Essay: My rich, mixed heritage

In her diverse hometown, race never mattered. Now that she's moved away, she's learning to field questions about her origins.

from the February 25, 2008 edition

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I went to a dinner with my mother and her Pakistani friend. The man stared at me and asked if I was Pakistani.

Mom said, "No, she's my daughter, and her father's white."

The man replied "Are you sure? Because you look like you could be from some particular region of Pakistan."

I giggled as the man pressed my mother with the usual guesses as to my race.

I don't want to sound like one of those mixed race, multiethnic, or whatever-you-call-them kids who tell how their lives were destroyed because they never fitted in or weren't a member of a single race. I'm not that.

Race was never an issue when I was growing up. In 2000, the Census Bureau rated Sacramento as one of the most diverse cities in the United States. And the different groups socialized, dated, went to school together, and married each other. Many of my friends were of mixed races, and no one cared.

But now, for the first time in my life, at the tender age of 21, my race has become a bigger deal.

My grandma wrote a book, "When We Were Colored: A Mother's Story," and I'm helping to promote it.

When I go to bookstores and tell people that my grandmother wrote a book about being "colored," they stare at me in disbelief.

I show them the family photo on the book cover and tell them that the chubby black baby on her father's lap is my mother. More disbelief.

They don't ask directly, but I can tell what they're thinking:

"What is this girl of unknown race [they may not be sure what I am, but I'm definitely not black] doing with a black mother and grandmother? And what is she doing using the word 'colored'? Doesn't she know that's not politically correct?"

(Grandma is working on a new book that she may call "Tales of a Negro Grandma," and I dread going to bookstores with that word.)

Still, people are always polite – just surprised. Sometimes they ask me what my family is like, fishing for an answer. Mostly, they say nothing.

I feel compelled to explain. I don't know why, but I think I should satisfy their curiosity, and I also feel I must prove that I am actually related to the beautiful black family on the book cover.

"My father's white," I usually say, and that takes care of it.

Book events are more troubling. My aunts and uncles are immediately recognized as the author's children, and people ask the black grandchildren, my cousins, if they're part of the family. But me – they just assume I'm some person hired to sell the book.

When customers ask to take pictures of the whole family, they give me that "Why is she trying to get in the picture?" look. That is, until my mother explains that I am her daughter. Then they smile and mumble something about multiculturalism.

It bothers me that people think I'm not related to my mother and grandmother because I'm proud of my family – proud that I come from a long line that endured slavery, survived segregation, and prospered.

My grandma's grandfather was born a slave. After the Civil War, he started a shoe shop in Atlanta that was so successful he was able to send his nine children to college.

I'm also proud of the white side of my family. They were Texas sharecroppers who came to California during the Depression. But that's another story.

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