I always knew...

I always knew I was Black. At least, when I was little I knew I was Black. I remember a self-portrait I drew, stashed away amongst the many things my mother has kept. It is a typical four-year-old drawing, clumsy and cute. And I colored over my face in black crayon.

My mother made sure I knew I was brown. She collected every Ezra Jack Keats book she could because, at that time, he was the only author writing and illustrating for children with brown characters. I always knew my father was from Sudan. And that he had died in a plane crash. And that I had sisters and a brother that I might someday meet.

When I got to elementary school, I think I thought I was Dominican. I mean, everyone around me was. All right, I knew I wasn't Dominican but I once found a tape of myself and sure sounded Dominican. I was happy and chubby and fit right in with my classmates.

And then I switched schools. Suddenly, I was getting teased mercilessly about the size of my ass. I was getting called "zebra." I got taunted for "sounding white." And I was a very different kid than my son is. He's been hitting the kids who tease him and call him names. I just buried myself in books, flying through them with amazing speed. I once read twenty books in two weeks for a read-a-thon. Everyone thought I was such an amazing reader. In reality, I was just more comfortable in a world some author had created than navigating the social scene in my new elementary school.

Throughout middle school and high school, I hung with the other kids that didn't fit into any clique. My friends were every color of the rainbow, but I was comfortable. I didn't have to talk in any particular way, or dress in any particular way. I just was who I was. And I avoided being a part of any group, preferring to make friends on a one-on-one basis.

This wasn't especially comfortable. I developed an intense anxiety in social situations with people I didn't know. I was especially scared of groups of Black people. Not scared in the same way white people are - clutching their bags and suddenly falling silent. I was scared of being found out. Scared of being seen as a fraud - a fake Black person, not Black enough. People didn't seem to understand that I wasn't Black in a way that allowed me to understand a shared history and experience. I didn't grow up around Black people. I didn't go down South to see my family. I couldn't reminisce about grandma's candied yams because my grandma made ratatouille, roast beef, and matzoh brie.

And though my step-father is Black/biracial, I don't think he was ever comfortable being that. Something about growing up with a white mother in the mid-west during the Civil Rights Movement did a number on him from which he will never recover. I remember him ranting about me being African and Arab and something about seven wives and oil. The most racist, anti-African and anti-Arab sentiments would spew forth from him, directed at me. It really pissed him off that after my sister Rihab came to visit, I began to know and embrace my Sudanese heritage. I changed my last name from his (Smith) to my father's name, Hamid, in high school.
There's always more to say, but it's bed time. My son has told me that I have to be in bed by 11 from now on so I don't have trouble getting up in the morning. And he's right. So off I go...