On Being Black And White Essay Research

On Being Black And White Essay, Research Paper

I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. “Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that” (Steele 211).

Since Altoona is a primarily white city, I grew up being around white people 90% of the time. The only time I really spent being around blacks was with my father everyday, and with family members on my father’s side. So of course I consider myself as being whiter because of the fact that I was raised mostly around white people. I know I don’t look like the average white person, or the average black person, but who’s to say what blacks and whites are suppose to look like. I have my own unique color. It is what my biracial friends and I call the “yellow race”.

When I was younger, even though at home I felt nothing to be wrong, in public, I tried to hide the fact that I was biracial. I was ashamed to be black and white. Since I have very fair skin, I tended to lean towards the white side. If people didn’t know about my father, I wouldn’t tell them because I didn’t know how they would have reacted. I guess this was just because I didn’t want to be different from my friends and they also didn’t want me to be different from what they were. It’s like they were pulling me into their own world, and didn’t want to see what I actually was. They insisted that being both was just not acceptable. This was the way I lived my life, seeing myself as only white because that’s the only way my friends would see me. When Steele was younger, he saw himself as black and didn’t fret about his class. He said, “race took on an almost religious significance” (Steel 211). But when he got older and after hearing his friend’s comment, his “faith was weak” (Steele 212). He started to realize that he was both black and middle class. And as I became older, I began to realize that I didn’t have to hide the fact that I was both white and black.

When I came to the campus, I wasn’t sure how people would react to me. I wasn’t sure how I should “act”. Would people look at me differently if they knew I was biracial? I mean I couldn’t just decide to be white one day and black the next. Some people think it is like waking up and deciding what to wear, “Hmm, should I wear the red or blue shirt today?” “Hmm, should I be black or white today?”