Interraciality for a Mutt Like Me

According to my spellchecker, interraciality is not a word. It also is not something I personally have mused over much in my life as an Eastern European-Gypsy-Cherokee-DAR-??? background.

Yet what I love about Yale is that the people around me bring up these topics to me even though I'm not thinking about them. Meet Dalia, my sweet suite mate. Dalia is a New Yorker. She is a African American Jew with the craziest, sexiest hair (definitely more than my mane). She can kick your ass in Hebrew and is a certified New York Bartender. She has a childlike laugh that makes me smile and she understands kids like no other.

She is taking a course on interraciality and hybridity and sat down on our green couch last night to talk to me about it. I won't go too much into the conversation for privacy's sake, but basically, what we talked about where notions of not being "Black enough" or how being a "halfie" often makes you "BI" racial, and not inter racial. You are not a venn diagram and a whole, but rather two separate things, divided which can make you doubt where/who you are.

For a mutt like me, I don't think of myself in terms of being interracial (in America, what you SEE in color terms is more what defines you as inter racial, being black/indian/asian/chicano, and then something.) It got me to thinking about a whole different struggle in identity that has never crossed my mind. Often times, people at Yale get down on themselves for not being "cool" or "original," by being black and japanese or indian and jewish. Yet people who think this, clearly are not thinking into nuances of the situation. The struggles, the triumphs, and the confusion. These are dilemmas I probably will never have.

So what does it mean to be a mutt? Where is my role in this conversation? I could politely sit back and listen, offer a sort of minimal understanding, and my care/heart for Dalia. I was really interested in her story. Sometimes I wonder though, should I be part of the conversation? If so, where am I valuable? As Dave Chappelle said, "Lets fuck each other till we're beige," I guess I'm already beige (my bubby swears her great grandfather had some african blood). So where do the beige talk?