I am not ashamed of checking the box next to "Other"

About race, and what its like.

Right now I have a cat laying in my lap, and she is all sorts of different colors, it makes me think about my skin color, and about how many colors are mixed inside me, the thing is unlike cats, my colors are mixed into one, not into a mixture that is shown so distinctively. My list of nationalities is Italian, Czech, French, Indian (Native American), 10% Irish, and 10% German. But in the end, my nationality is bi-racial, mixed, mulatto. The word mulatto, I have to say is not at all my favored of the names for someone of mixed races, but in the end it is usually the most used.

What I hate the most is when people say, "You are the best of both worlds" that sentence makes a person look really ignorant in my eyes. When exactly did this world split into two? When someone says that, I want to ask them..."Do you think we still have segregation or something?" I always do think back on segregation, on the fact that all over signs said "Whites only" or "Blacks only"...not only on restaurant windows, but idiotically on water fountains, and outside sitting benches. It took men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as well as so many others to fight and die to open the eyes to people and the unfairness of segregation. It seems in this One world that people have to die to create change, a sad thing, but I thank those who took on the challenge. It's slightly like Jesus' story; he knew he would have to die, to make religion of his father to become stronger, even when most of his people turned on him.

At the time of my birth, the date unneeded, there was still a hush hush hate for interracial relationships. My own grandfather disowned his oldest daughter when she married a black man. Her children my cousins were not seen as grandchildren, and when his youngest daughter my mother married my black father, my grandfather didn't disown her but I was again not a grandchild, it wasn't until my grandfather held the little body of my baby brother two and a half years later after my birth that he was actually sorry. See he never had to look or see the first three bi-racial grandchildren because we all lived in San Francisco and he lived in New York. So when my mother visited, and brought us, she took the chance of bringing us to my grandparents house, and pushed in when she wasn't welcome, and that’s when my grandfather saw me smiling at him, and my mom handed my brother into his arms, I remember even at three years old, the way my grandfathers face melted from a frown to a smile, and the tears that came into his eyes. And with that he pulled me to him and hugged me so tight with my brother still in his arms, that I almost couldn't breath. That day he owned up to his mistakes, and called my aunt his daughter that he had disowned, it was truly a day, in my life, that I can say changed my history. My grandfather, in time became my hero, God rest his soul.

As I grew up, I had to deal with the racism of being bi-racial, but in all honesty I didn't only deal with the racism from white people, no I also had to deal with racism from black people. Even with my skin looking more like their skin then of pale complexion, I still had to deal with them calling me all sorts of names, I honestly will not repeat them, because I have no need to, its the past. Those names made me stronger, because they did not push me down to the ground they wanted me so desperately to hit. One memory that will never leave me, is when a white woman came to me, so politely and asked if I was mixed. She was smiling at me, so I thought she would be nice, and I nodded my head and said yes. That’s when she became something quite different from what my first impression thought she was, her face looking completely angry, and she said something that broke my heart. "Well you are a f*cking abomination, and your parents will go to hell for creating you and any other siblings you have." Yet in the end I held it together, I just walked away with her screaming at me. Another memory was when I was in catholic school, the students mostly black, only a dot or two of white students, as well as a half of dot from me. I became friends with students, both white and black, it wasn't until one of my black friends, told me that she couldn't be my friend anymore. When I asked why, she bluntly told me, "Because my parents think its wrong that you have a white mother and black father, so they don't want me to talk to you anymore," she left then without another word, and day after day there was always silence between us. I never felt so alone. So through all this, I have to confess there have been hard times, as well as good times in my life, but I love who I am.

There is no race box for bi-racials', on different papers that ask to check a race box. The only box they have for people of mixed races, is "Other." I would check "Caucasian" and "African American" but in the directions it says only check one. So I check other, so aside from bi-racial, mixed, mulatto, there is also Other, which are the names of my race. Even so, I am not ashamed to check the box next to "Other." I check it along with Barack Obama, our president...He is NOT our first African American President, I must correct. He is our first bi-racial, mixed, mulatto, and other...President. I confess, I hate when everyone public and television say he is our first black president. I know how he feels, with me I dealt with racism from both blacks and whites, through out my life. But Obama has to deal with it, now so badly, people saying things on television, internet, as well as so many places. And I know he probably gets horrible letters too. But even with that all happening he does not quit, he wants to be the leader of our nation. He is by far one of my greatest hero's and one of my goals in life is to meet him and his family, to shake his hand, and to look into his eyes. To speak to him, and to tell him he is one of my heroes. For he and I, as well as so many others who are not at all abominations, are not ashamed to check the box next to "Other."

I love who I am.