Interracial means Other

Seven years ago I wrote a poem about the outrage I experienced each time I filled out a form for my children on which it was necessary to check a box stating: which race. Which race? This question is everywhere, because we are all only one race, one neatly folded category that fits within the perfectly formed box of our culture and expectations, right? Outrageous. On some forms, I filled in three or more boxes. On others I filled in none. Sometimes the person to whom I handed the form handed them right back, asking me to please fill out the form completely. I’d raise my eyebrows and comply, thinking of pithy replies five minutes too late. Of course, sometimes they accepted the form with nary a protest. Every time, regardless of the outcome, I felt a simmering frustration regarding how our society insists on placing individuals within acceptable outlines.

Blue Object by Peter SchwartzSeven years later my rage has muted into a sort of weary acceptance. My life is too full of happiness and love and just plain living to spend much time on useless anger, but still I refuse to fill out the boxes correctly. I’ve perfected the passive-aggressive approach to protest. In a year we will fill out the national census and I’ve read in the news that we’ll again be allowed to fill in more than one box in the spot that asks for race. I am happy about this, I think. Now that we have a multi-racial president, it is good to know that I can declare to the world, if only on a form, that my children’s racial ancestry is no longer just other. They can go proudly forth into the world knowing that they are one-quarter Korean, one-quarter Polish, and one-half Italian American. What does this mean for my boys? Probably not much, though even the idea of a form that encompasses a new multi-ethnic America is astonishing, really. In this particular instance, the rage against the social category machine has won. Sort of.

I’m still afraid of complacency. As a society, we have much further to walk on this long path to civil equality. The fact remains that seventeen years ago I had difficulty marrying my husband because of his racial background. I had to argue against the questions: Is that really how you spell his name? Just three letters? Yes, really, and of course he speaks English, he was born in Rochester, New York. He is as American as I. My own parents had problems when they married because Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans just didn’t do that sort of thing back then (I’m told my maternal grandmother wore black to the wedding she was so upset). My in-laws had trouble: my mother-in-law threw a bag of peaches at the judge who refused to marry her and her Korean fiance. She’s a lovely woman, an artist who cares a great deal about her roses and I just can’t picture her throwing fruit around in protest, though it must have worked. They married and my husband grew into a wonderful person as a result of her refusal to accept the status-quo.

These things happened decades ago, but I’m afraid, still. Three weeks ago my older son stood with his best friend as several boys yelled at them and tried to break into the house. In this small, rural town, my fourteen-year old has witnessed racial hatred and violence because a few kids didn’t like the fact that his best friend is black. My husband has been pulled over by the police when driving on the interstate. He was not speeding and the car’s inspection sticker was up to date. We’ve concluded that racial profiling sucks. And I have been punched in the stomach, accused of miscegenation, though I suppose it is nothing but the truth. It’s an ugly word, nonetheless. These hatreds may not be as prevalent as they once were, but they are still there, simmering under the surface of our great nation. So when my kids ask me why can’t all people who love each other get married despite their sexual orientation, I try to explain the history of civil rights and assure them that things will change because our country is built on a foundation of freedom and respect for all, but I worry. It is up to us to refuse to fit ourselves into those neat boxes, to refuse to categorize our children so that they will know not to force others into the prison of discrimination, so precisely drawn and fashioned.

The fact is, despite the lovely categories now available on some of the forms, many of us still feel a visceral sense of disgust when confronted with those who look and act differently. I think this is a culturally learned behavior that goes all the way back to what our parents teach us as children: don’t touch the hot stove, be nice to your cousin, don’t hang out with those Latino kids, they’re all losers. It stems from a desire to protect one’s offspring and keep the village safe from outsiders. This is a fundamental human survival instinct that no longer functions adequately in our global society. I think of it as the clothing principle: we evolved without clothes, but we need them in order to survive in winter. We evolved in a small tribe where protecting those close to you helped you survive, but now in order to live we must get along with a village as big as the planet. We must teach our children how big our tribe really is, how many billions of us there are and how to safeguard our future together.

In reality, this idea is larger than racial discrimination. It encompasses everything from acceptance of other cultures (not every society celebrates individual liberty, or needs it to function) to understanding how respecting the environment will impact our future (global warming). As an American, I find the election of our first multicultural president incredibly encouraging. As a mother, I find the lingering discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender, disability, etc. that is being taught to my children’s peers disheartening. It makes me sad, but I don’t really have the time to go out and protest and wave signs in the rain. Still, I can write my congressman. I can sign petitions and donate funds to those who do have the time. Most importantly, I can teach my children how to treat everyone they meet equally well. And I can refuse to fill out those damn boxes, those ubiquitous little squares that hint at discrimination even as they claim to help fight it. I can protest quietly while sitting at my desk. I can scratch in a new category that states, simply: American.

Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry and was a finalist in Nimrod’s 2006 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her first chapbook, The book of small treasures, will be published in December 2009 by Seven Kitchens Press. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, The Pedestal Magazine, Terrain.org, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry, serves on the Board of Directors for The Externalist: A Journal of Perspectives, and her website is http://www.novembersky.com.