Sometimes, the way that people speak about interracial children makes me feel as though the blood within my veins is actually some sinister potion. It reminds me of the mixture that the three witches brew in Macbeth, a "hell-broth" (IV.i.19) composed of repulsive ingredients that bubbles grotesquely. I am reminded of the bui doi (bụi đời), the children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers in Vietnam conceived during the long "military intervention." The term bui doi literally translates to "living dust," an idea that acts as an allegory for the experiences of many interracial children. We float in the air, but we are not a part of the sky, and we look like earth, but we do not belong to the earth. We continuously struggle to find a place to belong.
This sense of internal diaspora was intensified for me last week when I read about a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license for an interracial couple. The story was addressed in a blog co-edited by a professor in my cultural studies program, Kari Lerum, entitled "Sexuality & Society." The judge refused to marry the interracial couple on the grounds that any children they produced would suffer because he or she would assuredly be shunned by both of the racial communities to which the parents belong. "I'm not a racist," the justice said, "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else" (Foster).
While Lerum focuses on the broader implications of the occurrence for the same-sex marriage movement, and Dworkin, the other editor of "Sexuality & Society," examines the history of anti-miscegenation laws in a later post, the question that I am most concerned with is how people the public statements made by people in positions of authority, such as this justice of the peace, affect how interracial children are treated. Having grown up as a fair-skinned Latina of half-Irish, half-Chilean ancestry, I remember continuously being asked "what I was," as if having physical characteristics that are not easily tied to a single race, such as green eyes, somehow made me less than human. The question was never "who" but "what." Many people, not just children, are confused by their interracial associates, yet interracial people should not have to shoulder the responsibility of giving a summary of Cultural Pluralism 101 seven times a day. This treatment can be a cause of intense anger, such as that expressed by Sandra Cisneros' narrator in Caramelo:
...the guys at my new school act like a it's me that's the freak. The talk to each other like this:
-Man, you're fatter than shit!
-The good life.
-Damn right.
And this is how they talk to me:
-Hey, hippie girl, you Mexican? On both sides?
-Front and back, I say.
-You sure don't look Mexican.
A part of me wants to kick their ass. A part of me feels sorry for their stupid ignorant selves. But if you've never been father south than Nuevo Laredo, how the hell would you know what Mexicans are supposed to look like, right?
There are the green-eyed Mexicans. The rich blond Mexicans. The Mexicans with the faces of Arab sheiks. The Jewish Mexicans. The big-footed-as-a-German Mexicans. The leftover-French Mexicans. The chaparrito compact Mexicans. The Tarahumara tall-as-desert-saguaro Mexicans. The Mediterranean Mexicans. The Mexicans with Tunisian eyebrows. The negrito Mexicans of the double coasts. The Chinese Mexicans. The curly-haired, freckled-faced, red-headed Mexicans. The jaguar-lipped Mexicans. The wide-as-a-Tula-tree Zapotec Mexicans. The Lebanese Mexicans. Look, I don't know what you're talking about when you say I don't look Mexican. I am Mexican. (352-353)
When you aren't 100% identifiable to people, you are constantly asked the same kinds of questions as you grow up: "Where you from?" "You Greek?" "You Irish?" "¡No eres latino!"
When you become an adult, your colleagues continue the questions, albeit in a slightly more politically correct manner: "What's your heritage?" "You have such beautiful olive skin, are you from the Mediterranean?" "Where's your accent from?" It all amounts to the same question: "What are you?" I was recently asked about a colleague with a Latino name. "His name is Julio [name changed], but he doesn't look Hispanic. Can that be a black name?" It never occurred to this woman that the gentleman in question might be part-Latino, part-black, or any other mixture of races, much less that Latinos can have darker skin than the cafe con leche stereotype.
I think that it is important to recognize this issue in U.S. society because we cannot successfully argue with the aforementioned justice without acknowledging the truths he bends to make his ignorant statement. "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a[n interracial] marriage," the judge explains, "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." There is truth in this statement; children from interracial marriages can suffer and be ostracized by their parent's cultures. What is not true, however, is his proposed solution to the problem: no more interracial marriages.
The implication behind the judge's solution is that interracial people would rather have never been born than have to bear prejudices on account of their races. Taking this line of thinking further would suggest that anyone who might be teased in K-12 or have trouble fitting in to society would probably be better off never existing: queers, non-Christians, people of color, people with disabilities, etc. In short, this justice proposes that rather than suffering something so awful as the Holocaust, we'd be much better off having no Jews (queers, communists, gypsies, people with disabilities, the elderly) at all.
For further reading, see Ivy Farguheson's "A Latina by Any Other Name Sounds Just as Dulce".
Note: I apologize for not having the lengthy quote indented. Blogger apparently has its own rules for the use of HTML. Hm...
Works Cited
Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintage, 2002.
Dworkin, Shari. “Race, Sexuality, and the ‘One Drop Rule’: More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage.” Sexuality & Society. 18 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule-more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/
Foster, Mary. “Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.” Associated Press. 15 Oct. 2009. Yahoo! News. 2 Nov. 2009. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff
Lerum, Kari. “Love is a (political) battlefield: Interracial couple denied marriage license.” Sexuality & Society. 17 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/17/love-is-a-political-battlefield-interracial-couple-denied-marriage-license/
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. No Fear Shakespeare. 2009. SparkNotes. 2 Nov. 2009. http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/
