A Racial Biography

My mother and father are the same race – but kinda not. My mother grew up upper middle class, children of professionals, grandchildren of university founders, from a long long line of high yellow classist colorists. Though my mother was light enough to pass, she always identified as black – but she was one of the good ones, and there were bad ones that existed and you could tell who they were cause they were darker skinned. She grew up in the south in the 50’s and she knew segregation and protests and sit ins and all of the ills of America, which even being light skinned can’t protect you from. My father grew up in Grenada in the west indies and grew up black, with black neighborhoods and black business and black postal workers and black prime ministers. He is dark skinned but he grew up being just like everyone else, except the white tourists.

My parents met and my mothers family disowned her for dating a man that was darker than a paper bag – and then they moved to Montana. Their reasoning is lost in family lore.

But what’s important to know about Montana is that it’s mostly all white. There are Native Americans, some Latinx people, a smaller number of asian people, but the smallest number is of black people. It’s half of one percent. My parents had to teach me that I wasn’t related to all black people. There were a couple of black families that we knew, and then two or three other stray adult black men that we knew from buddhist temple (I was raised Japanese buddhist chanting in Japanese from an early age), but I was mostly surrounded by white people: white kids, white students, white parents – and all white teachers. Until Adrienne Kennedy taught me writing in my 20’s, I had never had a black teacher in my life. I remember a white teacher, who was like hip and cool and the kids liked, once pointed at me in class during a rant about how cool he was and said i mean, I probably have lived with more black people than you have! Ha". He was wrong however, I had a big family. My extended family is MASSIVE. My dad is in a family of 10, each with a couple marriages that produced a few kids each. Family reunions were gigantic parties that lasted for days. I was sent to Florida during the summers to live with them. My mother is the only child of her generation, and they hated us for being too dark skinned. This made me believe that I was very dark skinned, and I was compared to them and my mother – and compared to all the white people in Montana. Somehow I never really compared the color of my skin to my fathers or my sisters or any of my much darker West Indian relatives. I just saw us all as dark skinned. This is of course because I lived in Montana too. I have received many racist comments in my life. From a very early age. Many. But my parents knew I would. And so they prepared me for it. I can’t remember when I first learned about race and racism and that racists exist, because I have always known. That has always been an active topic in my household, touched upon daily. My father worked as a secret housing discrimination investigator – and as a bar tender. And he was there to tell me – white people were out to get you. I was taught that that people would think I wasn’t good enough, and they would say things, and do things, and blame me for things I didn’t do – and that perhaps they would get violent as white people had a long history of violence. And I was to respond in one way: by being better than them. The best. Flawless. Flawlessly dressed, flawlessly spoken, flawless grades, flawless knowledge of my history, flawless morals, flawless work ethic. And I was not to expect that I would be rewarded for this. I would still be looked over, miss promotions, come under attack.

My flawlessness was not for protection but rather for pride. I was to be proud. I was a black person. Be proud of who you are no matter what. I was exposed to lots of media about black people growing up. Magazines we ordered, any tv show with a black person we could get our hands on, movies, music videos out the ears, documentaries, books for days. We celebrated ALLLL the black holidays like kwanza and Juneteeth, MLK day was very important and my mother wouldn’t let us go to school on that day even though it wasn’t a day off when I was growing up, the black panthers were all saints, black food all the time. My hair was in braids or dreds all my life (when I didn’t have a flat top!) and I was often dressed in Africa dashikis. I was to know my culture, even though I wasn’t immersed in it.

Have I mentioned that I’ve seen a lot of racism? Soooooo much. Out of every mouth you can imagine. From 5 year olds, from 80 year olds – from well meaning liberal teachers trying so hard to connect with me, to 10 year old boys choking me. I have seen people talk down to me, underestimate me, threaten me, laugh at me, dismissed me in polite and impolite ways. I have my PHD in being black in white spaces. Nothing surprises me.

I bonded a lot with the few other people of color in Montana. There was some degree of us looking out for each other, that went beyond the “black nod” on the street. I remember the first time that happened I asked my dad if he knew that guy who nodded at him and he told me that it’s something we do. But more than that I felt a deep kinship to the other non black people I grew up with. I saw them to be like me. And that they were me. My nuance in racial understanding didn’t come until much later.

There wasn’t a lot of interracial dating in Montana. There wasn’t a lot of interracial anything. But I guess for the few of us that were around, we dated. Lots of shocked white parents as I’m sure you can imagine. Lots of being used to shock white parents. Sincere pure relationships with white people was almost impossible in Montana. There was a great cultural gap. I will admit that I did not see myself as attractive or handsome or desirable growing up. People told me that I was all the time. I had lots of solid healthy positive reenforcement. I just didn’t see it.

While writing this I remembered a South Asian boy I used to secretly cuddle with in high school, secret because he was a jock and popular. He graduated and joined the military. I never saw him again.

When I moved to NYC when I was 17, I began a great evolution. My understanding of the nuance of different races grew – and the knowledge that not all brown people always get along with each other was realized. I had years of learning such elemental things – such as the cultural difference between African Americans, West Indian Americans and African African Americans. I learned slang my mother would NEVER had taught me. I learned the different “ways of growing up black”. I had conversations I was never able to have growing up. Conversations black people only have with other black people. And my mind has never stopped expanding. I became a citizen of my fathers country and I identify as a West Indian American. Which is a black person. I’m still black. I was adopted by a group of friends and they carried me forward. I have found NYC to be wonderfully accepting of me.

I see racism everywhere – work, classrooms, subways, delivery men, waiters, banks, blah blah blah. I navigate it every day. But I do so with confidence. I’ve had friends I thought were not racist end up being racist. I’ve gotten rid of them. With work it’s hard cause it pays my bills – so I choose my battles. I hear my mothers voice in my ear “careful now...” and I hear my fathers voice “don’t let those bastards win”. I try to be smarter than the racism I encounter. That means that I confront, but I also mock, ignore, compromise as well. It takes a lot of energy.

I live in two worlds: the theater world and the gay club world. In the theater it’s mostly white. Leadership is mostly white. There’s a lot to be navigated and I’m always watchful of my words and motions. My club world is a gay world and its Black people and Asian people and Latinx people and if there are white people they are usually immigrants from other countries. It’s also not just in the club clearly – it's like dinners and trips and one on one hangs and house parties and whatever. But dancing is central. My friend group is as diverse and NYC and I am personally offended when people don’t have friend groups like mine. I’m sorry but I am. It feels like it’s on purpose. How could you live in NYC and not have black friends? It’s so confusing for me. Recently I decided that I needed more close black friends and so I made more close black friends. It was actually totally easy. I think that white people don’t want to have people of color as friends. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. My group of friends are in open dialouge about our identities. There’s conversations, there’s debates, there’s learning constantly. It feels free. I wish that the theater could be like that. I wish that I could be free in theater and not have to be on the defensive at all times. I wish that my life was fully integrated.