School Bus Census

Growing up with eyes made it apparent that my father’s relatives were a bunch of white people, while my mom’s family was black. That is how I knew that I was halfsies. Every day of my life, I looked to this chocolatey woman for guidance and this vanillaish man for love and, always a lover of metaphor, I became obsessed with things like oreos, zebras and most especially swirl-cones at fast food restaurants. “Yep”, my little poetic mind would think to itself “that is exactly what I am--I am black and I am white.”

Imagine my surprise when my mother informed me that I was not.  I was telling her about a dilemma at school, whereupon I had been instructed to mark my race on some sort of data form. The categories did not seem to address my swirl-cone situation, so I told my mother that I just marked white. Likely I did this because my father, the white guy, was the only person in my family who seemed completely on-board with having me around. If he was team white, I was team white.

Well, my mother explained matter-of-factly, “you should have marked black”. 

Why? I asked accusingly, I am not black! I am both, so I should get to choose.

If you are black at all, then you have to mark Black, Kerri, she said patiently.

But why, I asked with equal amounts of impatience.

Because, that’s just the way it is.

And if she had left it at that, you can be sure that I would still be going around marking Caucasian on every form known to man. I could be wearing dreadlocks, whilst preparing collard greens in front of a Tyler Perry movie and I would still claim a completely anglo-saxon identity because I have never done well with the flaccidity of “because”. 

But seemingly as an afterthought, my mother continued.

“Anyway, your dad is not white, his father was half black, which makes him black too.  You are not half and half, you are really more black than anything else.”

That made some sense to me and there was no way to argue with the math, but I still felt that another category should be developed to more accurately capture my family dynamic. I think I expressed this intellectual strain by saying something artful like, “that’s stupid.”

Nevertheless, I started marking African American on all my forms. So, I knew just what to do on the school bus that May when one afternoon toward the end of the year, the bus driver pulled over and said that he had to do a count of all the kids and that we should each stand up as our race was called.

 No one seemed to question it much at the time, but looking back, I feel certain that this demographical research could have been completed in a more sensitive fashion. When he called out for black children, I stood up alone, but confident. The bus driver smiled back at me condescendingly.

“Are you sure he asked”.  I suppose I understand his confusion since at the time I looked more like an Italian princess than an African one.” But I stood firm.

Yes I am sure, I said.

Do you think maybe you mean Mexican? Maybe even Chinese? 

No, I am sure, I said stifling an eight-year-old eye-roll.  I am Black.

You know, I don’t have to have this information today. He said gently.  Why don’t you go home and check with your parents?

And as inappropriate as it was, the bus driver was kind of right to do so. My family of origin is black and white. Our composition is 3 men and 3 women. My dad’s side of the family were all ultra-conservative members of the Church of Christ. My mother’s family smoked weed on Saturday night and attended Macedonia Baptist on Sunday Morning.  It should not surprise anyone that the phrase I use most commonly tends to be, “on the other hand”.  Despite being wildly opinionated, I see everything in shades of gray.  And it still bothers me, when we are asked to categorize ourselves in no uncertain terms. 

I hate it at Sonic (I’ll have mustard and mayo, thank you) and at church (one part Armenian, one part Calvinist please), but I most especially hate it at the voting booth. Why do I have to be a democrat or a republican? I can’t be pro-life and anti-death penalty? Because those two things seem pretty compatible to me, but it’s easier if we all just choose a side and stick with it, isn’t it? When will there be a more comprehensive descriptor of my political makeup?

I don’t know if they still do those school-bus-demographic checks anymore. At this point they probably do a retina scan or something which makes sense because honestly, the truth about each of us is so rarely black and white. I think it was Whitman who said that his contradictions came not from small-mindedness but from the grandeur of containing multitudes.

 Unfortunately not everyone gets to be bi-racial, but we can all be “on the other hand” thinkers. We can be bi-lingual, bi-vocational and we can be bi-partisan. Heck we could even create a new box if neither the elephants nor the donkeys tickle our philosophical fancies. In 2012 when it is time to check the boxes that best describe who we are, we must choose honesty over simplicity and the only way we can do that is to pay attention over the next year. Look alive! Listen up! Stand up! Use your voice! Let’s not be less dynamic than we really are because it is easier to push the select all button in the voting booth or because our pals or preachers or parents tell us to. Now is the time to do our research, tune in to our consciences and honor each individual part of ourselves. We might still end up standing on the bus alone, but at least we can do so with integrity.