Categories? No, Thanks

Growing up, I always thought that the people I was surrounded by fell into the same categories. After all, we've lived all of our lives together and had all of our experiences together, right? Oh, how wrong I was...

I started realizing, day by day, how different our experiences must have been: Our parents had their own, separate lives before they were married; my siblings each had their respective lives with school and friends, and I had my own life that was different from those of the rest of my family.

Even when it came to our time together, we each had our own perspectives of our shared experiences. Although I've noticed this a long time ago, I only realized the significance recently when my little sister shared a tidbit of her experience: Although all of my siblings and I have grown up speaking two languages -- English and Arabic -- each of us has a different perception when it comes to the mother tongue versus non-mother tongue that we speak. I consider myself bilingual both by definition and perception while my little sister perceives Arabic to be her mother tongue and English to be her non-mother tongue that she acquired from a very young age.

This conversation with my sister made me think long and hard about the labels that I have given myself over time. Whether it's because of statistical surveys, account creations, or otherwise, there has always been a reason that I had to categorize myself one way or another. One of the things that I have always been confused about when it came to labels was my race. Technically, I am of mixed race: My mother is of African descent from Eritrea and my father is of Middle Eastern descent from Yemen. Also technically, Middle Easterns are considered Caucasian, according to a researcher that I had a relative conversation with. Except, my father is a brown man that has never really considered himself Caucasian or White, so what does that make him? Moreover, when I only have the option to choose one race as many checklists require, what am I to choose?

Why is it that these surveys and checklists require us to choose just one? Why are they checklists in the first place? Say we keep the checklists; can't we at least have an "Other" box as some surveys have? It is a frustration, annoyance, and just overall nuisance to be lumped up into a category that you do not belong in just for the sake of statistics. That being said, I do realize the importance of knowing such statistics for medical purposes, for instance. However, do they really work if we're getting the statistics wrong in the first place?

Aside from checklists, our surroundings pressure us into choosing categories to put ourselves in, and if we choose not to identify with one thing or another, we are seen as weird, exotic, or outsiders. One such example that I have personally experienced is being multi-cultured. As I previously mentioned, I have both Eritrean and Yemeni heritage, both cultures that I love and celebrate in many parts of my life. In addition to that, I have lived for quite a while in Saudi Arabia and feel like a large part of me belongs with its people and its culture. When people know any of these facts about me, they ask questions such as, "Which one do you identify with more?" or they say comments that imply that I am a fake since I cannot fully identify with one culture or do not know everything about one of my cultures.

As a kid, this affected me greatly. I would try to make friends that I thought could relate to part-A of me, but I would eventually be left out because I am not 100%, fully A type. This happened even with people that were of mixed descent like me. My theory is that they wanted to distance themselves from the likes of them to decrease their outsider-ness and make themselves look like they belong with the in-group more than the out-group. Let me just say, they failed miserably on that end eventually...

Sarcasm aside, these experiences made me find friends that were ready to understand my mixed background and helped me grow into the person that I am today that celebrates every little part of herself. I even joke that I now watch Turkish series and am catching phrases from the language because my grandmother is part Turkish (no joke, she really is part Turkish).

Going back to the main point, categories are greatly confusing and often give off the idea that we must constrict ourselves to one -- two, if we're crazy! -- categories to identify with. Meanwhile, we are oceans of labels and categories and mixes that we are proud of and that we celebrate. We are multi-cultural, multilingual, multi-racial beauties. Identifying with all of these makes our lives exciting, interesting, and full of new experiences and opportunities to find out more about ourselves and our backgrounds every day. It makes us want to keep on digging to find the gems that are our ancestral traditions, our old languages, and our different homelands.

And if we're really, deeply thinking about this: Isn't there a point zero that we go back to where every single one of us is connected to? Doesn't that make us all connected at the root?