When I was four years old, a classmate innocently prodded, "Is that your mother?"
And I naively replied, "Of course," only to hear in return, "No, your real mother?" As I approached the sidewalk that afternoon to meet the woman in question, I looked down at my brown skin and up at my mother's white complexion and recognized for the first time that I was different.
I cannot compartmentalize aspects of myself—race, gender, sexuality, poverty—to describe how each has affected my path of life because they are all interdependent. My ethnic make-up is Black and white; two seemingly opposite ends of the "race spectrum," but my existence as biracial destroys the paradigm of distinct racial categories and allows me to think about things outside of strict dichotomies. When I came out as queer years later, I discovered that I could explain my sexuality using the same discourse as my race. I recognize my sexuality as part of a continuum, somewhere between homosexual and heterosexual. And to bring it full circle, my sexuality does not exist in a vacuum, but within the context of my ethnicity and gender.
Becoming comfortable in my skin was a long process and didn't really happen until I left home for college. I grew up in a predominately white area and the only other brown person in my home and immediate community was my older sister. When I was four-years-old, a classmate innocently prodded, "Is that your mother?" And I naively replied, "Of course," only to hear in return, "No, your real mother?" As I approached the sidewalk that afternoon to meet the woman in question, I looked down at my brown skin and up at my mother's white complexion and recognized for the first time that I was different. I had to be told I was "Black" because it wasn't part of my self-identification. My mother always told us we were racially mixed and that addressed any curiosity I had up to that point.
Yet when I went to Los Angeles to visit my mother's sister who lived in a Black neighborhood with her three African-American children, I encountered tension from the other end of the spectrum. One weekend afternoon, I rode my bike through my aunt's neighborhood and two older Black girls stopped me, "Why you always tryin' to act like you white, huh? Talkin' like you was white, you think you better than us, huh?" In tears, I rode back to my older sister who shared my confusion in silence. I was too Black for my white classmates and too white for those Black girls.
I always identify as mixed and I always check off two boxes. If I called myself anything else, I'd be denying a significant portion of what makes me Alexis. Of course, others generally perceive me as Black, especially whites. Other African-Americans can usually tell I'm mixed and Africans often ask me if I'm East African.
My father immigrated to the United States from Tanzania in the late 1960s and started teaching at a Southern California college; meanwhile my mother was taking classes at the same school to finish her degree—but he wasn't her teacher! There was a 14-year age gap and they had two children together. Unfortunately, my father chose not to be a physical, emotional, or financial support in our lives. It was hard to be a brown-skinned kid in a white community without having a cultural connection to my ethnicity. My father never stayed around long enough to teach my sister and me Swahili or the history of our Mchaga tribe. In an attempt to fill that void, my mother surrounded us with images—toys and books—that reflected what we looked like. Most importantly, she was there for us and sacrificed everything to ensure her daughters grew up self-confident, intelligent, and well-adjusted. I wouldn't be where I am today without my mother's support. When I was younger I used to resent being brown-skinned, it meant I was different and I so desperately wanted to blend in with everyone else. Today, I happily embrace my brown skin and curly hair. I love being different and couldn't imagine myself any other way.
Produced by husband-and-wife team Mike Tauber and Pamela Singh, Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed-Race America is a collection of photographs and essays that explores the experience of being mixed-race in 21st-century America. The book is composed of almost 75 individuals who also explain their lives as mixed-race men and women. Books are now available at www.channelphotographics.com and wherever books are sold.
