Brown People Do Not Care What Your Color Is

"So what are you again? You're like, black and white right?"

I was raised in an interracial home. My mom is a combination of ethnic blends ranging from middle eastern to African American and my father was Finnish and Dutch (plain ol' Caucasian).

Trying to describe my ethnic background to people was/is difficult. Their beliefs change based on the way I style my hair or the way I dress.

If I choose to keep my hair curly, "black and white".

If I choose to straighten my hair, "mixed with some kind of islander right?"

No.

It wasn't until I began seriously dating that I ran into more ignorant comments. Ironically, not from my partners but instead, their mothers.

You have to understand, I do try my best to give some people the benefit of the doubt. However, it is 2021 and I don't care if you don't have "people like me" in your town....you can't tell me that you haven't seen any of us on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, or (don't get mad) your precious NFL team.

Let's be honest, we are kind of dominating the field.

I said what I said.

Moving on.

All I am trying to say is, Kathie, you don't remember me asking you when we first met if you were German and Hungarian, do you?

That's because we don't care.

You will never find me asking a Caucasian person "you know I can just tell by your eyes that you are definitely Scandinavian, right? Am I right, I gotta be right."

Doesn't that just sound ridiculous?

The only time we care about racial background is if we believe someone might be of the same ethnicity as us, amongst some other reasons that dive into cultural pride, but that is a different conversation for a different time.

What we also do not care about is how "tan" you think you get in the sun.

"I'm almost as dark as you!" *insert palm to the face emoji*

I get dark in the summer. Dark.

In the winter, my skin lightens up and I begin to look more like my father's child. But you would still never find me say in the winter, "look Lauren, I am almost as white as you!" We do not even think to say it. Literally, the thought does not cross our minds.

Do you want to know why? Because we do not care about the color of your skin, whatever the shade.

We do not feel the need to compare or comment about race, especially during the most mundane times of the day. I am just stapling copies at my desk, please do not think that we are cool enough for you to hit me with an "okay this is going to sound racist" comment at 8:15 a.m.

Just why.

All I am saying is, Kathie, we can stop imitating the voices of Indian people.

For real though, it needs to stop. The fact that you feel so comfortable doing it really just blows my neurons away.

Point is, stop asking and saying ignorant racial comments.

It's not cute.

Also Kathie, one more thing, my hair is curly. Just curly. It's not coarse and it also doesn't take me 1 hour to straighten my "very thick hair". Contrary to what you might think, my hair is actually pretty thin and it takes me not even 15 minutes to straighten this entire mane of mine. I know crazy, right?

Okay, I think you all get the hint.

Hopefully, we all learned a bit here as we head into the new year.

**Note to readers:

Kathie, the name referred to above, is my soon-to-be mother-in-law. Yeah, she is stuck with my never-ending sass. Also, I use the word "brown" in my writing to refer to all shades of brown. It would be a lengthy entry if I went ahead and listed every ethnic background so instead, I chose the word brown. Feel free to substitute the word brown for whatever word you are comfortable with. I am sure we can all do that right? We are all adults here. Thank you so much for reading!! xoxo