Colored Like Me

The concept of “race” is something I've found myself reflecting on quite a bit while in South Africa. I mean, how could I not? “Race”-based segregation that seperated Blacks, Whites, Asians, Indians, and Coloreds (people of mixed-heritage) ended less than twenty years ago. I keep putting “race” in quotation marks because the simple notion that there is more than one race in itself perpetuates the same type of thinking that has been responsible for many atrocities throughout human history.When I was younger, my education told me that racial categories were concrete, and that those categories carried with them languages, customs, and traditions. But in terms of how race is usually utilized, the only thing people infer from one's racial identity are ability, intelligence, and 'civility' of different groups.

I've heard the word “Caucasian” used a few times on this trip to describe White people, and it triggers me. According to 19^th century anthropologist Blumenbach, White people originated in the Caucus region and are considered the most beautiful, intelligent, and superior race. The Caucus region was also fabled to be the birthplace of mankind even though we know that the human race originated in Africa. There were also sub-racial groups within each of these categories. In fact, according to Blumenbach, the white race included Egyptians and other north Africans, known as the Hamitic race. You may be saying to yourself "why is this a bad thing, he's saying that some Africans were as superior as whites?" Well, the Hamitic race was added as a sub-group mostly to explain the great historical civilizations of Arabia and Egypt. Blumenbach needed a way to separate "good and intelligent" Black people(Hamitics) from he viewed as the animalistic Black people of southern Africa(Negroids).

How has this way of thinking impacted our lives? Colonialism, slavery, the holocaust, Apartheid all seem to come to mind. Blumenbach's work still echoes today. Genocides, racial purity, race wars, racism, and the imaginary notion of reverse racism are especially prevalent amongst the current debate about the Black Economic Empowerment Act in South Africa and immigration in the States. And while the race may not be a scientific or medical truth, discrimination based on race is a very real truth.

All of this emphasis on race makes me reflect on my own racial identity. My ethnic identity is Italian, Jamaican, and Indian, but I've always called myself brown in terms of race. Jamaica is made up several different ethnic groups. While 90% of the population is Black (African in origin resulting from the slave trade), there are also substantial White, Indian, Chinese, and Arawak populations on the island. After slavery was abolished on the British island, there were huge amounts of indentured servants brought over from the other British colonies and protectorates. Chinese and Indian workers would finish their mandatory years of servitude and then set up families and communities of their own. These lines and separated communities have continued over the decades resulting in only 7% of Jamaica being multi-ethnic. So apparently my father's mother was black but his father was Indian.

Why does any of this matter? Well as someone who has constantly felt lost in their ethnic identity and having very few mirrors in my family to identify with, I have always found some refuge in being knowledgeable about why I look the way I look. Why my skin is an ambiguous brown instead of a clearer shade of definitely this or that. Why people will forever ask me "what are you?" Why the texture of my hair comes as a surprise. Being in mono-racial spaces makes me uneasy at times. With the participants on this trip seem somewhat segregated by race, and I feel forced to be two different people in one space versus the other, rather than my whole self in both spaces.

So when the little girl from the community project asked me if I was Colored, all I could do was say “yes.” I wonder what it would be like to have a brown community to relate to. Although racial segregation is a terrible travesty, imagine if the Colored category existed as a community in the States. I have to admit, it would be so wonderful if I could be my full self instead of having to float in three racially divided worlds.