Finding myself: growing up mixed in an all white family

I grew up wanting to be white. I wished more than anything for straight hair, pale skin and freckles. My whole family is white, one half from south Georgia and the other from Colorado. I’m biologically related to my mother and was adopted by my Dad in pre-k. My mom and I met my dad and my now step-sisters when I was four. My biological father is from Namibia, a country in southern Africa, but he and my mother split before I was born.

Growing up in a white family means a complete detachment from Black culture, both American and Namibian. This disconnect from blackness permeates my everyday life. I don’t know how to take care of my hair, keep it healthy or style it. I know next to nothing about the country my biological father was raised in. I don’t speak the native language or eat any of the cultural foods. I’ve researched the customs and traditions of the people of Namibia, but I fear that I will never fully understand the culture. I can’t walk into the village where my birth father grew up and feel at home. The reality is that I will never, and can never, be completely in touch with my roots.

Every single person of color living in America fights a hostile white world. Every step they take is combated by a larger system of oppression. I fear that I have assimilated into that system. Maybe being raised by middle class white people has stripped me of my native culture and made me part of theirs. Many times during my childhood — like community theater and summer camp — I was one of few, if not the only, Black or mixed person present. Camp was so overwhelmingly white that the only other Black person was also raised in a white family. 

I have spent a concerning amount of my time explaining to white people’s underhanded or overtly racist behavior back to them. It does not happen to me often, but when it does it truly opens my eyes to how clueless they can be. 

One time, a white guy literally said the n-word to me in casual conversation. When I questioned him about it, he explained that he had been given an “N-word Pass” by his Black friend. Incidents like this are very rare for me, but they point out how normal it is for white people to be casually racist. The number of people that randomly touch my hair is astounding. In these instances, I am standing by myself or with a group of friends and someone that I don’t even know comes up and starts to pet me. I don’t really know what to do, so I just stand there feeling vaguely like an animal until they stop.

I hope that one day I can learn the language my birth father spoke. I hope that I can someday learn everything there is to know about my culture and customs. I realize that I sit in a place of enormous privilege, and that I have opportunities that I would not have in Namibia. My family supports me whenever I talk about wanting to reconnect with my culture, and I am very grateful for that. I hope that one day in the future, I can go to the country that my birth father was raised in and feel at home.