Shades

I am privileged. This is not a revelation. I grew up knowing that because I look white, I will be okay. I feel secure. I don't worry about going to college, about paying for things I need or want, I don't worry about my personal safety when I go outside, and I trust the law enforcement officers around me. Without realizing, I trusted was white America's systems to protect their own, and oppress the other.

What they didn't realise is that I am not their own. Not really. I've been ingesting and internalising their propaganda against people of color for my whole life, but I've also witnessed the consequences of this on a personal level.

If you saw my father, you would see a tall, bespectacled, middle aged, brown man in a sharp suit, probably talking about public health, his time serving America in Afghanistan, his daughters, or grilling. You'd see a confident, knowledgeable, successful man, the son of hard working immigrants. A man who made it out of a small town in upstate New York to a position of power through sheer force of willpower and patriotism.

What you wouldn't see is this.

My grandparents escaped Germany in the 1950s, after years of living in Bavaria as refugees during and after World War ll. They came to America with my newborn aunt in tow, on their way to build a new life out of the ashes of the one stolen from them by war. They settled in Mexico, New York, a town of roughly 1,000 people at the time, a vast majority of whom were white. My grandparents built a house, got jobs, and became a part of the community.

Somewhere along the way, my grandmother transgressed. She had a short affair with a black man, and my father was a result of that. As Catholics, my grandparents could neither divorce, or abort my dad, so my grandfather decided to raise my father as his own, and pretend as if his wife's adultery never happened. As a result of this, my father has dealt with a lifelong identity crisis. As soon as he was old enough to see race, he saw that he was different from his friends, his parents, his sister.

The kids on the school bus made sure he saw this too, calling my young father the n- word before he even knew what it meant. All he knew was that he was different, and not in a good way.

Luckily, he was resourceful and smart, and made it out of that small town. Carrying the burden of his undiscussed race, he went to college and graduate school, enlisted in the military, and worked his way through the government, and now works to protect the country that he loves, but doesn't really love him back. Throughout his life, he's been a victim of colorism, from his high school biology teacher making him retake an exam in front of the principal because she couldn't believe that he'd gotten a good grade, to his own need to prove his worth to his country time and time again.

My family is an unintended experiment in privilege, colorism, and at it's core, what America is. My mother's mother's mother and father were polish jews who came to America in the early 1900s, settling in New Jersey and running a pharmacy for many years. My mother's father's father came to America in the 20s, enlisting in the military and working the railroad in order to bring the rest of his family over from Italy. My jewish grandmother and my roman catholic grandfather eloped, because they knew none of their family members would come to their wedding, to witness the joining of two cultures who both believed in remaining separate.

When my mom married my dad, a similar thing happened. My mom will say it's because of the passing of her dad that they didn't have a big celebration, but my grandmother didn't even go to my parent's small ceremony. Was my mother ashamed to be marrying a man darker than she? Was she afraid of her family's reaction? Why did she even marry my father? Was it for love, or because she was pregnant with my sister, and couldn't bear the weight of having a child out of wedlock?

These questions have haunted my early adolescence, and made me aware of the ways that colorism affects my own life.

My great grandmother and her siblings rose through society, rising to levels of privilege they never would've imagined. College education, vacations, ambassadorships, and venture capitalism have become the norm in the branches of my family tree. My immediate family- my aunt and uncle, cousin, grandmother, mom, dad, and sisters- aren't the most wealthy of my family members, and seem to take this as a sign that they are not as privileged. I've been complicit most of my life, thinking that my family was normal, poor, even, because I don't live in a big, fancy house, I go to public school, and I don't get everything I want.

What I chose not to see was all of the subtle ways my family shows that they don't truly approve of my father. My grandmother brushing my sister's hair, saying it was just like hers, but never even touching it as my sister grew older, and her hair began to curl and kink. My aunt joking about the fact that my dad is so clearly black, but seems to think that he is white. They may love him as a person, but not without first acknowledging that he is not like them.

My sisters, both older than me, are brown. I am white. They could be any race they chose to be, latina, fillipino, middle eastern, african american. I, on the other hand, look eastern european, mabe meditterainian. This difference made me feel so utterly different from my sisters. While they were grappling with not fitting in with the rest of my family, I was concerned only with fitting in with them. As we grow older, our facial features look more and more similar, our noses, our lips, our cheekbones. But when we were young, we each heard and felt comments from strangers and family members alike, not aimed to hurt us, but pointing out the differences we already felt.

When my oldest sister, Abigail, was about a year old, she and my mother were on a walk Abigail, always a people person and curious about the world, observed the world outside of her stroller with zeal. A woman walked up to my mother, and simply said, "where did you get her?" implying that my sister was adopted, because an interacial union didn't even cross her mind.

My dad and I used to go on "Daddy Days" where we would go to the driving range, and he would caddy around my hot pink golf balls and teach me how to hit them hard and strong. I was about six when a man asked me "where's your grown up?" when my father was right behind me, tying his shoe or something. I know I don't have the same color skin as my father, but if you looked any closer than that, you'd see the family resemblance.

The most common joke of my childhood was, upon reflection, a morbid coping mechanism. "Which one is adopted?" my sisters and I would jokingly ask each other. We asked ourselves so no one could ask us. It was confusing, and for a time, I was sure it was me. It didn't matter that I looked like both of my parents, and I shared some attributes with my sisters, my skin was different from my two role models in life, and I was taught not to see past that.

Colorism has caused me, a white woman from a stable home, to question my identity. I can't fully identify with my white family, who choose only to open their eyes to issues of race when it's convenient. I can't identify with my sisters, because they have felt the burden of the color of their skin daily for their whole life, everywhere they go. I can only identify with myself. I am a secret agent, on the inside of the battle against white privilege, a person no one would expect to feel the weight of race in America so personally. I am not claiming the struggle of all people of color for myself. I feel safe leaving my house, my resume will be taken seriously, because I have a white- sounding name. I am only saying that people like me, the unsuspected victims of colorism and the witnesses of privilege, have a job to do. For others, for ourselves, for everyone.