Too Black for Whites & Too White for Blacks.

Too black for the whites, too white for the blacks...or just not black enough. Spining in a vortex of stereo typical ideas about race in America. I came across a documentary on you tube titled "I'm Biracial,not Black Damn it!" It featured a miriade of half black and half white people and there experience growing up this way. Their comments and experiences validated my own feelings and journey of growing up mixed in America. My mother said she would often get stopped by a white woman while pushing my stroller,who would say "oh my what a beautiful sun tan your baby has!" My mother would respond in her native New Jersey style blunt verbratto " She's black you idiot!" To complicate matters my mother came from very proud ITALIAN family,and if you know Italians you know that they don't consider themselves white. In high school I sat in the black section of the cafeteria but often visited the white one,and even though I was gently teased about not being black,speaking too white,or having a flat white girl butt, I felt more accepted than I did amongst whites. I think that because of the persecution blacks have received as a whole they are inherently more accepting of people who are shunned because of race. I was biracial before it was "in" and less common so I never could find the right shade of foundation. Nude pantyhose made my legs look like prosthetics and the "Black Essence" hose didn't look right either. Gel and mousse formed my hair into a curly freeze dried wanna be Afro and hair grease was just a different unimaginable disaster. It wasn't until around age 12 that I figured out that my mom had no idea what she was doing with hair like mine and I took matters into my own hands. Buying white hair products and black hair products and mixing them together until I found something that made my hair look half decent. 20 years later I'm in my mothers shoes with 5 daughters who's hair is not white,not black,and not even biracial like mine,but relegated to the undefined gray term of "ethnic hair" that I have no idea what to do with. I think my kids are considered what the young bucks call "MGM" (multi-generational mulatto).History repeating itself like a scratched Anita Baker record. My pro black,very African American father encouraged me to use whatever racial status would get me the furtherest for the particular situation. Being black got me more financial aid in college, being white got me a better APR on a car loan when I graduated, and checking both boxes got people confused. I further complicated matters in 2006 when I became Muslim and started wearing a hijab. Even Arabs think I'm Arab. Mexicans often start speaking to me in Spanish assuming I'm Hispanic and everyone seems completely confused when a Muslim who looks Arab but checks the African AMERICAN box sits down and sounds like a white girl who did a 10 year bid in Catholic school. I'm not Black,White,Arab,Mexican,or anything else you assume me to be, but I certainly can be!