It’s a question I’ve gotten used to by now. When you meet someone and start asking the fundamental questions to get to know them. They ask me for my name, where I’m from, what I do for work, what I’m studying at school, and then they shift. They’re uncomfortable for just a second. They may hide that uncomfortableness with extra cheer or with tactful sensitivity and then they ask, “I don’t want to be offensive, but what ethnicity are you?”

I don’t want to be offensive, but what ethnicity are you?

For this blog post to make sense, I should introduce myself. I identify as a woman of color just like the other powerful women that work here at Manaaki Mental Health. Getting into the specifics is where it gets complicated. I further identify as multi-racial and multi-ethnic defined as “having parents or ancestors of different races” and “made up of people of various ethnicities” respectively. But those answers rarely are satisfying so I identify myself further as Brazilian on my mother’s side and European on my father’s. Looking at me, people have always been able to see the diversity of my heritage on my face. They can tell I’m not European descendant but can’t further discern my genetic origins beyond that. I’ve even gotten to the point where, when people ask me the inevitable question that partially sparked this blog page, I’ve been encouraging them to guess. Guesses range from part East-Asian to Native American.

Socially Constructing My Race

Not looking European has been a cornerstone of my identity. Academia has defined race as a social construct for a while now but I- and I have to assume others of a mixed background- have always intrinsically known this. We know that “race” as we know it in the Western world is largely based on phenotype or how you look. Doesn’t matter if you have the same parents and therefore similar genes, if you look different then you are regarded differently. Just ask my mother how her two daughters are treated: me with the very typical Brazilian features of tan skin, dark hair, and dark eyes vs my younger sister who is extremely blonde with blue eyes. Despite us both having equal claim to being Brazilian, our claims are treated very differently.

Due to being the most “ethnic looking” of my mother’s children, race was always a performance for me. I was the exotic Brazilian in school and I was the white kid in my mother’s Brazilian circles. My white classmates were amazed at how I was bilingual at 5 years old and my Brazilian cohort always regarded me with cautious acceptance. If I wanted to fit in with either circle, I needed to construct my race in a way that was pleasing yet cohesive. It was this that started my insistence of being labeled as biracial instead of Brazilian that way I was able to claim both of my heritages regardless of background. I found my niche identity and embraced it. I didn’t care so much about looking or acting ethnic enough because my ethnicity was my own. I would always act my heritage because I would always act like me. . . Until the braids

The Braids

I love my hair. As a graduation present, my mother paid for me to get my hair braided the way fashionable women in Brazil had it. When I was visiting the country last August, I spent my trip with my family desperately looking for a place to get my hair braided as a way to celebrate visiting the country only to not have the time. (I have been naive and didn’t realize the time commitment getting your hair braided was). So when my mother offered to pay for me to find someone to do my hair I was so excited! As of writing this blog, I’ve had the braids for a week and it has been an experience.

People always compliment it. They compliment the style, color, and my strength to sit and have my scalp tortured for 6 hours to have my hair look this way. The kindness is overwhelming and admittedly I am enjoying the attention. Along with the kindness has come a wave of people asking the topical question. A lot more people. What used to be something I only needed to tell a group once has suddenly become the most important thing for people to know about me. It has very powerfully reaffirmed that I am, in fact, not white.

Was this my goal with getting my hair done in this style? I looked at very Brazilian fashions and mimicked them in my own styles, it can be argued that I got my hair done for the sole purpose of looking more “ethnic”. To quote my brother upon seeing my hair for the first time, “[I] look like [I] belong in a Brazilian music video”. When my boyfriend showed a picture of my new hair to one of his friends, my boyfriend told me his friend said something along the line of “Oh she really is Brazilian”. The answer to the original question is a very cautious maybe. I have to admit it would be nice if I was less racially ambiguous. Of all the problems in the world, this one is certainly at the bottom of my priorities. If anything, it’s only one small itch that acts up every now and then. Still, my identity being more solidified with my appearance has given me a sort of comfort I did not have before. When my appearance validates my identity, I need to spend less energy defending it.

But this line of thinking is complicated. For starters, why do I defend my Brazilian identity so ferociously but not my European one? Why is it that people treat being Brazilian as a neat decoration to my identity, a lovely exotic sprinkle on otherwise boring ice cream? Personally, I think it goes back to how I have been treating the European half of my heritage.

You may have noticed that I have been using the term “European” instead of “White” save it for one instance. This comes from a lecture I attended by a community leader named En Canada. In this lecture they called for the separation of whiteness from European Americans. While I by no means am able to express their logic as eloquently as they do, I will share the revelation that I had. Being white is the default identity in America. With white as a default identity people are then separated into white and not white. I have grown up in the “not white” category due to my appearance. My skin was too tan, my hair too dark, my body not skinny enough. The first racial identity given to me by my American peers was “not white”.

No one likes to be an outsider. It’s very much human nature to want- to need- a group you belong to. Harking back to the days before agriculture, not having a group meant freezing or starving to death as a lone wolf. When you’re labeled as an outsider, it is natural to prove that label wrong. I proved that label wrong by clinging to a group I was a part of. I’m not “not white”, I’m Brazilian. Having this identity proven correct is comforting because it means that people around me recognize me not as a lone outsider but as a member to another group.

When my otherwise European-looking hair was braided, that re-affirmed my placement in the “not white” category of people. I think this is the reason more people have been vocally curious about my background is due to how I- intentionally or not- distanced myself from my European heritage. I’m more exotic, my background a fun adventure now. It breaks my heart that this is the case. Going back to the idea of separating whiteness from European-descent, the fact that those of a European heritage join the homogeny of whiteness takes away a part of their culture from them. You can’t be English, French, Dutch, Russian, or any form of identity. You’re white.

Conclusion?

Is there a larger point to this blog? Likely not. This was just a way for me to share my thought process and explain how getting my hair done has led to change and reflection regarding my racial identity. If you can relate to this experience or want to point out flaws in my logic, there’s a commenting system I want to encourage you readers to use. Awareness cannot be developed in isolation after all.