I got my DNA tested!

After years of wondering where  I came from, wondering if  I really belong, wondering who I actually am, I decided to take a DNA test from Ancestry.com. A friend of mine had come to visit me at my job and she's been pressuring me to take the test for some time. So during the holidays Ancestry.com had a sale on DNA kits and I ordered one. I can't remember how long it took for the test to make it to me, but I was super excited to take it.

The mailman left the test in my mailbox and I literally squealed when I found it. Now, when you take the test you have to wait at least 30 after eating or drinking anything. Luckily, I hadn't had anything for about an hour and was able to take the test right away. 

I opened the box and found this ancestryDNA packet inside with instructions to register the test before actually taking the test. This way Ancestry could send the correct results to me. The company even gives you the option to link it to a tree on the site. When you open the kit, there is a tube that you have to spit in. It's only about a tablespoon of spit, but it took me a couple of tries to fill the vile up to the line. After you fill it, you put a top on it and then you shake it a bit before packaging it up in the pre-addressed box to mail back to Ancestry. 

Waiting for my test results was the longest couple of weeks of my life. I mailed the kit in around the 14th of December and Ancestry started processing it on December 28. A little over a week after processing began, my DNA results were back. Now, I jokingly told my mom that if my results didn't have anything from Africa, she would have some explaining to do. She said, "I'm not explaining anything." Luckily, when my results came back, she didn't have to explain anything.

I knew there would be an overwhelming abundance of British Isles in my DNA. What I wasn't sure of was how much African ancestry I would have, or where that DNA would come from. Finding out that 19% of my DNA comes from Nigeria was kind of an anchoring moment for me. All my life I've been trying to figure out who I am, trying to see if my biology matched what I was raised believing. Seeing Nigeria, Ivory Coast/Ghana, Benin/Togo and other African nations in my DNA helped me no longer feel like I was a Rachel Dolezal-type person. I wasn't faking my heritage. I wasn't a "Mama's baby, Daddy's maybe" like I'd been jokingly told as a child. I wasn't just my siblings "White sister". 

Getting these DNA results did something that 35 years of life experience couldn't do-- helped me feel more centered and like I know who I am. The results gave me a sense of belonging that I've been searching for my entire life. I think I'm starting to find my own identity in a world that wants me to fit their mold.

*This post was NOT sponsored by Ancestry.com

Growing Up Biracial in a World that Wants Me to "Pick One"

Growing up, my parents and siblings had very different ways to describe me. If you had asked my Dad, he wouldn't hesitate to tell you I was his "cream colored" child. His very light-skinned daughter. My siblings would tell their friends that I was their "White Sister", and my mom would always tell people I was biracial. Growing up, I thought everyone had a family like mine-- a black father, a white mother and two black siblings with a different mom. I thought everyone had a "black side of the family" and had a Granny who was the neighborhood candy lady selling Lillie Dillies for 25 cents. (For those of you who don't know what a Lillie Dilly is, it's a wonderful dixie cup filled with frozen Kool-aid.)

As I got older, I realized that not every family was this way. My cousins didn't count in my mind because they all had at least one black/white relative through my parents. I honestly thought every family had at least one black or white relative. Once I realized not every family was like mine, I started paying close attention to every family around us. I started paying closer attention to reactions from kids on the playground, adults at the mall, and I didn't understand what I was seeing.

Other kids had families that, for lack of a better word, matched. Mine didn't. Other kids knew where they came from, who they were and seemed to have a better grip on their individuality. I didn't. I grew up confused and wondering where I actually fit in this world.

I went to a predominately white school for 13 years. (12 at one school, 1 at another). I was lucky to get the education I did because my family couldn't really afford the school I attended. I was able to go tuition free because my dad worked there. My graduating class had 73 students at the time we graduated and there were a total of 2 black kids, and that's only if you added me and another biracial girl together. So finding my own identity was not an easy task to attempt during high school. It wasn't an easy thing in college either.

One of the most difficult things I've had to do is fill out forms that demand I chose a race. From forms for school, employment, even the US Census, I've had to try to choose what race with which to align myself. Every time a form said to pick one, my insides were screaming at me to not deny the other part of me. I had a difficult time trying to rectify my desire to check all that applied and listening to the instructions given me. Worse were the times people tried to convince me to pick "Other". Oh, how I loathe that option. In my opinion, "other" meant not human. "Other" meant not worth having a true classification-- not worthy of being. I refused to be an "other", but what could I mark on those forms. I had taken to marking both Caucasian and African America, but  I wonder how often my choice was accepted by the form takers. Did the census list me correctly, did my refusal to bow to the pressure to choose one or other cause my results to not be tabulated? Did my desire to choose my own classifications keep me from positions?

The answer is. . . I don't know. I do know that even now, I'm still trying to fight for the ability to accurately depict my race/ethnicity. The county I work for will not allow biracial as an option. I have to pick between my white side and my black side or other. Since I refuse to be an other and they won't let me leave it blank, I've picked African American, for now. I'll keep fighting until I make them understand, make them actually hear me.

I'll leave you with this powerful set of lyrics from the musical Ragtime. Sung by Brian Stokes Mitchell, the song is called Make Them Hear You. 

"And say to those who blame us

For the way we chose to fight

That sometimes there are battles

That are more than black or white...

And I could not put down my sword

When justice was my right

Make them hear you

Go out and tell our story

To your daughters and your sons

Make them hear you

Make them hear you"

"Should You Exist?"

*originally posted 11/12/2012 on a blog I have since merged into this one.*

I recently had someone ask me, "Do you think your parents shouldn't have married and had you?" I looked at this person and quickly exclaimed, "You can't ask me that! That's like asking me if I think I should be allowed to exist!!" See, this friend only saw the romantic ideas about interracial dating and relationships. She was looking at how cool it is to date outside your race and how it would be different from what her family expected. She was not looking at it from the perspective of a potential child in that situation. She wasn't looking at it from MY eyes.

After a few moments of a stony silence, I started talking again. I was brutally honest. I sat there and I flat out told her the good, the bad and the VERY VERY ugly moments that can happen in a multiracial family.

So I told her that sometimes I did wish my parents were the same race. She looked at me like I had grown a second head. I told her how I was 8 before I heard or met someone else who had a white mom and a black dad. I told her of the loneliness I had because I didn't know anyone like me. I told her how it felt to go to the park and have kids call me "Zebra" and "Oreo" when they saw my family together. I told her about children being taught to hate at young ages who would call me a "white n*****". I told her about friends who were allowed to play with me one day and not the other. I laid it all out there for her to see.

I also told her about the time I was walking home from a friends house when I was probably 10 or 11 years old. Our street had been under construction (I think they were getting ready to pave it) and I saw a "MISSING CHILD" sign on the barricade to my street. My parents had always taught me to look at the missing children posters and see if it's a kid I knew, so I walked up to the sign to read it. The words on that sign have haunted me ever since. I can't look at those posters the same anymore because in the back of my mind, I'm terrified it will be the same racist message I found as a child. On the poster was a little blond headed, blue eyed boy and the caption said, "MISSING: THIS CHILD'S HOPE FOR A FUTURE. BECAUSE OUR WHITE WOMEN KEEP MARRYING BLACK MEN." I remember crying as I tore that poster off the barricade and going home to talk with my mom. That moment has always lingered in my memory.

 Looking back at it now that I'm an adult, I have come to realize that whoever placed that sign on the barricade to my street had to have known my family lived there. It would be way too much of a coincidence that the only sign I saw with that message was on the barricade to my street when there were multiple barricades in the neighborhood. 

I told her of random people looking at me and flat out asking me, "WHAT ARE YOU?!" and knowing "human female" was not the answer they wanted. Of people who ask me to check for bumps on the base of my skull and people trying to figure me out. Teachers who flat out called me a "mulatto" to my face. I have had to deal with people thinking they could say all they want to me because I didn't fit what they wanted me to be.

All my life I have been forced to defend my right to be on this planet. I have been forced to accept how people want to identify me. I have been pigeon-held into forms that tell me that I have to only "pick one" race when there are multiple races inside me. By filling out forms they want me to, I have been forced to try to smother half of me-- to pretend that part of me doesn't exist. To hide who I am, to hide my family from the world. 

I was ecstatic when in 2000 the census forms allowed me to mark more than one option to finally be allowed to define myself as I am an not try to fit someone else's mold. I could finally define myself. Then I learned that how I fill out a form is still subject to how someone else decides to interpret the form. Just because I make both Caucasian and African American, it doesn't mean the form will be read that way. Whoever enters the data has the final say.

I'm still fighting this battle. Now it's with the Human Resources. In a county where multiracial people are EVERYWHERE, I still can't get HR to add a category for us. When I looked at my Human Resources profile, I was disappointed to see that they marked "WHITE" for my race. I am not just a White woman. I am also a BLACK woman. I am a beautiful combination of two races and when I tried to get them to change what they had on my file, my options were: 1-have them mark me down as being BLACK only, 2-- leave it as WHITE or 3-- have HR change my ethnicity to OTHER.

I AM NOT AN OTHER!!!!!  I am a human being. I'm not some ET looking, Star Trek turtle shell wearing humanoid from the Klingon Empire. I am a BIRACIAL woman who should be able to identify myself they way I choose. 

When I asked HR why they were unable to identify me the way I identify myself, they told me that they couldn't make a new category in the system. A new category? Interracial marriage has been legal in all 50 states since 1967 when the Supreme Court brought down the decision in Loving v. Virgina (388 U.S. 1) reversing years of laws against multiracial marriages. So, if interracial marriages have been completely LEGAL since 1967,then why in 2010 was I told that the system couldn't create a new category for those of us who identify as multiple races?! Oddly enough, marriages often produce children. It's not like I'm the first multiracial person to walk the planet. I can't be the only one to question this policy.

I know it looks like I'm angry and hate being multiracial, but I don't. I love being unique and I love both of my families very much. I wouldn't change being multiracial for anything in the world. I can't imagine just having one race in my family, one kind of blood in my veins. I couldn't chose a better family to be a part of and I know that if both my parents were the same race, I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't exist. Sure my parents may have had children with different spouses, but none of those children would have been me. So, would I change anything. NO. Not for all the money, prestige and material possessions in this world. I love who I am. The things I dealt with growing up made me the woman I am today. I wouldn't change them at all. 

Also, I acknowledge that multiracial children growing up today won't face the same things multiracial children did in the 1980's and 1990's. Multiracial children are much more abundant now. I see so many kids on a daily basis who are multiracial it fills my heart. Those kids will grow up with each other and know that they are not alone in the world. They will have amazing support systems and other people they can relate to. They are growing up in a changed world. They will have other issues to deal with that I didn't deal with as a kid, but this one-- being multiracial in a mono-racial world is not something they will suffer through. 

So if you ask me if I would recommend an interracial relationship, I'll be the first one to say YES! Maybe it's selfish. I mean if I said no, I would be telling the world that I shouldn't exist. Dating or marrying someone of a different race than yourself is not something to take lightly. Both partners need to sit down and figure out if it's something they can handle. It won't be all sunshine and roses. Being in an interracial family is hard work. You'll have people who hate you just because your family isn't mono-racial. You can and probably will hear harsh words and see things that you wouldn't want to see. The children may have a rough road ahead, but your family will be stronger. 

I DESERVE TO BE ABLE TO EXIST!

"You Brought Me the Wrong Baby"

The first words I ever "heard" from my Aunt Frog were "You brought me the wrong baby!" Probably not the best words a infant should hear from a relative, even if she couldn't understand what that meant. In June 1982, my aunt came to visit my mother and me in the hospital. I'm not sure exactly how old I was at the time but I was probably a few days old. Mom had gone through the trauma of a cesarean and a stroke so she wasn't really coherent when her little sister came to visit.

When Aunt Frog asked to see the Puckett baby, she was not expecting me. When the nurse brought me out to her she looked at me and said, “You brought me the wrong baby. I’m here for the black baby.” Apparently at the time I was born, there were NO black babies at St. Mary’s Medical Center. My aunt had automatically assumed that since my father was black, I would be also. However, the paleness of my mother was a little bit stronger than the dark hues of my father.

"You brought me the wrong baby!" Even though it was many years after Aunt Frog uttered those words and even though I know I didn't understand them when she said them, that's how I have felt off and on my whole life. I've always been "trapped" between two worlds and not really sure how to get them to mesh together. I could be one way with my dad's family, but another with my mom's. As a kid it was really confusing for me. It still is.

I always felt like the "wrong" person. I didn't feel like I could be myself. I wanted to fit in and being biracial really wasn't the way to go back in the 80's and 90's. It wasn't until recently that I have started to feel like both sides of me are being to merge into WHO I am.

More to come. . .