I never chose my race, other people did it for me

By Mariah Davis

Mariah Davis

They said: "The only thing black about you Mariah is your hair. Other than that, you're white."

Growing up, I didn’t realize that there was anything strange about me. I thought it was entirely normal for a person to have a one black parent and one white parent. I didn’t see any differences in color. My skin could have been covered in purple sparkles and I’d have thought nothing of it.

My parents always explained to me that my dad is black and my mother is white and they encouraged me to identify as being only black. I didn’t care at all what that meant except for the fact that black girls have a lot of trouble with their hair. My dad would braid it up and put it in twists with the adorable little hair ties with little round balls at the ends. That’s the only difference I saw between white and black people.

Since I was home-schooled, my mother, who was white, tried very hard to teach me I was black. She’d show me Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and all sorts of other black public figures. I figured race was a part of the past and nobody cared if you were black or white now. Why did everyone make such a big deal about me being black? How come whenever I got a Barbie doll from my mother’s relatives, I always got the black girl? Could I get the blonde Barbie just once?

When I was in fourth grade, I started going to a charter school. All of the kids teased me for my wildly curly hair. I just couldn’t figure out how to keep it under control. They would call me “Bozo the Afro Clown” and would complain that my “hair was too big” when they had to sit behind me in class.

One day in sixth grade, I finally told my parents that I didn’t want to go to school anymore because the kids kept teasing me about my hair. “That’s racist,” my mother said.

I was confused. The students were teasing me about my hair, not my race. But according to my parents, my hair is a part of my heritage. It’s a part of being black.

After that, I started relaxing my hair. My hair would look straight for a couple of weeks, but after that it would be overly dry and damaged. I just wanted my hair to be as easy to manage as all my friends’ hair. I would beg my mother to buy me a new hair product every time we went shopping.

In eighth grade, I got the most amazing hair product ever created: A hot-iron hair straightener. My father was not pleased. He told me I needed to embrace my black hair, and I’d never have hair like all of the white kids I hung out with. But that didn’t keep me from trying. I became addicted to the straightener.

In the middle of ninth grade, my family moved from suburban Shoreview to St. Paul. I transferred to Arlington High School, a school with significantly fewer white kids, and more black and mixed-raced kids than I’d known before. The kids would make fun of me for things harder to change than my hair – my light skin, my suburban accent, my mostly Asian and white friends, and my punk style. They thought I acted like a white kid.

People would ask me “Are you Hispanic?” or “Are you Native American?” which I am on my father’s side, and they’d always be surprised when I said I am black. They said: “The only thing black about you Mariah is your hair. Other than that, you’re white.”

My parents had taught me all my life that I was black, but now, I was white. I felt bad, like I wasn’t representing both of my races. My friends would call me “white girl” and I’d shake it off and laugh.

I’ve learned to embrace the fact that my blood is all the colors of the rainbow. My friends and I make jokes about me being mixed. During Black History Month, I asked my friends if I’m allowed to celebrate the entire month or just half? They told me I don’t even get to celebrate that much. I have to stop at the sixth day because my skin is too light.

I joke that I’m so mixed, I’d have to date someone half-Asian and half-Hispanic to manage to date outside my race. And I should marry someone of that racial mix so my kids can be “blended like a berry blast smoothie.”

In my senior year, it seems like every day has been filled with college and scholarship applications. Almost every form I’ve filled out has asked for my race. I don’t mind it that much when I can check more than one box, but I still can’t stand it when I’m asked which race I identify most with. One time I was so annoyed with that question I wrote down “******* rainbow!”

Obviously, I didn’t submit my application with that included, but on one level, I really wanted to.

I identify with all of my races equally to the point that I don’t feel like I have a race anymore: I’m what the future will look like when we learn to cross our boundaries.