Being Different

One major adversity I faced in life was simply being different from everyone else. I struggled with my identity because of my race. What was I? Where did my roots come from? Am I black? Am I white? Am I Indian?Let’s start from the very beginning. My parents are West Indian from the Island of Trinidad and Tobago. My dad is French Creole and white but on his birth certificate his was race was labeled Negroid. My mother is West Indian, which means her roots come from India.Being from the Caribbean, you are already considered a melting pot. When I was younger we lived in Brooklyn, New York, where you were embraced by many cultures and races. I blended in well! Not one soul looked at me but not one soul questioned where I was from, or what race I was.It wasn’t until I was 14, when we moved from the city to the Lone Star State, Texas that I felt different. I thought when we moved here everything was going to be perfect. New state, new friends, and new environment. I was wrong.When we moved here I was faced with racism and stereotypes. The main question I always got was, “What are you?” Are you Mexican? Wait you look Puerto Rican. No, you look Indian. Even in my own race I faced adversity. The black people would say you can’t be black because you have “good hair” and the white people would say you don’t look white, you are too dark. Even in the Indian communities, some people wouldn’t acknowledge me because I had both white and black in me. I wasn’t 100% Indian. That is when I started to become insecure about what I was.When I would tell my parents my concerns, they did what any other parent would do. They hugged me and told me the next time someone said something about my race to tell then I as a human being. I knew my parents meant well but that didn’t change the way I felt. I still had to face this cruel world every day.At the age of 17, I met a girl who was very similar to me. She was from the islands and also had a very diverse background. It was her that helped me overcome my insecurities. She told me being different is beautiful and I should embraced that melanin skin and that long, beautiful, curly hair. She said, “You were born to stand out; not be the norm.” That helped me through the most crucial years from adolescence to adulthood.Even with this new confidence and self-awareness, there’s one challenge I still face: marking my race on forms. Well, which box do I check? I can technically check more than one box. But they say you can only check one. Why did they have to remove the “other” box? That would have made life easier for me.I check “black” because that was the race I can be more identified as. Because my dad’s mother passed away when he was a baby, I didn’t get a chance to meet the white side of his family. So I was surrounded with many of my dad’s paternal side: the black side. Culturally, that’s what I am. The food I eat, the music I listen to, the experiences I’ve had.I think back to that melting pot in 1980s Brooklyn. For just a moment, before I moved to Texas, I was allowed to just be a human being without classifications and limitations. I remember how their words of comfort sometimes did nothing to make me feel better. And now, as a mother, I’m faced with having those same conversations with my kids. But that’s another story for another day.