Find yourself!

‘Find yourself’

Stuck in-between a rock and a hard place. How the world has pressurised us into a position where we have to now choose between what is right and what is wrong, knowing the differences between good and evil, just questioning our straight – common – sense.

Living as a young naïve mixed race, Tonga, German and Irish born in Australia, living in a western country, in the heart of white suburbia. I had one choice. I grew up white.

The term half-caste, from my father and my mother. Father being white and mother being brown. As stated above, the word naïve comes into play. There are no malicious terms in the words I breath. It is ignorance that is bliss that broadens our children’s innocence. Remember this while reading, remembering that this is written from my 14-year-old self.

The phrase ‘white’, what does that even mean? Is it reversed racism? Do we disregard history and give the word ‘white’ emotion? I’m Tongan… I’m not ‘white’. Wait, am I?

I’ve struggled in my 20s, confused as to the way people had treated me. Expectations were pushed and society had put a big sticker on my head in capital letters – ‘FIND YOURSELF!’

But how…?

My sensitivity made me vulnerable in certain social groups, when in interaction with larger proportions, and I never understood why. Whether it was a generation gap, a gender difference, or judgement on features, intellect, socio-economic. Judgement on… race.

I never understood how one could be racist therefore I never saw it when it was happening to me. I just blamed myself. Not my skin. Or my race.

I thought, I was white.

I never got used to my face, my legs or my hair. A friend and I were getting ready before a night out and she looked down and saw that my privates were a different colour to hers, she laughed and pointed it out, I laughed and didn’t think anything of it. It’s okay, I’m white.

At school, parents blamed me for stealing things out of their children’s bags. When the accusation was thrown, when the father ran out of his car so furiously because he thought I looked in their direction the wrong way, my poor innocent 14-year-old self about to be washed away by a grown middle-aged white man, yelling at me and all I could do was stand there and cry. It’s okay though because I was white.

My name was graffitied very creatively on walls ‘CLAIRE GOAT, GO BACK ON YOUR NON-FOBBER BOAT’.

But wait, my mums Tongan?

No that’s right, I’m white.

On social media the bullies told me to eat curry, through songs my name was rhymed with black bears and from my extended family, I was a palagi. At dinner we ate spaghetti, music was alternative and my multicultural immediate family enjoyed watching tv.

I’m… whi - no wait, i'm... confused.

But white descendants were what I was more attracted to, craving that welcoming, sense of acceptance, sense of identity, a sense of belonging. How could you blame me? This was all that was around me. The more I was pushed out, the more I wanted in. Australia, our ‘diverse’ country. Where we are ‘young’ and ‘free’.

… I call bullshit.

I didn’t understand my true sense of identity until I had been with partner who was born in Afghanistan and fled war in 1998. He was 8 years old. An 8-year-old young, innocent, guileless and curious boy who had to escape the unknown and fell into western civilisation. His parents having to sacrifice and make the ultimate choice of seeking refuge in Australia in fear of the worst. The unimaginable. Something so incomprehensible.

In his time in Australia, he was also conflicted with a torn identity. Experiencing identity crisis, he stayed within his community as this was what he was surrounded by. However, just as I was, he too was singled out because of his features, in his own community.

After some time, he socialised with other communities that were not like his and began to experience acceptance and resilience. He grew thick skinned and was able to guide his way through the western world. As my 14-year-old self, he too learnt how to be white.

So, when the words ‘find yourself’ come back to the scene, I still feel like I fall in a heap of unawareness. Uncertain whether I have to pretend to be something I’m not, continue my operative white persona so I can feel accepted or to become my authentic self just as I am even though I do not know who that is and probably never will. We are created by social normalities, trends, stigma, categories, groups, division. We cannot say who we are when the world has not let us be. But the beautiful thing about mother nature is procreating and changing our evolution.

And then, she was here. My sweet, beautiful baby girl, Hazel-Lilly. A naïve mixed race, Tongan, Irish, German, Afghan, Indian, born in Australia, living in a western country, in the heart of white suburban. 11 years ago, life was very different. Life today, as we know it, is also very different though I hope in the sake of our new children that a difference is made with the way we choose acceptance and I know that she will endure acceptance. She will fight for acceptance, she will create acceptance, and she will have her own choice.

I hope that every dark hair on her body, she will groom ever so gently knowing that the darkness in her pigment lays deep within her skin that shines the beauty within her culture. I hope that her brown eyes remind her of soil in the ground where feet were pressed upon making sacrifices for her to be here. And I hope when she looks at her skin, her auburn silky soft layer that masters her as whole, that she knows that she does not have to feel any other colours of the world, but her own.

As Thelma Plum sang, she is her own homecoming queen and those lyrics will be played endlessly on that record player. She will be prepared to be in between two worlds, ready with her voice used as a mace, knowing that there are many colours, but only one human race.