I found this post in my Facebook news feed this morning: 12 Things You Should Never Say to a Mixed Person. The article is from Cosmo, so it isn’t exactly deep. Nevertheless, I read it. At first, I was annoyed with the implication that I am supposed to feel uncomfortable or insulted when people say these things to me – and I hear them a lot. But as I read, I grinned at the memory of some of the times these lines have been said to me – and the confusion or embarrassment of the speaker when I neither agreed nor argued with their statement, but said simply, “I’m both. Like you, I don’t belong to one of my parents or the other.” That’s when the true meaning of the article’s title dawned on me: it isn’t a dozen statements to avoid because they make someone else feel bad, rather it’s providing advice to the ignorant on how to avoid exposing themselves!
This morning, I am grateful for being “other” on all those forms that require me to choose one race or another. I find laughter in the jellybean diversity exercise instructor struggling to figure out how I could play and end up with the correct number of jellybeans in my cup. I am thankful for the freedom my genetic diversity provides from the narrowness of race-bound categorization. And I appreciate the fact that there isn’t a set mold I am “supposed” to fit into. I am grateful for the ability to just be me.