FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
Youth Radio's Karissa Harden is bi-racial. Her mom's white and her dad's black. She says she's used to others calling the black part of her identity into question.
Ms. KARISSA HARDEN: All my life, I looked inward and asked myself: How far does my black experience go? This question was sparked again recently in my sociology class. Black students in the class began to share the standards and rules they apply to the infamous N-word and black life.
One lady pointed me and said, if she said it to me, I wouldn't be cool with it. She was implying because I'm bi-racial I'm not familiar enough with the black experience to use black codes of speech in interaction.
I was caught a little bit off guard. As usual, whenever my biracial identity is spotlighted, I felt really awkward. But after that uncomfortable moment I started to really think about whether there was any truth to her statement.
I haven't experienced some things that many people consider monumental in the black experience. I don't want to put black people in a box or they'll believe experience is as exclusively black. But growing up with a single-white mom I missed out on a lot of barbecues in the park and jam sessions to old school music that takes you to a more wholesome time in black life.
I didn't grow up surrounded by cousins and family friends who lived in my neighborhood. And I didn't spend every Sunday at church enduring long sermons about Christ and his glorious promise.
And sometimes that makes me feel like my black experience is limited. However, that doesn't mean I'm not connected to the black part of me. I've taken adventurous trips to the deep South to visit distant relatives and felt inexplicable pain and rage in my heart when I see pictures of horrific lynching scenes. I've looked in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction at my brown skin and broad nose.
One of my simplest pleasures is running my fingers to the coils of my thick mass of hair and inhaling the lingering scents of Pink brand lotion. In my old neighborhood, I had inspiring conversations with the legendary and harmless wino who roamed the black.
I've endured the anguish of being a daughter to an unaccountable black father and attended down the reunions with my kooky but precious relatives. Not to mention, there are a lot of things I've been though that are distinctly a part of the bi-racial experience.
I've been through the insulting process as having to choose either African-American or Caucasian on censuses and standardized tests. I felt like I was surrounded by white peers who will never understand me as a black person and by black peers who will never understand me because I wasn't enough like them.
And plenty of white teachers met my mom with surprised and perplexed looks on their faces at parent-teacher conferences.
Reflecting on all of this, I finally began to understand that having any black in you, you embody the black experience. Whether you bump that Lil Wayne record and wear your white tee or paint your nose black and listen to death metal.
Whether you're proud to believe black folks are the original people of planet Earth or you just don't care about all that Afro-centricity. Whether you're a black Latino who speaks Spanish, or a black Parisian living in the Les Mares(ph), everything have experienced has been in your near black body. It's easy to get lost in the media-induced homogenization of culture.
Even though we all enable that process at times, it's important to allow yourself to develop your own definitions.
For NPR News, I'm Karissa Harden.
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CHIDEYA: That commentary was produced by Youth Radio.
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