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My sister Eimile, my mother Iris and me at age 2 in my
Nana’s garden in Hertsfordshire County, England
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When I was first asked to write this piece, I was defensive. There was something very personal and private about my relationship with my mother, something I initially felt I should protect. I wasn't sure I wanted the probe of public inspection to invade something so very precious to me. I was split because I also felt it might do me some good to put it in writing.
Here goes.
I am a hodgepodge, born of a Black American father and a Caucasian English mother.
I, like my mother, started out in England eating biscuits instead of cookies and using the letter "u" to colour my vocabulary. I wasn't really concerned about my mixed-up-ness until I was 5 or 6 and the words "black" and "nigger" were injected into my vocabulary.
Suddenly I was being defined not by my great smile, personality, intelligence or that I was a quick learner. Rather, I was being judged by my ethnicity and, what's more, by the ethnicity of only one of my parents.
Two issues were at work here. First, ethnically speaking, people seemed to identify only my father's race, which diminished, if not eliminated, the role and value of my mother. Secondly, I was defined and treated based upon something as insignificant as the color of my skin.
They didn't know me, I thought. They did not know that I was a terrific soccer player or that I loved chocolate ice cream when I checked the box next to "Black." They didn't care about my mother, so I became "Other."
I didn't fit anywhere -- not really black, not really white, somewhere in the middle of all that. Gray.
From the time I was 4 until I was 9, our family lived in Huber Heights, which at the time was a part of Dayton. It was a predominantly white community where, for the most part, I was happy and comfortable. But there were incidents. Times like getting my butt kicked up the street to my front yard because I wouldn't give up my seat on the bus to a girl in sixth grade. She felt I should because I was "a nigger."
Or when "they" burned a cross into the grass in the neighbor's yard. We were never really sure about that one, because one of the neighbors' daughters dated a black boy in high school and were our friends. Was it directed at them or just the wrong house? The cowards never made it clear.
So I learned how to bob and weave a bit.
I learned that my mother was white and my father black. I learned that that somehow made me different than most, if not all, of the people around me. I learned that it made a difference.
Then, in 1973, came the move. We were going to Yellow Springs, where things would be better. And for the most part, they were.
Yellow Springs, that liberal, hippychick, peace-love-and-lightning-bug village near Dayton and Huber Heights did provide a lot more. There was a great school system that was within walking distance, streets you could ride your bike in, trees, street fairs and an ethnically diverse community.
But that diversity brought with it a painful lesson. I was no longer called or treated like a nigger. Racism and rejection were more subtly wrapped.
The camp that I thought would embrace me because, after all, I looked most like them, rejected me. To the black kids whose wooly hair and auburn complexion I shared, I was a zebra, an Oreo, a half-breed with nowhere to go. Not all of the black kids felt this way. It was only a few.
But they made my life hell.
There were places I didn't want to go. In school, it was the restrooms and the locker room changing for gym. Out in the regular world, it was the swimming pool.
Very soon I realized that I couldn't avoid going places, so rather than stay in the house all the time I avoided going places with my white mother. Call it prepubescent racial politics, if you will.
This did nothing about the people who already knew, but it eliminated the chance of new people finding out that I was a half-breed. And my mother knew what I was doing, which I didn't learn until years later. Because, like my mother was with everything else, she held her chin up and continued to love unconditionally my two younger sisters, my father and me.
To try to learn more of what our perspective might be and how to care for our hair, among other things, my mother would buy Ebony and Essence magazines. She was very aware that her daughters were borne of her and yet, in some ways, different.
Like any mother, she wanted to take care of everything we needed, and it was her responsibility and I believe pleasure to take care of what we needed. She sought out what she didn't know. Despite this valiant effort, I continued to not be seen with my mother.
Yet, I missed her.
This public dodging went on through my teens until I graduated high school. Then I went away to college, where I didn't have to work to be away from my mother. I realized that I'd done a great disservice to both my mother and myself.
I'd pushed away the one person in the world who did and would love me no matter what. I began to feel ashamed of the way I'd treated her. I was ashamed of my embarrassment of my ethnic mixture. How could I have allowed anyone to affect the way I felt about my mother, my family and myself?
I was angry. I'd let this American culture -- which boasts diversity and inclusion -- make me feel like I had no place and caused me to shun the person most responsible for my existence.
When I was in my mid-20s, I spoke to my mother about my behavior, my avoidance. I confessed my betrayal of her dedication and love. She said she knew it all along and, like many of the struggles my mother saw me through, allowed me room to sort it out for myself. This was partly because she didn't know what to do, but also because she was smart enough to know that's what people do in the end -- figure it out for themselves.
My mother died Nov. 5, 1999 at 3:26 p.m. EST of Multiple Myeloma, a rare form of cancer that attacks the blood.
My biracial issues were certainly not the only ones that created distance and dissension between my mother and myself. But I'm thankful that I had the good sense to discuss the things I felt we needed to long before she was ill.
I'm even more thankful that my mother loved me despite my weaknesses, fears and foibles.
Iris Walker was a remarkable woman, something I didn't always realize and might not fully appreciate until later in life. Probably when I least expect it. ©
