all of this gave new meaning to me about Francisco’s life. I’ve come to believe his waving his hat farewell was a final attempt to bond with his niños pequeños. He wanted to make certain he had linked the past with the future before he left. He was his father’s courier, with a history to pass on, and I’ve accepted as true, a belief that I was his chosen if at the time, unknowing recipient.

Over the years, I’ve sheltered and safeguarded the significance of Francisco’s mortality and transience – it has kept me grounded and provided me with purpose and perspective.

I revisit my Abuelo when in need of counsel and when my relationship with my son needs affirmation. My eyes, or are they Francisco’s? – Lock onto his. There’s no escaping legacy – prescient in knowledge and history.

My son, you will listen to and remember what I say. Many people have come before you. A host of fathers with different names from different lands foretold your life. They crossed continents and braved perilous sea voyages across the world. They trekked on foot through mosquito-infested Yucatan jungles and swamps, survived tropical diseases, climbed over the Sierra Madre Mountains and across the Sonora desert to give breath to your life.

You are their legacy. Don’t run away from it. Embrace it. It’s your inheritance. Pass it on.

My childhood memory of Francisco helped put my family tree into focus, connecting the links between mixed-race and multicultural people proud of their origins and working class, embodied by miners’ hard hats and ranchers’ Stetson hats. Kindred spirits, a cowboy thing.

I’ve long since traded horses for Subarus and Jeeps. But the memory of Francisco remains forever sheltered in this little boy’s heart.

It’s been many years since I last attended Tucson’s Fiesta de Los Vaqueros Rodeo. But I will, if only to pay homage to Francisco’s (and my) heritage and the lifeline he bequeathed to yet another Wilson generación.

He is of mixed Mexican, Indian (Yaqui Tribe), Euro-Iberian, and Cornish Celtic ancestry. He lives, works, and writes in metropolitan Seattle, Washington.

He is best described by a quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain when recounting the preparation of a Burgundy wine-base rooster entrée.

“So, they take this big, tough, nasty-ass rooster, too old to grill, too tough to roast. Marinate and simmer the shit out of it, before it’s tasty.”

Frederico is the author of a new book, Escaping Culture: Finding your place in the world. Find out more on his website: mestizoblog.com

It’s All Ice Cream yet It’s All I Scream

My, my, my people. Look at the times!

How many of us are still captive, confined?

We’re reading, speeding, feeding on this info highway.

We are the fortunate lot who’ve been allotted a byway,

Yet cannot freely speak our truths afraid of what they might say,

Find ourselves with no job with no pause nor delay.

Don’t even speak a word unless it sounds like “obey!”

How they terrify terrifically, so we do not speak specifically.

Relay a hint of history? Reveal what’s been a mystery?

Composed Craig Steven Wilder tells a story so gracefully.

Truth be told, outrage on hold, he seems a little pissed to me.

Perhaps because he sees what has been hidden so explicitly.

That the plasticity of enslavement shapeshifted with plausible complicity.

I wonder what the fourteenth amendment was for?

Perhaps an uncivil war slaughtered 600,000+ to blood and gore,

So under the law a person could be a person and a negro no more.

OR,

Maybe it was a concession for new breed of oppression upon the “poor,”

For under that law, corporations quickly became persons too

The “person” now patenting life itself, doing what they do.

The “person” capitalizing the most on the law meant to protect YOU

How many mortal “persons” died for that law so that immortal “persons” can sue

After all the horror, you see who got their foot in the door?

Are the beneficiaries the descendants of DeWolf or The Moor?

If that’s unclear, let’s go straight to the core:

The wealth usurped off the backs of blacks

that built the universities from out of the cracks,

that trained lawyers to cleverly devise a new plan of attack,

to leverage that same wealth to make a bigger stack,

so once shackles were removed, they could put them right back.

A law that remains intact – and that is an actual fact.

We choose to ignore this parasitic symbiosis

Divide conquer subjugate – prepare for the prognosis

Reduced to fractions of opposing factions,

While extraction is the action during our distracted, delayed reaction

to the retraction of our freedom as it erodes to mere abstraction

and sink deeper into indebted servitude through predatory transactions.

Politically, it’s present perpetually.

Realistically, a ridiculous rivalry.

Sadistically, it’s psychological slavery.

We can’t know our history, but can at least get a fistful.

Words straight from the heart, from the start make you tearful.

Fearful, although the fear is unnecessary.

Simply submit to the empire, it doesn’t have to be scary.

See beyond surface, I don’t intend to offend.

This is a time to build bridges and a time to blend.

To send a message similar to the dream

Of Dr. MLK – it has not lost its steam.

It’s why we still celebrate the day of his birth.

He put faith in the world when we doubted our worth.

A black man on the mic defending “niggers and kikes,”

Publicly speaking his mind – until he rested in Earth.

Honor to those who fought so that we could be free,

Instead of picking weeds or hanging out in a tree.

If we explore our roots, we most certainly see,

Soil and ivy bloodsoaked, fertilized with fallen ebony.

These Ivory Towers, towering over our ancestors,

Unite education, exploitation, imperial oppressors,

Taxation for public research serving private investors.

Baskin, my name, it comes from slavers,

Now with global corporate presence – think thirty-one flavors.

What have we learned? Some things are not what they seem

Chocolate or vanilla? You know, it’s all ice cream.

-By Andrew Baskin

For more on “Ebony & Ivy” see here

In a roundabout way, Andrew Baskin recognized food as a nexus linking complex issues regarding sustainability and immediately put this knowledge into action. Transitioning from volunteer positions with Soil Born Farms in Sacramento to guiding collaborative projects as a senior apprentice at Love Apple Farm in Santa Cruz, he subsequently traveled across Western Europe studying food systems for 2 months on a shoestring, and finally returned stateside to a vermicomposting farm in Sonoma. Now in his senior year at UC Davis studying Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems with emphasis in Economics & Policy, he has an immense appreciation for the movement driving this educational paradigm shift. As with many families, his has survived genocide, exploitation, and war and he desires to integrate this historical narrative around social/economic/ecological exploitation into his professional career as he, both personally and collaboratively, pursues healing and justice in these dimensions.

Liminality as Inheritance: On Being Mixed and Third Culture

The following is adapted from previous posts published at Discover Nikkei and Best American Poetry.

—

“To be hybrid anticipates the future.” —Isamu Noguchi, 1942

Noguchi’s prescient words are manifesting on every level in our time. Just look around you: rigid binaries and categories continue to shift, dissolve, and flow into one another, creating a new “third”. As a woman of mixed heritage I’m compelled by the process that unfolds in this liminal space—a space that isn’t this or that, but is its own realm—a borderland of both/and. It is a space of fluidity and potentiality where all my “selves” are free to be, where I’m beholden to no one culture, camp, or tribe, but can instead move between and among them. It’s an exciting, and destabilizing, time in which to be alive.

The symbolic and psychological meanings of “borderlands”—both internal and external—have been my preoccupation for years. It’s a preoccupation that comes with the territory. I am the daughter of a Japanese mother born before World War II in Tokyo to an upper middle-class family and a French Canadian-New Englander father who grew up during the Great Depression in a working class, bilingual family. My parents raised my brother and me with both cultures in various locations in California, Micronesia, and Japan. This last is why I also consider myself an adult Third Culture Kid—a person who’s been raised in places and cultures other than her parents’ passport country/countries. TCKs internalize aspects of all the cultures in which they’ve been immersed while not having full ownership in any. Consequently, I’m adaptable, curious, restless, and can live pretty much anywhere. My least favorite question is “Where are you from?” because it is impossible to answer. If I were to use a food metaphor to describe my internal experience, Asian hot pot (or nabemono in Japanese) probably comes closest. Although I often felt “other” as a younger person, in midlife I’m finally learning to settle into and appreciate my unique background and have mostly let go of struggling to fit in. I’ve come to learn that I prefer the in-between.

Months after my birth in Kobe, Japan, my father moved us to Southern California and then on to Santa Barbara, Guam, and Tokyo. This regular uprooting, combined with my bicultural upbringing, contributed to my feelings of otherness. In the sixties there were few children like me, even in California, where I spent my first nine years. As a child, I felt I was different from most of the people around me, but didn’t yet understand how or why. Not until I lived for seven years in Guam, where my father taught high school music, and then spent a year of high school in Tokyo did I have regular contact with other mixed and Third Culture kids.

My otherness, I was to learn, is a family legacy. My mother, who left Japan alone as a young woman in the mid-1950s to follow her dream of living in America, and against her parents’ wishes, was not cut from traditional Japanese cloth: ambitious, outspoken, creative, and intellectually curious, she felt constrained by the limited options available to women in post-World War II Japan.My father, whom my mother met in Boston where they were both students, was “other” in his family by being the only one of seven children to attend college and to live outside of the United States.

My strong-willed mother, socialized in post-World War II Japan, was, paradoxically, also dutiful and self-sacrificing. Like many of her generation, she taught me to read and to play the piano at home by the age of three and before I began any formal study in either; patiently tutored my brother and me to read and write Japanese; and read to us in both Japanese and English. I now marvel that my mother, who struggled herself as an isolated immigrant woman in her adopted country where she was interchangeably devalued and exoticized, managed to do these things for us from her deep sense of love and duty. Her innate strengths, cultural values, and, yes, otherness made possible her later career as an entrepreneur, where she moved easily between diverse business and social groups, successfully negotiating multiple, and sometimes conflicting, sets of interests and expectations.

When we made the rare family trip to Japan, my mother made a point of introducing me to traditional Japanese arts and culture. Among my favorite memories were our visits to the vast, colorful, and cacophonous basement food floors, or depachika, of Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya, my mother’s beloved Ginza department stores. Wherever we went in Japan, I could sense her wordless love for the country and culture she’d left behind. Although it would be years until I could appreciate what she’d given me, I absorbed what she offered until it became a part of me.

My father has said that what saved him from the limited prospects of his Depression-era, provincial, and conservative Roman Catholic upbringing was being drafted to serve in the Korean War. There, as a young soldier living away from New England for the first time, he was introduced to Western literature by his bunkmates who’d attended college. On leave in Japan, my father fell in love with Japanese culture and, much later, returned to permanently live in that country, where he has remained for nearly 40 years, occupying the unique borderland of the long-term expat. After his military service he attended college in Boston on the GI Bill and later completed a Master’s degree in music education, eventually taking a risk by embracing his lifelong passion for directing choral music as a full-time vocation and sharing his passion with an international community of singers and music lovers in Tokyo for 30 years. It’s amazing to me that my father, a man of humble origins, went on to cultivate such an expansive and creative life, despite many early setbacks. His otherness became a resource.

In my early twenties, living in L.A. after college, I began to feel curious about Japan and my Japanese self and moved to Tokyo in 1985. There I worked at tedious jobs, but the visa they afforded and the money I earned allowed me to explore Tokyo, travel within Japan, and socialize with my Japanese friends, who, although they were very kind to me, mostly regarded me as gaijin (“outsider”) and periodically wondered aloud when I would return to my country. People of mixed-Japanese origin—known as hafu, or “half” in Japanese—were not as common in Japan as they are now, and increasingly so. Although I learned much about Japan and valued what I learned, it became clear to me that I would never—could never—be considered Japanese, even if I read, wrote, and spoke the language fluently, married a Japanese man, adopted a Japanese name, and lived there for the rest of my life. After a couple of years of this marginal and marginalized existence, feeling lonely and at loose ends, I returned to the U. S. I now periodically travel to Japan to visit my family in Tokyo and Kamakura when I can. Today, we can see that Japan’s deep-seated and rigid boundaries against “other” are being strongly challenged, both within and without its borders. Dynamism is working against stasis and change is inevitable.

Like many TCKs and persons of mixed ancestry, I have searched all my life for “home”. In late 2012 I relocated to the Los Angeles area after more than two decades in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. L.A.’s a good place for in-between-ers like me. In this sprawling metropolis with no center, a place that’s in a perpetual state of fragmentation, disintegration, and transformation and whose population represents every culture and nation, I can enjoy a sense of internal and external spaciousness. But it’s a restless city and its vast size lends itself to tribalism. As a relative newcomer, it’s been challenging to find a place of belonging. But then I’m reminded that, as an adult TCK who’s moved over 40 times since my birth, I’ve always felt this way, no matter where I’ve lived. I belong everywhere and nowhere.

I’m grateful that, in addition to beautiful mountains and beaches, L.A. has a significant presence of people of Japanese descent. When I’m not in Japan—a country that I consider my spiritual home—my primary contact with Japanese culture here has been via my excursions to downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo. I don’t consider myself Japanese American because that’s an identity, a community’s history, that my mother’s family doesn’t share. The Japanese American experience seems, to me, to be essentially tied to the internment on U.S. soil of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. That said, there is something deeply nourishing about spending time in J-town, an urban borderland that’s not America and not Japan, but a liminal space where I find solace—a feeling that’s almost belonging—in familiar objects, images, and food.

These many years later, I am still learning how to make peace with the big questions: Who am I? What am I? And, more importantly, how do I want to be known, first and foremost, to myself? I feel like I’m finally approaching a kind of clarity and hard-won self-acceptance. As a friend recently wrote to me, being mixed seems not just liminal, but is a space of its own that’s not quite defined and maybe never will be. In Japanese British filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s excellent documentary Neither Here Nor There, she movingly describes her own struggle to define and integrate the various strands of her mixed heritage and growing up as a Third Culture Kid between Japan and England. Like Yamazaki, I am learning how to be “other” and yet find “home”.

Note: I was re-introduced to the notion of “borderlands”, as it applies to mixed-race experience, by Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, author of When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities (Stanford University Press).

Born in Kobe, Japan, Mari L’Esperance is a poet, writer, and editor and lives in the Los Angeles area. Her poetry collection The Darkened Temple (2008 University of Nebraska Press) was awarded a Prairie Schooner Book Prize. An earlier collection, Begin Here, was awarded a Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize. With Tomás Q. Morín, she’s co-edited an anthology Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine (2013 Prairie Lights Books/University of Iowa Press). You can find Mari online at www.marilesperance.com.

Musings of Mixed Race Therapist in Training

It was difficult to know where to start writing a blog about my experience of being mixed race. I’ll admit I felt over-whelmed. I decided to the easiest thing to do would just be to start where I am which is coming to the end of training to be a counsellor and reflecting on this whole experience. I am a 34 year old woman of Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British heritage. My father’s heritage is Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British, my mother is White British. I currently live in Yorkshire in the north of England where I was born and grew up.

Over the last three years I have been doing a counselling diploma in order to have a career change after several years of working in the academic publishing industry (a predominantly white middle class industry which I must admit I felt out of place in at times, arguably though I have moved into a very similar working environment). As part of the counselling training it was necessary to explore all aspects of my identity in order to raise my self-awareness so I can assist my clients in doing the same. As part of examining my identity I have spent a great deal of time exploring what it means to me to be a mixed race woman. It’s been a massive journey for me and of course it never ends. As I look back at my personal history I can see how being mixed race has expanded my perspective in life and added a lot of richness. I also have had to re-visit some of the difficult aspects. I can’t deny I have had that experience of feeling I do not really belong anywhere and still do at times. The flipside is that I can probably fit in in more places and scenes than a lot of other people can and be more comfortable with diversity in general. There have been periods of confusion around my racial identity (probably made more difficult by the stereotype of the tragic and lost mulatto), periods where I have felt angered d limited by the racism and micro-aggressions of others and times when I have faced a severe lack of understanding about what it means to have a mixed race identity in society in general but even within my own family.

The counsellor training was difficult in itself and at the moment I feel I am recovering somewhat from this experience. I suppose I had been somewhat naïve about what training to be a counsellor would be like. Ethnicity, culture and racial diversity were given minimal space on the course (until I launched a long and emotionally costly protest). I spent much of the time in training feeling like I had to educate others about black identity and mixed race identity because there was pretty much nothing in the training that addressed white privilege or the issues of racial minority groups in any kind of meaningful way (except for what I or other racial minority group members were bringing with us). This is horrifying when you think most counsellors are white middle class women and the majority will not have had much reason to spend time meditating on race or the implications of cross-cultural/ racial counselling. It’s well documented (and was also my experience) that counseling trainees struggle to discuss issues around race openly and without fear. This has serious implications for the work we do with clients. I know for myself how difficult and frustrating it can be to find counsellors who can work effectively and non-defensively with the hurt of racism and issues to do with race.

During the course I became aware of the woeful statistics around the over-representation of black and mixed race people in mental health care and in prisons in the UK. I was also depressed to learn that mixed race children are the ones most likely to be put up for adoption. It’s so obvious that these communities are among those being failed by mental health care practitioners and society at large but very little is done to rectify this in the counselling world. I must admit there were times when acknowledging this and the general ignorance I’ve come across in the field so far in these areas has made me wish to leave the profession but the over-riding feeling has been that actually these facts make it more important for me and others like me to be there representing a different voice and perspective and doing our best to meet the needs of our clients.

I think I’ve noticed a pattern for myself in life in general. There are times when I identify more with being black and more with being white and then times when I feel ‘mixed’. My racial identity definitely feels fluid. It’s been a long hard battle over my life resisting the perimeters others have drawn out for me with regards to race and my identity. When I was studying on the course because I detected a lot of ignorance and some real unwillingness to have open conversations and race and culture (which I experienced as oppressive) I felt more aligned with my black identity and used that to explore what being part black felt like for me in that position. The current debates around asylum seekers in the UK seem to have stoked British racism and news filters in daily from the US around the fight for black lives there. We are not immune to being failed at the hands of the police in the UK either (my family has had personal experience of that) but this seems to get less attention here. Again such issues make me feel more in touch with my black identity and like I need to stand up for issues affecting those in racial minorities.

I was just at work the other day when a colleague said to me ‘You know when you’re family came over in the past seeking asylum…’ I stopped him there. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘My family were never seeking asylum. My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force. That’s how he ended up in Britain’. Not that I have any issues at all with asylum seekers but it worries me that anyone could adopt the idea that all brown-skinned people in the country could only be here because they have been seeking refuge. I’d love to say assumptions and ignorance of this kind are not the norm but a week without racial micro-aggressions from casual conversations or some aspect of the media or life in society would probably be a week spent at home with a blindfold over my head and ear plugs in my ears. Then people wonder why when you are in a racial minority you are overly pre-occupied with race not realising the extent to which our lives is affected by it. In general the British public seems to have little knowledge about history and race in this country particularly when it comes to the British history of the colonization and slavery, and the ramifications globally of this.

Well I said I would start where I am and I guess this is where I am at the moment when it comes to being mixed race and discussions around race in general. I’m feeling pretty angry. Especially when mixed race people are being hailed as the ‘face of the future’ and evidence that people in general are less racist and more open-minded. I’m just expressing my own experience here but my experience is that people are not more open-minded and we are pretty damn far away from this mixed race utopia that everyone is talking about. I don’t think more mixed race relationships or people in the world are necessarily reducing racism and moving things forwards. I would love to be proved wrong though and I’m waiting and watching.

Nicola Codner is 34 years old and currently training to be a person-centred counsellor in Leeds, UK. She is biracial and her heritage is White British and

Black Caribbean. She has a strong interest in difference and diversity which led her into re-training as a counsellor. Prior to training as a counsellor she worked as a publisher in academic publishing. She’s keen to continue to develop my writing experience hence part of her interest in blogging. She has a degree in English Literature and Psychology.

In her spare time, she loves reading, music, art, theatre, traveling and cinema.

How Will Your Children Racially Identify Themselves

In the last six years of my marriage, my husband and I have done what we can to blend two cultures. We have asked loved ones for advice and observed to see how other interracial families did it. We wanted to glean everything we could because blending cultures has always been extremely important to us. We wanted to try and have a lot of it figured out before we had kids.

We had our first child a few days before our second year anniversary. We still had so much to learn about bringing two cultures to one family. We realized we would learn it along the way. We would learn how to blend cultures as our family grew.

We have learned so much since we were married. We’ve learned a lot about traditions, cultural expectations, where to have grace, where to give a little, but we are still pondering one thing in regards to our children. How will our children identify themselves racially?

We now have three biracial children, three little boys who are half Indian and half white. Their racial identity has come up a few times as they’ve begun to ask questions about life. My oldest son asked me why he wasn’t black like daddy or white like mommy. I had to explain to him that he’s both. He’s so special that he has a little bit of mommy and daddy in him. After that, he loved going around to people telling them that he is a little bit of mommy and daddy!

It came up again this year. My husband, kids, and I went to go and see my husband’s side of the family. Every one was excited because we had recently had another little boy. No one had met him yet and they couldn’t wait to get in some baby cuddles. When we got there, our little guy was instantly handed over. Everyone started calling him our little Indian boy. They said that he looked the most Indian out of all of our kids and deemed him the little Indian boy.

I didn’t think anything of it at first. I agreed! Out of all of our kids, he looked the most Indian. He has the sharp little nose, dark skin, and beautiful dark eyes. The more it happened, I started to realize something stood up inside of me when they said that. He isn’t just Indian. He’s white and Indian. He’s both. He’s a beautiful blend of both.

That’s when it hit me. Our children will be faced with a choice. The day will come when our children have to racially identify themselves. What will they say? Will they choose a race to simplify and avoid questions? Will they choose the race they identify with the most? Or will they say they are mixed?

Their response will depend on the way we raise them. If we allow a competition between races to occur, they will be prompted to choose one. If they are embarrassed about being different, they will choose one.

We, as their parents, shape how our children see themselves. We have to raise our children in an environment where the cultures in their lives don’t compete; rather they complement each other. You can’t try to make your culture more important than your spouse’s. We have to show them the beauty of the cultures in their lives.

We do this through hands-on experience. We make food from both cultures, although we try to make more Indian food at home because they are exposed to American food everywhere they go. We dance around in our house to Bollywood and American music. We watch movies from both cultures. Some of our favorites are Bollywood musicals because our kids copy the dance moves! We take our children to different Indian festivals in town. We take our children to art museums to learn about history. We want them to see the beauty of each culture and become passionate about them both.

Each family may have a different preference when it comes to how their children racially identify themselves. In our family, it’s very important that our children embrace both of their cultures. When the time comes and they have to racially identify themselves, we want them to proudly say, “I’m White and Indian.”

You have to talk about this as a family. How do you want your children to racially identify themselves? Do you want them to blend cultures, choose a culture, or something new? Your decision needs to shape the way you teach your children.

Brittany Muddamalle is the mother of three boys under four years old. She has been in an intercultural marriage for six years. Her and her husband are currently raising their children in American and East Indian culture. She is also the writer of The Almost Indian Wife blog. Her hope is to make a change by sharing her experiences with her own intercultural marriage and raising biracial children.

Check out her blog: The Almost Indian Wife Facebook Twitter Google+

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