The Pros and Cons of Racial Ambiguity

Nicole_Lyn sheds some light on a sensitive subject!—Sparkitors

I know what you’re thinking: “RACE IS A HOT BUTTON TOPIC! ABORT THE MISSION BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! ABANDON SHIP!” But I’m here to say that it’s okay, dear Sparklers. There’s no need to launch yourself out of your symbolic battle ships into symbolically choppy ocean waters while I’m around—I’m just cool like that. But if you must, protective headgear and life jackets are widely available in many department stores near you.

My little brothers and I are biracial, and we look more like a bunch of random kids who live in the same house as opposed to actually being siblings—the reason for this being that we’re all a different type of racially ambiguous. Are we Caucasian, African American, two-thirds American Indian? No one knows, but I’m here to tell all you wonderful people what makes that awesome. And also what makes it not so awesome, but I’ll get to that.

Pros:

-If I ever decide to be an actress, I have a much more varied selection of roles available to me than other people. Of course, I’m currently more into the writing side of artistic expression, but if I’m ever down on my luck, I could go to Hollywood and get my big break as that one awesome actress who can play any character as long as said character doesn’t have blonde hair. I’d be like the girl version of Dominic Cooper!

-We get some pretty awesome skin-tone adjectives. They sound like coffee flavors you’d find at Starbucks: mocha, cream, mulatto, amber, cinnamon, honey, caramel, maple, sun kissed . . . olive (I bet olive coffee exists somewhere). Of course, you could be a stick-in-the-mud and say "tan", but where’s the fun in that? Nowhere, that’s where.

-There aren’t any stupidly offensive stereotypes associated with it. I will personally come to your house and feed you fresh grapes while fanning you with a giant palm frond and acting out the Hunger Games for your entertainment if you can come up with one label about racial ambiguity that doesn’t involve, “Ha! I can’t tell where your ancestors were from!”

-It’s amazing when someone actually guesses your race correctly. This sounds really weird, but it’s just one of those little pleasure that we enjoy way too much for our own good. It’s like having exact change when you go to a restaurant or having someone notice that you got a haircut. It just makes you feel all happy. And happiness is good.

Cons:

-Everyone assumes I speak some other language. Believe it or not, I’m not very tech-savy. It takes me an hour to find out how to scan something, and don’t even get me started on the copier or the options menu on a TV. So when I’m out in public, you can imagine that I have to ask for help with things like that pretty often. I know it’s the employee’s job to be helpful and considerate and all, but NO I do not want you to switch the language on the screen to Spanish or Mandarin. Or anything besides English! Do you want me to be even more confused?

-People mistake me for other races. All. The. Time. This pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the first con. It just gets annoying after a while. So far, I’ve been mistaken for a white girl with a really good tan, black, Indian, American Indian, Asian, Eastern European, and pretty much every type of Spanish humanely imaginable. While I somewhat enjoy being shrouded in mystery and intrigue, the constant misconceptions about my race are almost as annoying as people thinking that my hair is a perm. It’s not.

-That awkward part of the conversation where people have to ask you what race you are. Hey look, it’s another tie-in! So right after someone mistakes me for another race and asks me if I need to talk to a multi-lingual member of the staff, this little tidbit of awkward pops up. It’s like asking someone if they’re pregnant when it turns out that they’re just “big-boned.” It’s uncomfortable for all people involved, and the situation should be avoided at all costs.

Any other biracial Sparklers have pros or cons to add to this list?

Related post: How Do You Define Racism?