@hightor,
My mother is an African American and my dad was Caucasian. My brother and I are both fair-skinned. My brother awere told we look Hispanic or Latino. People have questioned my brother about his ethnicity. People have said I looked Mexican.
I was stopped one time by a local cop who thought I was Hispanic or Latino. He was undercover dressed as a cyclist and he was concerned for my safety; I was walking home some construction work was being done in a major street near a bridge and he didn't want me to fall into any ditches.
I remember sitting in a high school science class and a teacher was asking students about their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. She was conducting a study in anthropology and was asking kids to name the countries their ancestors came from.
Two White girls who used to mess with me in high school were in that class with me. I said tothem "Do you have a problem sitting around Black people?" Those little HUSSIES laughed at me and said "Yeah, you REALLY look Black!" Of course they were being sarcastic.
They told me a few years later at a supermarket I used to work at when they saw me in the parking lot that I wasn't "Black enough". I first learned the phrase "Black enough" from them.
I think they were mad I didn't want anything to do with them and that I usually ignored them when I was in high school. I think they liked me and I think that's why they picked at me. I wasn't thinking about them.
A White girl on a certain chat site I go to told me I "look like a White guy with an Afro".
I remember being mocked to scorn by a lot of African American youths in high school. They were mad I was trying to relate to them and that I tried to "fit in" with them. I remember it was usually dark-skinned African Americans who picked at me.
In a gym class one time one of them said "Go sit with your WHITE friends".
I didn't have too many Black friends in school. The Black kids I hung out with weren't racist.
Some Hispanic/Latino youths in middle and high school used to pick at me also.
One time my mother took me and my brother to an African heritage festival when we were teens. I tried to relate to the Black youths there and they laughed at me and one said something offensive and derogatory towards me because I had a Nelson Mandela shirt on.
When I was little a popular rap group was supposed to come to my house and teach me andy brother martial arts. But the minute they saw my White dad they left.
One time my dad took me and my brother to an African American barber shop. The minute the workers at the shop saw us they said, "Sorry, we don't cut WHITE people's hair!"
I'm still subject to racism to an extent when I'm around certain people but not as much as when I was a youngster. That doesn't bother me.
I'm not hung up on culture.
I ignore idiots who try to give me some kind of race complex, or who race bait and play race cards.
