In Mixed-Race Kids, America Sees Black

America may finally give me a choice.

America may finally give my sister, cousins and some of my friends a choice. America is going to let all people of mixed-race parentage a chance to identify all of the races that compose them. Recently, a Clinton administration panel rejected a campaign to include a category of “multiracial” to the 2000 Census but did recommend that the government allow Americans of mixed race to check off more than one racial category.

This decision won’t make a difference for me, however, because if you have black blood, America says that you are black. You can’t be anything else. You are treated and spoken to as if you are black. In essence, you have no choice to be multiracial because America decides for you. And America decides that you are black.

America has told me since I was 6 years old what race I was. The older boy at the local playground didn’t let me choose. He saw my darker skin and curly hair and let me know that I was black. He was angry to see that I had taken over his vacated spot on a swing and called me the n-word. I understood what the word meant, but I never thought that I could be called one. I understood that my father was black and my mother white, but I had never thought of myself as one or the other. It didn’t matter to me and I thought that it didn’t matter to anyone else. How wrong I was. In just a few moments, a little white boy used a word borrowed from his parents to turn my world upside down. In his eyes, I wasn’t white or mixed or anything but black. And I would learn quickly that America’s eyes saw exactly what that little boy saw.

America didn’t give me a choice in school. I was black there, too. I was expected to be an authority on a black issues ranging from Malcolm X to how South-Central blacks felt before and after the L.A. riots.

Teachers weren’t the only ones in school who didn’t give me a choice. Classmates would begin a joke about black people with a “no offense.” At parties, the black girl was pointed out to me as a likely prospect to dance with.

Through the years, it became clear to me that white America saw me as a black man and nothing else. In local stores, I would catch the eyes of suspicious storekeepers peering over the aisles at me just waiting for me to slide something into my pocket or stuff something under my shirt. I was black to them and I was supposed to act out their stereotypical image of a black man as a criminal always looking for something to steal. I would be asked if I wanted to check my bag at the front counter as other customers weren’t questioned at all.

The police certainly never let me choose who I was. They saw a black man driving in a white neighborhood and were sure that I didn’t belong. But now it appears as if I may have a choice and the only question is whether I will exercise it after 22 years of being told that I am black. I haven’t decided yet and I probably won’t until the boxes for white and black stare me down. I do know that it is going to feel strange to exercise a choice that I don’t really have.