What it's like to be Ethiopian/Norwegian/French

My mother is Ethiopian and my father is a white American of mostly Norwegian and French descent. All my life, strangers would approach me to ask what my ethnicity or race is. I sometimes enjoyed the attention, because it made me feel unique or interesting, but sometimes I found it annoying because I wondered if people needed to fit me in a box with a clear label so they could make their assumptions about who I am based on whichever ethnicity I happened to be. A great many people are overtly racist, but many people are just holding on to stereotypes because that's all they know. They are uncomfortable not being able to "read" someone just by looking at them.

One of the questions I used to get was "Why don't you look black?" It is common knowledge that darker skin tones, dark eyes and dark or curly hair are dominant genetically, as are non-Caucasian features, so most children of white and black parents (or white and Asian/Latino/etc.) wind up with the dominant features. Makes sense, since evolution would favor darker skin/eyes/hair for its protective benefits. I did have dark, curly hair growing up, but my skin was naturally light and I would easily tan in the sun. I never got sunburned. Thanks, Mom! But I looked white next to my mom, so sometimes we would get stared at wherever we went. As a teenager, I milked the attention in stores by purposely saying "Hey Mom!" loud enough to witness the confused eyes of everyone within earshot glance back and forth between me and my mother.

My mom gave me my birth certificate when I turned 18 years old, and I noticed it had "Caucasian" listed as the race/ethnicity of both my parents. I was baffled. I was born in the South in 1975. There's no way the hospital staff didn't notice the African woman with the white husband!

When I was a child I remember the first time I watched a talk show and some idiot was going on about why "the races shouldn't mix", and I was astonished to hear someone have a negative opinion. I (thankfully) did not grow up in the South, as we moved to Minnesota by the time I was 4, so I'd been spared the racist dogma up until that show. These white people were up in arms, claiming it "confuses" the children to be "mullatto"and blah, blah, blah. The only thing that was confusing to me was why they'd be angry about human beings loving each other. Ugh.

 I took some anthropology courses in college and came upon an article discussing why East Africans (Ethiopians, Somalians) tend to have "Caucasian" features. It went in depth about Ethiopian genetics and I found it difficult to understand as I don't have a degree in biology or anything like that, but it basically said something about how most Ethiopians have a high percentage of Caucasian genes linked to Norwegians, Jews, and Armenians. So does that explain my birth certificate?

I found this YouTube Video and I was like, "I'm not alone!" Other than my siblings, I've never met another person like me.

Being a person of both white and black parents has given me a unique perspective on race relations. I understand what it's like to be both white and black in America. I have witnessed overt racism firsthand with my mother, but the racism I have had to deal with was more covert. I may not be followed in a store being suspected of theft for no damn reason, but there have been many people who've started treating me differently once they find out what my ethnicity is. I've also been dealt the "race card" by black people who didn't know they were talking to someone who was half black herself. White people were the worst with the Ethiopian jokes back in the 1980s, giving me reason to think all white people were idiots at one point.

I don't consider myself white or black; I'm my own color. I'm kind of tan, but not really, unless I spend the day in the sun. My husband has said that I look white, but you can tell there's "something else" there. When I was younger, when someone asked me what my race was, I got to a point where I would ask them what they think because I was curious. When I wore my hair curly I mostly heard "Hispanic?", but as soon as I started straightening it I heard everything from Eastern European to Greek to Brazilian.

So if I ever meet you, please, for the love of all that is good in the world, if I ask you if you've ever had Ethiopian food, don't answer with "I didn't know they had food!" Yes, I have heard this.