It has been interesting and good to read people’s thoughts about being mixed heritage in recent issues of Present Time. This is a complex issue, and as time goes on, we will have more and more people with this identity. Ahemdillah! (As we say in Arabic, that is a good thing!)
I have been working on this for almost twenty years and would like to add my voice to the discussion. My dad is Arab, with Syrian and Lebanese heritage, born and raised in Egypt. Some of his people are Catholic, some are Muslim. I was raised Catholic. My mom is Irish, Scottish, and German, and born in the United States.
When I was growing up, we were called “biracial.” I am light skinned with blue eyes. Many people from West Asia and North Africa look like me. Some are mixed heritage, and some are one hundred percent Arab, or Iranian, or Turkish, and so on.
West Asians and North Africans all over the world have been and still are under threat and terrorized by war and exploitation.
My family was heavily targeted by both racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in Seattle, Washington, USA, where I grew up. We were called horrible names like “towel heads” and “sand n-word.” We were teased at school, sometimes by teachers. We were asked if we were terrorists.
My dad was attacked by a mob of white men in California (USA) when he was seventeen because he went to a Protestant church with a white girl. She distracted the men, and he was able to run away. But the fear never left him. He identified with Latinas/os in California and later with African Americans in Seattle. He helped start the Black Student Union at his college. He was accepted by the Black students a one of them
When I joined RC, I wasn’t sure which group to go to, white people or people of color (that’s what the group was called at that time). I was at my first workshop, a women’s liberation workshop, and on the first night Diane Balser (International Liberation Reference Person for Women) gave each woman of the Global Majority a few minutes of attention. I didn’t participate, but I noticed that an Iranian-heritage woman did, and I asked her about it. She encouraged me to claim my full heritage as an Arab female and introduced me to other light-skinned women, one Native and one Latina.
At my second workshop I went to a topic group for immigrants and children of immigrants in non-white families. It was a revelation to experience the safety in that group. After that, with the encouragement and counseling of my Regional Reference Person, I started going to the People of the Global Majority groups. I encountered many funny [strange] looks and sometimes hostility. It was sometimes hard for people with darker skin to understand why I belonged in that group. I’m sure this is still the case sometimes.
Of course, I need to do the work of claiming my white identity and the oppressor patterns that go along with it. But I find I do not have the safety to do that work in a room full of only white people. White people are not clear about this, and I have had some very confused counseling. So instead of going to eliminating white racism groups at workshops, I often call a topic group for mixed-heritage people to work on their oppressor role, and I also do this work consistently with my mixed-heritage Co-Counselors.
Many mixed-heritage people who look white were not raised white. I was raised by two parents, one white and one not white. Society might call me white because of my appearance, but I have experienced racism, directly and indirectly. I have internalized racism, handed down through generations. For many of us, our first experience of racism was in the womb, targeted by our own mothers or fathers. For most of us, this was never talked about. We grew up with a lot of confusion, not knowing who we were or why we were targeted. We internalized that there is something wrong with us and that we do not belong in either group. That is why I’m not sure we should be separated and put solely in groups with other mixed-heritage people. This can reinforce the very way that we have been hurt. Sometimes it makes sense for us to work this way, but it also makes sense for us to be with the people that assimilation and genocide have tried to separate us from. We also do not deserve to be blamed for our hesitancy and confusion; this is part of how we’ve been hurt.
We are lucky to have discharge and re-evaluation to help us figure this out—insha’allah (if Allah wills it). We all need to work on it. Most of us are “mixed” in some way. I take the direction, “I am completely whole and just right, and I belong everywhere.” Our RC commitment (below) says we are the future!
The RC Commitment for Persons of Mixed Heritage:
Recognizing that we are the people of the future, and that every one of our cultures and our heritages is valuable and to be respected and appreciated, we proudly proclaim ourselves to be 100% universal humans, and we invite all human beings to join us in this claim. (From The List, Appendix, page 5)