Ever since I was little, it was clear to me that I wasn't the "average" person. Not because I had some superpower or I was born with two left feet, no. I was particularly unique in that I am biracial, meaning, I'm made up of two different races. My Mother and Father grew up less than ten minutes away from each other in two close New Jersey coastal towns. They didn't meet until college, where they began dating and the rest was history. But what made them a unique couple (especially in 1992 when they started dating) was that my Dad is black and my Mom is white. Now, to many this isn't uncommon, especially now in 2016 it's actually becoming increasingly more common. However, twenty years ago when I was born, it still wasn't all that common.
For the millions of biracial people out there, life can be very interesting at times because of your unique racial status. I remember being very young, around six or seven years old, making the attempt at explaining how I was made up of two races. My parents always told me this adorable analogy, "Mommy is the milk, Daddy is the chocolate syrup and you're the chocolate milk." In the mind of a small child, this is a simple concept and to me there didn't seem to be anything strange about it. It wasn't until my middle school years that the challenges of being biracial started to manifest themselves. Kids became more crass in the understanding of what made me, me. They use to use vulgar remarks mocking my parents and that usually resulted in a schoolboy "smackdown versus raw" reenactment. It got increasingly more confusing through the years that you really try to identify who you are as a person. What most biracial people can agree on is that, at times, you're caught in this weird paradox because you have one race saying one thing about the other and vice versa and trying to dissect that can be confusing.
What I can say now is that I am so thankful to be who I am simply because I can view the world from twice as many perspectives as the average person. I get to experience two generally separate cultures and lifestyles all at once. Growing up going from a barbecue to a cookout was a normal routine. Family events were always fun because both sides of my family always comingled and there was never a divide, just good people enjoying the company of other good people. It always cracks me up when people ask me, "If you could choose, what would you choose?" I'm not going to lie, when I was trying to figure myself out in those confusing teenage years, I may have considered it if I had that option. Looking back on it now, I feel so blessed to be who I am because of the experiences that it has given me. I can hold conversations with many different people because I know how to talk to those cultures because of said experience. I'm proud to be biracial because there's something about being made up of two separate cultures, that makes us more understanding of people as a whole. We can put ourselves in their shoes much easier than the average person because we know both sides of the spectrum.
