Check this box please, and deny half of your identity

When I was pregnant one of my biggest fears regarding becoming the mother of a Bi-racial child was the thought that she would identify with one half of her racial identity. I worried (for obvious reasons) that the half she identified with would not be mine, thus denying our mother/child bond.

I don't think this is an unfounded fear. In this country, if you look Black, you are Black. No matter if you are half, or one quarter, Black is Black. White is White. I'm White. As far as I know, the majority of my ancestry is British, with a little German, French and Irish, but most likely 100 percent European. Except that there was a suspicion amongst my mother's family that my great grandfather may or may not have been at least partially Native American. He was suspected of "passing." The only reason anyone thought that, though, was because he never grew facial hair. He didn't look the part and he didn't pass on any ethnic qualities to his children.

In addition to this country's history of dividing the races by color, even the Black community doesn't let Bi-racial folks get away with being a mixture of both.

It's pretty common to hear Black people make fun of Bi-racial folks, saying they aren't insert-other-half here, they're just Black. A couple of high profile Bi-racial men come to mind, our president, Barack Obama and golfer Tiger Woods.

Even though President Obama was raised by a White mother and his White grandparents, he enlisted his Black/African half while running for president.

Tiger Woods has been given a lot of shit by Black people for saying he's Cablinasian, (half Asian -- one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter Thai --, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch) thus standing up for his Bi-racial identity. Technically, he's more Asian than anything else.

I don't blame Obama for using his skin color to get votes. Hell, he was just playing the game. And he played it well. Even though Tiger Woods is no longer America's sweetheart because he turned out to be a flawed human being, I still give him props for insisting that he not deny his Asian roots.

Now that Annika is here, my old pregnancy fears have lessened because I have started thinking about how I will talk to her about her roots and her skin color.

I think the world is more tolerant now than it was when I was growing up. And I think as Annika ages, it will become even more so. Kids today are more tolerant and open-minded than my generation. Today we have people who refuse to identify with a gender identity, people who identify with both, people who look one way and feel another.

I see racial identity following the same trends as sexual identity heading toward more gray (or should I say, tan) areas. More and more people will refuse to pick one or the other. More and more people are refusing to say they are simply one thing.

Human beings are complex to the core. Using color to identify people, is, in my opinion, just as antiquated as defining life roles and fashion choices based on a person's genitalia.

Choosing a more complex racial identity is a common thought process amongst plenty of mothers of Bi-racial children.

I was browsing a Bi-racial mom forum recently, and the topic of choosing racial identity at school caught my attention. Will my daughter feel pressured to choose a racial identity that isn't consistent with who she really is?

One mom said when she signed her daughter up for school, instead of choosing one of the pre-filled racial identities, she chose Other and wrote in Bi-racial. She was told that she was not allowed to do that and must choose only one race.

Those boxes may seem insignificant, if you fit into one of them, but if you don't, they are not boxes anymore, they are fences.

Ever since Annika was born, I've thought a lot about a boy I knew in high school.

His name was Charles. He was a Bi-racial boy being raised by a single White mother, his father was Mexican. Charles' skin was as white as snow. He had thick black hair, straight as a board. He did not speak with an accent in class. But when surrounded by his Spanish friends, he laid it on thick, using Spanish slang and affecting an accent. Even back then, I knew this kid wasn't confused. He was ashamed. I could see it in his eyes. He was defensive about anyone calling him White. He was damn proud of being a Mexican and he did all he could to make sure everyone knew he was proud of his heritage.

The only problem was, it was only part of his heritage.

I used to wonder how it made his mother feel that he was so ashamed of his White half, especially since she was the one raising him, alone. He was forced to choose. For whatever reason, he felt that his Latin roots were the better choice.

I don't see why anyone has to choose. That's not a choice I want Annika to have to make. That's like asking someone to choose between an arm or a leg. It's like asking someone to choose air or water.

It's asking someone to choose, mother or father.

Apparently, I could even be the nanny

Annika got mistaken for a boy at the park the other day. I guess the fact that she was wearing a black T-shirt and blue shoes won out over her blue nail polish and turquoise pants bespeckled with butterflies.

Those kinds of mistakes just make me laugh a little. At least they are the kinds of things that pretty much happen to everybody during the infant and toddler years. Mistaking a girl for a boy or vice versa is par for the course in pretty much any culture.

That experience far outweighed the interaction I had with a woman at the same park earlier in the week.

I was swinging Annika in the toddler swings when a graying White woman approached with a little blond girl.

I looked at the little girl and said to Annika, "She looks about the same age as you, sweetie."

The woman smiled and asked Annika's age. I told her, 2. She told me the age of the child with her, 2 and change. We smiled and murmured things about how cute they were. The girls giggled in their swings.

Then she turned to me and said, "Are you the mother?"

THE mother.  Not even her mother.

"Yes," I said.

This is where you expect me to get all irate.

But I didn't.

My stomach did not turn to bile or get all twisted up in knots. It turned more to a consistency of Playdough. Lumpy. Pureed. Mushy. Bored. Trite.

I felt my face go flat with disappointment at this now mundane question. It's getting a little tiring.

Even though Annika was still laughing and shouting "Wee, wee!" I asked her if she was ready to get down.

"Baby, do you want to slide?!" I asked her all excited.

"Nooo, SWING!" was the answer I got.

I just wanted to get away from the woman, who had noted that she was in fact, the little girl's grandmother.

Like I cared.

Either she noticed my lack of interest, or she understood that she had made a mistake. After a few minutes she said, "The reason I asked you if you were her mother is because you run into a lot of nannies here too."

"Oh," was my response.

That is true. It's the only park where I see nannies.

To me, the nannies stick out as nannies. They gather together with strollers and bottles and chat with each other while the children play within a safe distance. There is a distance in their interactions with the children in their care. They lack the tenderness that you see between mothers and their children. Maybe that's something only mothers notice.

I finally got Annika off the swing under the guise that we needed to change her diaper and offered her a snack.

Anyone who is not the mother of a Bi-racial child might not really get my point here. I even hesitated to write this because I'm not even quite sure I get it, but somehow I felt this experience was an important one to share.

That feeling - that dull, soft spot that has turned so quickly from irritation to lack of interest in engaging someone who would be even slightly insensitive to our familial difference - is very new to me.

I've never been one to turn away from a debate, a fight, a dialogue. I am always the one searching for knowledge and enlightenment. My curiosity peaks at the slightest hint of something new or out of the ordinary.

But this stuff, this is not new. Not in this country.

White people who are in denial about the state of the racial divide. White people who think that because we desegregated schools, and affirmative action placed Black workers further up the ladder, and the fact that we have a Black president makes it all better, makes it all okay, makes it all -- equal.

That soft, dull feeling that I can't even begin to describe as an ache, because it doesn't ache. It is more like a tumor. That is what I imagine dark-skinned people feel every time they interact with insensitive White people. People who think that a Band-Aid makes the wound disappear.

I spent nine years living in Detroit. I cannot even begin to tell you the hatred and vitriol that divides the metropolis. It is in ingrained so deeply that most people, Blacks and Whites, don't even see it as a color issue anymore.

I spent a lot of time chatting with my Black friends in Detroit. The ones who cared enough to attempt to enlighten me, about how it feels for your feelings to be swept aside as easily as, "Oh sorry, it was an honest mistake."

But I didn't really get it until now. Or, I should say, I am feeling it. Maybe I will never really get it. But I feel something that I definitely never felt before.

It's only been two years, of slip ups and insensitive questions about the maternal bond I share with a child who is not the same color as me.

And already, I have no desire to interact with someone who can't or won't even admit the possibility - until she has hard evidence - that she might be my daughter.

If I can get to this point in two years it makes me wonder how many years this country will pay dearly for the past mistakes we made. It makes me wonder how many generations it will take to slough off the ingrained anger and indifference, on both sides.