I’m not going to share my results publicly, because that’s not the point of my ramblings. What if the you that I found wasn’t the you I was looking for? What if the you that was depicted through varying percentages of ancestry didn’t answer Who am I? but simply posed more questions?Īs you can probably predict, despite my attempts to convince myself to take the test results with a grain of salt, they still loomed powerful. So you can probably see why that bright yellow, cheery email notification boldly proclaiming “ Victoria, welcome to you!” was so appealing, and simultaneously terrifying. A desire to get to the end of the racial identity road with a few less questions than when I started. And while each of those descriptors give me varying degrees of fulfillment, pride and embarrassment, there has always been a desperate longing for resolving that question which has marked so much of my life up until this point. And of course, if you chose any of those aforementioned labels you’d be right. You might say, “That’s easy.” You’re Torie. While that statement oozes with hyperbole, there is nothing hyperbolic about the precision with which I am able to recall the ways in which my life is informed by that overarching question: Who am I? I’ve been trying for a very long time to figure out who I am. A large incentive (which is often reflected in their marketing) is the chance to dig up your past so you know who you are in the present. That last question Who’s your kin? links back to the essence of 23and Me, and all other DNA testing sites. Am I a counterfeit? Will they openly or subconsciously question my claim to blackness? Will they resent my whiteness, my white family? Will they fear my blackness? Am I allowed to go to the Black Student Union? Can I sign this petition for Black Centre College Alumni? If I speak from the black perspective am I stepping out of line? If I don’t speak from the black perspective am I letting bigotry and ignorance pass? If I identify with blackness will that distance me from my white family? If I marry a white man, will he understand the depth of my racial identity? Should I use the lighter or darker skinned emoji? Are you Hispanic? Are you Trinidadian? You must be Ethiopian. Always careening in my head are questions of authenticity. In black settings I’m too white and in white settings I’m too black. “Your white parents probably taught you to hate black people. If you’re part white and part black, you’re just black. “I don’t understand this ‘mixed’ business. “You’re a white ni–er, you think you’re better than us cause you live with white people and go to the white school.” And with every remark, side-eye, sneer and slur the internal tug of war bore incessant confusion and anxiety: And if I made the wrong choice? I was socially exiled or chastised. But outside our house, I was pressured to make a choice. My parents made sure I knew I was living a life of nuance, one of racial and familial complexity. This national mentality is fueled by the hysteria of a 24-hour news cycle, by the ideological silos of social media and by the structure of the country’s politics.“ Either black people are criminals, or cops are racist - pick one. “America, I’ve found, doesn’t like nuance. Trevor Noah, host of the Daily Show, says it well: And whether it is in the classroom, at the lunch table, in a dentist’s office or on a college application I am overtly and covertly reminded that my body is a contradiction, my life is an anomaly. I’m a legitimate family member in family without biological ties. I’ve walked the color line, inhabiting a liminal state of both/and in a world obsessed with either/or, a world bent on polarization. For much of my life my racial identity has been painfully, and often times forcibly, chosen for me. At least not with much freedom or without obstacles. You see, I don’t get to decide who I’m going to be. While that might sound empowering, it is truly just a platitude. What if the report isn’t what I expected? What if after all this pinning and questioning I was left empty-handed? What if after over a decade of navigating this ocean of racial tidal waves I was washed up ashore an island without so much as a compass? I wasn’t sure I could handle the culmination of a long quest for answers leading to a dead end.ĭeep breath. I told myself. I swallowed hard and my thumb hovered over the screen, trembling. It looked like a Hallmark birthday card, welcoming into this great big world of racial identity chaos answers I’d been seeking for 14 years. The invitation was juxtaposed against a yellow background little bursts of orange and blue speckled the page in celebratory fashion.
Victoria, welcome to you! Your 23andMe results are in.
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