On Being an Other…
I have never fit in.
I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to identify with most people on a personal level. I get along best with elderly people, with whom I share many common interests. I get along with children, with whom I share many common interests. It’s basically hit or miss with anyone else.
I think the root of this is that I don’t enjoy sitting around and talking about other people.
It bothers me.
That judgment and that criticism and that harshness and stereotyping just hurts my heart to hear. I speak up when I hear it, but I honestly just steer clear of people most of the time so that I don’t have to even be around it.
Why is it that people feel the need to categorize others based on physical characteristics? It is commonly accepted that people of different skin tones, hair colors/types, or facial features are different “races”. This, to me, is a completely absurd idea. Yet, most people accept this as fact – without a second thought.
The simplest definition of “race”: a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.
If this is true, then there should be millions of additionally recognized human “races”. Every new birth would have the potential for the creation of a new race. Every single person could say that s/he belongs to multiple races, because, if we are grouped by heredity, then we should try to include all of our heredity, right?
Surely that definition is a joke? In reality, we are only grouped by the parts of our heredity which can be seen or analyzed by others.
It is only in the human species that members are classified not by actual genetic makeup, but by how we appear to those administering the classifications.
What makes even less sense about these classifications is that somehow nationality and “race” have become intertwined. I don’t understand how a person can claim to be of a particular nationality when s/he was not born in the country, has never visited the country, and has limited or no knowledge of the cultures of the country. It makes absolutely no logical sense for a person to list a generalized physical characteristic as his or her “nationality”.
My race is human.
My nationality is North American.
My ethnicity is Californian, and now Washingtonian.
My ancestors came from all over the world.
I am average height and weight, my hair is dark and curly, my eyes are large, my smile is wide and frequently seen, and my nose is rounded. My skin, though, my Skin has a decidedly honey-ish brown tint to it.
It’s never mattered who I am, who I want to be, what I like, what I do.
The only thing remarkable about me, or so you’d be led to believe by people who refer to me as “that black girl”, is that I happen to look a certain way. I never quite understood what people were talking about, or why they were talking about it. I usually just felt ashamed when someone would say something like that.
Apparently, though, my skin is my most important feature. As a child I was described by people as “African-American” or “black”, told to “go back to Africa” and denoted mainly by my purported “heritage”.
What heritage were they referring to? Did they know something about me that I didn’t know? Why was this identifier the most important thing about me, the only thing that people would recognize me by?
I do not have any language, traditions, oral history, or recipes from my ancestors who originated in Africa.
I not have have any language, traditions, oral history, or recipes from my ancestors who originated in the Americas, Asia, Europe, or the Middle East, either.
I wish I did.
I would love to know and experience those cultures of my ancestors who landed in North America so many generations ago. But, they did not cherish or save their cultures.
Probably because we, as humans, like to make people feel ashamed of their cultures.
The only thing that is always passed down is hatred, baseless bias, and meaningless associations.
These are the things that people celebrate.
This is a contradiction in this supposedly enlightened and progressive society we live in, but nobody questions it.
On standardized tests and official documents, there is always a section about “race”.
As a child, I was supposed to fill in the bubble corresponding to the “ethnic group” I most closely identified with. There was no “Californian”, there was no “North American”, there was no “person who experiences many cultures and embraces them all regardless of their differences” bubble; there was no “silly girl who laughs and listens and watches and thinks and sings and dances and writes and reads and learns and understands and smiles and hugs and loves and doesn’t care what you look like and who wants to be judged by her character, not her looks”. There was, however, an “Other” bubble.
I am an Other.