The Problem and Privilege of Racialization

(Excerpt)

August 2018

5 MIN READ

"Fuck you, Black girl."

It was 1990, I was 10 years old, and those were the welcoming words I received from a beige-toned, dirty blonde-haired, blue-eyed and freckle-faced classmate at my high-end and hyper-evangelical college prep school when our paths intersected on the soccer field during PE class.

As some would sophisticatedly state, I was “fresh off the boat” from my parents’ homeland (where I had spent my formative years), and this incident forever colored my vision of the world.

Although my English was not operating at an optimal level then, like any good immigrant, I had done my due diligence and learned all the curse words in my newly adopted language before starting school.

So, while I knew my angry classmate shouted an expletive at me, I responded to her remark with a quizzical grimace because I could not comprehend why I was being identified by an achromatic color that did not match my skin tone. (Had my classmate consulted my Crayola Crayons set, she would have known that “Fuck you, mahogany-skinned girl” would have been the proper way to address me.) I would discover my answer nearly three decades later: racialization.

The degrading incidents I have experienced in America and abroad due to my pigmentation—the primary determinant of my perceived racial character—has only increased since that intimidating run-in with my then fifth-grade classmate, and I have learned to accept that pigmentation plus phenotypic bias and arbitrary racial tagging are a normal part of polite society in the “developed” world.

In the two decades I have floated between Boca Raton, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Washington D.C.,

I met a host of superficial strangers who were quick to assign multifarious identities to my individuality: African, African American, Afro-Latina, American, Arab American, Biracial, Black, Black American, Blasian, East African, European, European American, Frenchy, Half Asian, Mixed, Mulatto, nigger, West Indian (e.g., Cuban, Dominican, Jamaican or Puerto Rican), West African and my all-time favorite: Whitey.

Unfortunately, I was robbed of my quintessential identity crisis because I have never subscribed to the human-manufactured framework of “race” (or any race-based terms coined by strategic mortals), a stance most Homo sapiens have a challenging time accepting and are often angered by.

While I have long rejected racialization (and ethnoracialization), I consider myself color-conscious, as well as phenotype-conscious. Meaning, as a person with sight, I am well aware of how one’s epidermis, eyelid shape, eye color and hair texture impact human thought or behavior.

So, whether your body produces no melanin, a little melanin or abundant melanin (or loses melanin), whether you were born with a single- or double-lidded eye shape, or whether you possess ample disulfide bonds (generating curly- or coily-textured hair) versus fewer disulfide bonds (generating straight-textured hair), I believe you will be judged and treated in a negative and/or positive manner when engaging in everyday errands from seeking a job to securing a romantic relationship, because these visible, non-living properties are regarded as desirable by some, and disgusting by others.

As a young girl, I intuitively opted out of the imaginary race doctrine that supported satan’s goal for humanity: deceive, degrade, dehumanize, divide and destroy.

To this day, I am perplexed by the reality that millions of beige-skinned humans in the Segregated States of America religiously rely on a lie to lazily police my preferences (i.e. musical, political, etc.), assess my character and determine my worth on a daily basis, for decades.

In other words, a make-believe race crafted by numerous beige-skinned men—e.g., François Bernier, Carl Linnaeus, Christoph Meiner, Johann Blumenbach, etc.—is what most beige-skinned persons I’ve met use to confirm that I’m inwardly subhuman, incompetent and/or unattractive.

By the time I started high school, I was wise enough to realize that the well-liked race doctrine was a visibly flawed, profoundly fluid and epic failure of a system.

On the matter of failure, this “perfect” system has damaged our humanity by slathering a slew of inequalities and inequities into our institutions, systems and communities.

(Do you honestly believe this system is working out well for all of us in this “civilized” century and this supposedly “Christian” country?)

On the matter of (universal) fluidity and flaws, let’s look at a phenotypical portrait of my acquaintance Gilles.

Gilles’ phenotype resembles that of athlete Christian McCaffrey.

Picture a beige-toned, pointed-nosed, straight blonde-haired and blue-eyed male who was born and raised in my homeland, and whose family roots can be traced back to the (constructed) African and European continents.

Like me, Gilles speaks several languages.

Unlike me, he proudly racializes as “Black,” which is acceptable in my homeland.

However, if Gilles visited the United States, all of my brown- and beige-skinned peers would claim him as a member of a “White race,” because upon scanning his skin, they would conclude his epidermis bore no sign of brownness.

So, from their “superior” perspective, Gilles would be societally racialized as “White,” which comes with a set of American-branded assumptions and advantages.

In the illusory, anything-goes race model, Gilles’ self-racialization as “Black” is perfectly acceptable, as is the “White” racialization provided by my peers.

The problem is that my peers believe they possess a divinely mandated right to assign a “valid” race-based tag to a non-American (or American) national, and so consequently, this superficial classification of others routinely trumps an individual’s perception of themselves, thereby generating a foreign identification system that may not necessarily gel with Gilles’ native identification system.

(For example, I grew up in a brown-skinned country, so my complexion was normalized since childhood, whereas my skin color was not—and may never be—normalized in America. In America, I’m typically considered subhuman, a “Black” thing, ugly/unattractive, dumb, violent, etc. Whereas in my homeland, I’m typically considered human, darker-skinned, beautiful, intelligent, pleasant, etc. Balancing two superficial identification systems proved to be problematic for me in the States, as I’m constantly defending my humanity to beige-skinned persons who continue to pledge allegiance to the pseudo-science of pale-skinned men.)

Now, let’s look at Kiran, whose phenotype matches that of actress Freida Pinto.

Kiran is an American national who grew up in India, Kenya, and the United States and can claim a minimum of 10 ethnoracial markers including “African American.” However, my acquaintances would strictly peg Kiran as “Indian” based on name, skin tone, nose shape, hair texture and her parents’ birthplace.

Again, Kiran’s right to self-identify is irrelevant in the Land of the Free and the Fearful, because realistically speaking, how a beige-skinned society claims you is what ultimately counts in the fictional and futile war to determine who deserves access to dignity, amongst other commodities.

It seems that in America, the power of naming truly belongs to those who do not believe in the freedom of choice when it concerns self-description.

I have witnessed such egocentric thinking in action, mostly with beige-skinned humans whom I have had the displeasure of meeting; their determined unwillingness to refrain from tagging me with a meaningless (ethno)race, while declining my birthright to self-identify as I please is baffling at best, and worrisome at worst.