Different, Not Better

 


Harrison Dunne Polite-headshot

By: Harrison Dunne-Polite
Heritage: White + African-American
Profession in U.S.: Student


When I was a kid, I wished a lot of things were different. This was partially because of my ambiguous identity. I didn’t know what to consider myself or even who to look up to. There were clearly many socially constructed distinctions between my two parts, but nobody to explain them to me.

And in the absence of definitive role models, I eventually found heroes on both sides. But America’s (and the world’s) racial history put me in a tough position. How was I supposed to choose one part of me over the other? My mother or my father? My Black or my White? No, I refused. I would not make a choice. I could be out of place when it’s best to feel so, and I can join in when it's worth it. Many people imagine this flexibility as me being mixed, therefore socially versatile, but it isn’t that simple. I did not start here; I got to this point. I touched the fire and got third degree burns. I went through trials. I spent many days and nights feeling left out and incomplete.

It was common to feel perpetually out of place. The isolation I endured left me without a group to hang onto or a perspective to adopt. It was as if I were on the sideline of the sidelines – becoming comfortable in a racial purgatory. At times, this proved rather lonely because I felt more appealing than connected to people. I defined my ambiguity as my plight. This is how I socially existed through most of high school; not more black than I deserve, but not too white either – God forbid, not that.

My opinions have changed since then, but what I did take away from that phase of my life was an obsession with the abstract – here I feel most comfortable because socially this is where I always existed. In the abstract, things are removed from reality and exist as ideas. But in “my” abstract, all things are considered in an attempt to not pick a side. I have to account for all the pieces at play. This has proved to be a wonderful skill, and as a result, I have interacted, resonated and clashed with opposing sides of a social world in an effort to find myself. I have come to realize my reality as Mixed Privilege.

I never imagined I would find myself in a place of normalcy, for I didn’t really think people were like me. Instead I thought people like me more so happened than existed.

These distinctions presented by my surroundings were trying to convince me of something that just wasn’t true. I felt different because I thought I was. Now I realize, I am like so many others. I hold my spot on the sideline of the sidelines because I was pushed here, but there is plenty of room for everyone.

Being mixed, again, is not easy. It has mostly been a very educational and enjoyable experience, but there have been significant side effects of my double consciousness. I have no choice but to employ them as the privileges of my disadvantage. My hope is that others can also uncover ways to leverage their position for internal growth and maturity, and that this process addresses this particular position that history has put us all in.

• • •

Harrison Dunne-Polite is a sophomore at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, studying Africana Studies and Sociology. He is of mixed heritage and was raised by a single mother in Princeton, NJ. Through his experience as a mixed American, Harrison attempts to develop a sense of relativity through observations of how people treat him and, of equal importance, how people do not treat him.