I got my legs waxed the other day and instead of the usual person, it was someone new. I always find myself ingratiating myself on these potential torturers. I don't really know why except that on some level I imagine they can determine the amount of pain I will be in so I'd better get them 'on side'.
This new woman is black so I put into the conversation that my mum is mixed. She looked up at me and remarked that there was no sign in me. I said no, that's genetics for you.
There are 2 things here. One is, why do I initially assume that being 'mixed' is going to gain me greater sympathy with a black woman?
And the other thing is that we don't really know anything about mum's heritage. No one who is alive will tell us and we only really found out that our ancestors are not who we'd previously believed when my grandfather died.
It is conjecture that my maternal grandfather was half Kanaka (or South Sea Islander) or Aboriginal. It seems likely, given all the circumstantial evidence that seems to have appeared now that we're thinking about it. But we don't know.
So I feel fraudulent when I claim a mixed heritage, though within Europe, I definitely have a mixed ethnic heritage.
I remember when we found out that my grandfather's dad was not Mr Jensen. I had always thought of myself as European until then. I may have had some 'unsavoury' European heritage, that is, being Jewish. And being mixed Jewish and Gentile is hard enough from a Jewish perspective, but suddenly I had a whole other kind of ethnicity or 'race' in my origins. That completely changed how I saw myself... perhaps disproportionately.