Are There Any Truly Black (or White) Americans? : BOOKMARK : <i> The fair-skinned descendant of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave, the author came to see the arbitrariness of racial stereotypes. An adaptation of the new book “The Sweeter the Juice.” : </i>

Sometimes I look at people and wonder if they are related to me. I do this in public places and private spaces. There I am, in airport terminals and train stations, on ballroom floors and sandy beaches, studying people who might be my relatives. At parties and dances I have become momentarily distracted by familiar yet unknown faces. I scrutinize the shape of the nose, the cast of the eyes, the curve of the lips and the jut of the chin. Whenever I see a tall white man with a slightly kinky golden brown hair, subtly flared nostrils and large ears of my brother, I say, “there’s a Morris.”

I am a black woman, but many of you would never know it. My skin is as light as that of an average white person. The skin of my sisters and brother is as light as, if not lighter than, mine. But we have lived as, worked as and mostly married black people. Our psyches, souls and sensibilities are black. Yet our lives have been deeply colored by our absence of deep color.

In a broader sense, my family’s story reflects white and black America’s historical attitude toward skin color. Our experience suggests that America is not what it presents itself to be. Some geneticists have said that 95% of “white” Americans have varying degrees of black heritage. According to “The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy,” 75% of all African-Americans have at least one white ancestor and 15% have predominantly white blood lines. All statistics are subject to interpretation, but the fact that anthropologists and biologists continue to glean these truths from genetic data gives weight to the claim that there are no “real white Americans.” I began the search for my mother’s family believing that I was looking for black people “passing for white.” And they did indeed pass. But what I ultimately found, I realized, were black people who had become white. After all, if you look white, act white, live white, vacation white, go to school white, marry white and die white, are you not “white?”

All in all, I have grown a great deal less certain about the vagaries of race and know that I am ambivalent about its implications. But I am comfortable with that ambivalence, for it keeps my doors and windows open.*

Copyright 1994 by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. Adapted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

* BOOK REVIEW. A review of “The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White” by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip appears on Page 1 of the Book Review.