Quadroon

Dear Joe,

I'm not sure if you've ever had someone stare at you in an attempt to figure out "what you are". But I think you know the feeling. This feeling of another human being searching your face for familiarity. Their eyes get extremely inquisitive. Left to right. Up and down.

Taking inventory of your suddenly much too exposed features:
Wide bridge in nose. Thick bottom lip. Squared jaw-line. Closed-set eyes. Muddied complexion.

I can read the inner dialogue. And then it comes. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what are you?"

I've often been a total asshole when answering this question.
Replies like "a human being." "a bad dancer" "a mother." "a woman."
All true, but obviously not what the interrogator is looking for.

I now just skip past my pride and tell them. Black and German. If I like them, I get detailed. (I hardly ever get detailed.)

Unfailingly, the next sentence follows: "I thought you looked like you might have black in you, you look so exotic". Usually given with a sigh of relief. Like, they were so afraid to ask if I was black, for fear of insulting me. As if, something in their brain was connecting the darkness in my eyes back to some otherworldly place.
Safari. Deserts. Big Game. Exotic.

So confused about the face before them. Trying to puzzle together centuries of genetic tangoing.
Generations of love throwing up the middle finger to social acceptance and following its own path. Decades full of DNA from soldiers, and warriors, and brave men. Brave enough to date interracially when the world around them was on fire. Brave enough to survive slavery, civil rights, European wars, and still find love for their supposed enemies. Brave enough to live in defiance of what the world tried to tell them they were. Much braver than the man before me now, afraid to even say the word. "African American."

I wasn't offended this time though. I felt the genuineness of his question. I didn't feel any malice towards him. I know I look confusing. I was more upset at the "why" of the question. He wanted to know if I was black so that I would participate in a black history month event.
He wanted to see if the assumptions he made during his silent categorizing of my face was correct. If I had a drop of blackness in me. If I was black enough to read Nikki Giovanni poems in front of REAL black people and not be offensive. If I could say "negro" without the audience gasping.

We spoke about ancient classifications. Which, actually aren't so ancient. (Technically, I would have been a mulatto and not a quadroon.) We spoke about a time where these classifications meant something else. Something about how you were treated. Your station in life. Your value. Your freedom.

So yeah, like I said, not so ancient after all. You can change the grammar, but the need to classify other human beings, well, that is going to take a little longer to change.