“I am so confused, mom. I don’t know what to do,” said my daughter after dinner.
“What is the matter, sunshine?” I asked while loading the dishwasher.
“There is this school project and I am supposed to talk about my cultural heritage and share with the class a dish that represents my ethnicity. I don’t know what to pick!”
Sensing my daughter’s dilemma, I left the dishes by the sink and sat next to her at the dining table: “Well, share your whole story. Don’t let them put you inside a box.”
Here is the thing: My kids were born in the US to a Brazilian mother and a Chinese father. They grew up celebrating Chinese New Year, 4th of July as well as Brazilian Carnival. They have fond memories of their Chinese grandma cooking delicious “jiaozi” and they also enjoy the Brazilian “pão de queijo” I bake for snack. My kids are connected to three worlds at once, but society insists on placing them into one single box.
Just Because You’re My Color Doesn’t Mean You’re My Kind
Race and ethnicity are two concepts related to human ancestry. Race is defined as “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits.” The term ethnicity is more broadly defined as “ large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic or cultural origin or background.” Both terms are social constructs used to categorize and characterize seemingly distinct populations. Neither race nor ethnicity is detectable in the human genome.
Though race has no genetic basis, the social concept of race still shapes human experiences. But who decided that people should be grouped by skin color? Why not group people by their eye color? Or the shape of their noses? Or the number of freckles on their faces?
I once met a woman whose dad was British and whose mother was Ghanaian. She was born in Wales but didn’t live in the UK until she was 13. She spent her early childhood in Ghana, where she was called “white”. When she moved to the UK, at the age of 13, she was told she was black. To me, this story tells a lot about race: how so much of our identity is what other people put on us.
We Are More than the Boxes We Are Put Into
I was born and raised in Brazil and immigrated to the US in my early 20s for my graduate studies. Since day one in the US, I always had a hard time finding the right box to check. Latina? Yes, I am from Latin America, but no, Spanish is not my first language. Democrat? Yes, I voted for them, but do not necessarily agree with every single liberal platform they promote. Feminist? I’m certainly a legal egalitarian, but don’t subscribe to the fuzziness of the term “feminist” or other packaged ideology.
When I put myself in a box like “feminist” or “Latina” I lose the nuance of my belief and the intricacy of my identity. I give someone else the power of interpretation. By putting myself into a box, I give permission to other people to associate me with the stereotypes that go along with that box.
The problem with categorizing people is that we tend to see those who belong to the same group as more similar than they are, and we tend to judge people from different groups as more different than they actually are. Once we begin to see the members of outgroups as more similar to each other than they are, it then becomes very easy to apply our stereotypes to the members of the groups without having to consider whether the characteristic is true of the particular individual.
Each one of us is a unique individual, shaped by our own experiences in life.
I am an individual. I do not wish to be defined by where I was born, my education, the year of my birth, the color of my skin, or my gender.
I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, a marketer, a writer. Some days I am happy, others I am sad. I like green and also red. I am left-handed and wear glasses. I love the wind and the smell of nature. I have only one lung. I have strong moral values and try to do the right thing. Sometimes I succeed, mostly I fail. I am shy and brave. And I am also afraid. I’ve learned to be my true self. And I belong with everyone that accepts me.
Like my children, we are all complex beings, a blend of our multiple experiences and a quilt woven by the stories of our ancestors. Each one of us is an individual, always evolving and maturing (at least, that is what we are supposed to do during our lifetime). To try to fit ourselves in boxes that can be easily checked is to deny our wholeness by reducing ourselves to one single thing.
I don’t want to be defined by this box. We are more than the boxes we are put into. Regardless of our ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, age, gender, whatever, we are all united by being human
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Slightly off-tangent, a mentor of mine told me ten years ago that "there is no box".
It was her response when I mentioned, "That's thinking outside the box."
I'm glad she told me that, and you just reminded me again. Thank you.