THE BURDEN OF A MIXED RACE IDENTITY

ANDRA ELENA Agafiţei

Ph.D. student, Faculty of Letters, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University, Iaşi, Romania, andra.agafitei@yahoo.com

Abstract: The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to underline that, despite the fact that we claim to be
living in a world in which tolerance is one of the most important coordinates and racism is a notion that exists
purely theoretically, the realities of our times prove exactly the opposite. On the other hand, the paper aims at
making people aware, one more time, of the consequences of a racist behaviour, behaviour that can completely
change one’s life. Our goal is to show that even though many decades have passed, racism is still present in the
society, at all its levels. By writing this paper, we hope to succeed in making a difference in the readers’ minds and
souls by raising their awareness related to the relationships with other people.

Key words: ethnicity, identity, race, search

1. Introduction
There comes a moment in life when, all of a sudden, the “Who am I?” question springs to mind.
It may happen during childhood, which is well-known as being the time of the first discoveries, in
adolescence, when one struggles to find out as many things as possible about oneself and the others or
even when one is already a grown-up but feels that there is something more to learn about one’s person.
So… “Who am I?” Here is the question, and the answers may vary: “I am my parents’ child”, “I
am a mother/ a father”, “I am a teacher” and so on… Well, one might say, all these can be right but do
they really define one as a person? Is one satisfied with these “external” answers? And what happens
when, in one’s quest for identity, another “element” appears, complicating the situation? Yes, it is
“colour” that we are talking about and, more precisely, we are referring to “black” and “white”, the two
colours that have always been and represented different worlds (instead of “worlds”, one can also read
“peoples”, “races”) that were not supposed to blend and still… they did, giving birth to various shades.

2. Being different in “Down These Mean Streets”

If one is white or black, things are quite simple but when one’s colour is somewhere in between
and, moreover, when this particular element tends to become the most important factor in mediating one’s
relations with the outer world, all seems to change; especially if one’s colour does not happen “to reflect”,
like some sort of mirror, one’s nationality, ethnicity.
This is also the case of John Peter Thomas – or as we all readers know him, Piri Thomas – who,
in his Down These Mean Streets novel – built as a Bildungsroman – tells the story “of a mulatto Puerto
Rican youth in search of his racial definition and cultural identity who wanders uncomfortably in the
contested social, cultural, and racial spaces of the home, the school and the <<mean streets>>”
(Augenbraum, 2000, p. 22). The novel portrays “his experiences as a child in the barrio and as a teenager
in an Italian section of East Harlem and later in Babylon, Long Island” (Augenbraum, 2000, p. 21), which
force him to confront issues of racial and ethnic identity.
Ironically, it is in his own home where Piri first encounters loneliness, faces rejection and seems
to be invisible for the others, especially for his father, who does not even care that his son is not in the
house, being too busy playing dominoes with his friends: “Poppa hadn’t even gone to work. He had
known about my cutting out and hadn’t even worked up a sweat” (Thomas, 1991, p. 7). We believe that it
is because of Piri’s skin color – he is the darkest of all his siblings – that his father treats him coldly, as if
he were not his son, discriminating him. Even though he is also his kid, he is “the one that always gets the
blame for everything” (Thomas, 1991, p. 3). Thus, “colour becomes the category that sets Piri apart from
the others” (Augenbraum, 2000, p. 23), making him feel like a total stranger among the members of his
family. Despite his age (12 years old), he is aware of the fact that the relationship between him and his
father is different, wondering if the reason might be his skin complexion:
Why do I feel so left outta things with you – like Moms is both of you to me, like if you and me
was just an accident around here? I dig when you holler at the other kids for doing something
wrong. How come it sounds so different when you holler at me? Why does it sound harder and
meaner? Maybe I’m wrong, Pops. I know we all get the same food and clothes, anything and
everything – except there’s this feeling between you and me. Like it’s not the same for me. How
come when we all get to play with you, I can’t really enjoy it, like the rest? How come when we
all get hit for doing something wrong, I feel it the hardest? Maybe ’cause I’m the biggest, huh?
Or maybe it’s ’cause I’m the darkest in this family. (…) I mean, you love us all the same, right?
(Thomas, 1991, p. 22).

Because of his father’s attitude towards him – who prefers the others who are white and acts as if
he were white – Piri’s relationship with his siblings begins to change. If, at first, he keeps his thoughts for
himself, “but how come he called Miriam <<honey>> and the rest of those sweet names and me hardly
ever? Miriam gets treated like a princess. I’d like to punch her in her straight nose” (Thomas, 1991, p.
22), in the end, he has a “confrontation” with his brother, José, who rejects him the moment he chooses to
identify himself as being black. On the one hand, José states that they are Puerto Ricans and, on the other
hand, the fact that he is not black, due to his physical features, proudly defending his “white status”
(Thomas, 1991, p. 145). “I ain’t black, damn you! Look at my hair. It’s almost blond. My eyes are blue,
my nose is straight. My motherfuckin’ lips are not like a baboon’s ass. My skin is white. White, goddamit!
White! Maybe Poppa’s a little dark, but that’s the Indian blood in him. He’s got white blood in him and –
“(Thomas, 1991, p. 144).
As a matter of fact, we might say that it is a mere coincidence that José is white, because “the
majority of Puerto Ricans are mestizos” (Novas, 2007, p. 132), just as Piri is.
The only one who does not seem to care about her son’s color is his mother. Paradoxically, it is
the white parent who accepts the boy as he is, paying no attention to that particular aspect. Even though
she sometimes calls him “un negrito” (Thomas, 1991, p. 19), she does it for the simple fact that she loves
him; the word is a term of endearment and can be used “when addressing anyone, even those with flaxen
hair and blue eyes” (Novas, 2007, p. 133).
Being a Puerto Rican with black features makes Piri feel like he does not belong in his family,
like he does not fit in. He is stuck in between the two colors, black and white and this makes it all harder
for him. Thus, it does not come a surprise for us, as readers, when we get to read that he hates his siblings
for their color and that if he is supposed to be black, then he accepts it and wants to find out what “black”
means – “Jesus, if I’m a Negro, I gotta feel it all over” (Thomas, 1991, p. 128) – by going South with his
friend Brew, who also considers him a black: “Ah only sees another Negro in fron’ of me” (Thomas,
1991, p. 121).
The situation at school does not differ much from the one at home. Here too, Piri has problems in
stating his identity. At the swing session in the school gym, he asks Marcia, a white girl, to dance but he is
turned down just because she thinks he is black. At first, she mistakes him for a Spaniard because he
utters a Spanish word, “suerte” but then – even though he mentions he is “a Puerto Rican from Harlem”
(Thomas, 1991, p. 282) – his accent, which is “more like Jerry’s” (Thomas, 1991, p. 282), a non-white
accent, confirms her beliefs. This is a moment in which he is not “betrayed” by his physical features but
by his language. It is the linguistic barrier that creates a gap between Piri and Marcia. Kids are mean to
him and this can be noticed from what they say behind his back: “Christ, first that Jerry bastard and now
him. We’re getting invaded by niggers” (Thomas, 1991, p. 86). Even though someone is trying to support
him saying “I hear he’s a Puerto Rican” (Thomas, 1991, p. 86) and that does not mean he is a Negro,
another kid says that it does not make any difference and that “he’s passing for Puerto Rican because he
can’t make it for white” (Thomas, 1991, p. 86). Although Angel tries to comfort him, Piri cannot help
thinking that he hates all those “white motherjumps”. He hates the whites, does not want to be thought of
as a black, he just wants to be seen as what he really is: a Puerto Rican.
 In the streets, Piri’s life changes every time he moves to another place; and in each new
neighborhood, he has to state who he is, to face all the new challenges, to build up his reputation, to do
what he is required in order to be accepted in a gang because a gang is like a second family in which all
the members look after one another, giving you the sense of belonging, of having been integrated in a
group. After all, is not this what we are all longing for, acceptance?
Hanging around on the block is a sort of science. You have a lot to do and nothing to do. In the
winter there’s dancing, pad combing, movies, and the like. But summer is really the kick. All the
blocks are alive, like many-legged cats crawling with fleas. People are all over the place. Stoops
are occupied like bleacher sections at a game, and beer flows like there’s nothing else to drink.
The block musicians pound out gone beats on tin cans and conga drums and bongos. And kids are
playing all over the place – on fire escapes, under cars, in alleys, back yards, hallways.
We rolled marbles along the gutter edge, trying to crack them against the enemy marbles, betting
five and ten marbles on being able to span the rolled distance between your marbles and the other
guy’s. We stretched to the limit skinny fingers with dirty gutter water caked between them,
completely oblivious to the islands of dog filth, people filth, and street filth that lined the gutter.
(Thomas, 1991, p. 14)

The fragment above describes what we may call a no-worries-day in the barrio, in Spanish
Harlem. Still, not all days are the same, especially when you, as a Puerto Rican kid, move to the Italian
block and have to explain, all over again that you are not a black, even though all the others say that you
are “black enuff to be a nigger” (Thomas, 1991, p. 24). In front of the white children, Piri’s explanations
do not matter at all, being still perceived as a black person and not a Puerto Rican, and, moreover, as an
intruder in their neighborhood. In the “spaghetti country”, the rules belong to the Italians, and Piri has to
fight (both on a physical and on a spiritual level) his way in order to show them that he is not afraid, that
he has got a heart, that he is an hombre.
Wherever he goes, he lives between white people – he cannot avoid them – and this makes him
feel disoriented. Being a child born out of a white mother and an African-American father only
strengthens this awkward situation, giving him the sensation that he is “torn apart” between his two
halves: “I still can’t help feeling both paddy and a Negro. The weight feels even on both sides even if both
sides wanna feel uneven. Goddamit, I wish I would be like one of those lizards that change colours. When
I’d be with Negroes, I’d be a stone Negro and with paddies, I’d be stone paddy” (Thomas, 1991, p. 180).
Unfortunately, he desires the impossible and Brew reminds him that: “Yuh knows damn well yuh can’t
make it like a Caucasian due to your nappy hair – better’n mine, but still nappy. Your nose ain’t the right
shape; it ain’t as flat as mine, but it’s still flat, an’ your color can’t pass as a suntan even yuh-all had a
letter of recommendation from Sun Tan Oil Incorporated” (Thomas, 1991, p. 181). We can notice here
that physical features play an important part in defining one’s identity, race or ethnicity.
Still, all these problems seem to be forgotten in the time spent in a maximum security prison after
having been convicted for armed robbery. In jail, Piri spends his time counting down the days until his
parole working, thinking about Trina and his plans regarding her. It is now that the young Puerto Rican
wants “to learn all the hustles, all the arts of knowing people and their kicks” (Thomas, 1991, 257) and is
“curious about everything human” (Thomas, 1991, p. 297). He also becomes interested in philosophy and
different religions (especially the religion of Islam). He befriends Chaplin – or Muhammad, as he likes to
call himself – starts reading from the Holy Quaran and embraces the religion of Islam. Even though he
does not remain a Muslim after his release from jail, he does not forget one thing: “No matter a man’s
color or race, he has a need of dignity and he’ll go anywhere, become anything, or do anything to get it –
anything…” (Thomas, 1991, p. 297).
When he gets out of the jail, he is a man with self-respect and dignity, liberated from the
“Whiteness and White supremacy” (Candelario, 2007, p. 342). Once he chooses “the Bible as a source of
content, accepting faith in Christ” (Augenbraum, 2000, p. 26), he is cured, he finds his real self, which is
no longer trapped in between black and white but which now belongs to the most important side, the free
side, that of a man who has found his identity.
 3. Conclusions
Down These Mean Streets, “a didactic novel, marked by a positive and optimistic outlook
regarding a young man’s struggle for individuality, personal responsibility, justice, human dignity,
acceptance, and, above all, recognition” (Augenbraum, 2000, p. 22) is the living proof of the fact that,
even though the world has evolved and things have changed, certain issues – especially racism – is one
matter that continues to be present in the society, a presence that, unfortunately, cannot be left aside
because it still is one of the major factors that forges one’s destiny.

4. References
 Augenbraum, Harold and Margarite Fernández Olmos (eds.) (2000) U. S. Latino Literature. A
Critical Guide for Students and Teachers, Westport CT: Greenwood Press.
 Ginetta, E. B. Candelario (2007) “Color Matters: Latino/a Racial Identities and Life Chances” in
Flores, Juan and Renato Rosaldo (eds.) A Companion to Latino/a Studies. Malden/Ma/Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing.
 Helms, Janet E. (1993) Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research and Practice. Westport
CT: Praeger Paperback.
 King, John (2004), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 Novas, Hilmice (2007) Everything You Need to Know about Latino History. New York: Penguin
Group.
 Rattansi, Ali (2007) Racism. A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Steinberg, Stephen (ed.) (2000) Race and Ethnicity in the United States. Issues and Debates.
Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell.
 Thomas, Piri (1991) Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Books.
 Torres, Rodolfo D. et al. (2003) Race, Identity and Citizenship. A Reader. Malden Massachusetts:
Blackwell.

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