| Do Color and Race Matter? |
| by Naresh Arvind Prashad |
“Are you sure that child is yours?” said all of my dad’s friends and family. That was the famous question that my dad was asked at the time of my birth. Born on January 18th, 1981 at the Prashad Medical Hospital in Georgetown, Guyana, I weighed nine pounds, six ounces at twenty inches long. When I was born, my mom said that I was the fairest and whitest baby boy that she had ever seen in her entire life. My complexion, as well as several other physical characteristics led to my father’s family and friends to make their generalization that my father was not my biological father. Guyana is located on the Northeastern part of South America, thus making it a country located within a tropical climate region. It is extremely hot all year round, even throughout the rain season. Due to the scorching hot sun, very few Guyanese children are born with a fair complexion. All things considered, it was my skin tone that drew the attention to me, for it was unusual to the rest of my dad’s family and this is what drew the disparities between them.
On my third day of life, my mom and dad took me home to my grandparents’ house, where my parents resided. Traditionally, in the Hindu culture, this is where mother and child were supposed to live. In Guyana, the three most dominant religions are Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Hindus believe that mother and child should live with the parents of the father because the elderly should never be left alone out of respect and gratitude. After my father’s parents saw me for the first time, they could not believe their eyes. Their minds could not be changed, they were sure that their son was not the father of this newborn baby boy. They used my complexion, hair color and hair texture as reasoning. My hair was extremely black, very fine, and to them unusually straight. They were sure that my biological father of a “white man for the States”. This assumption began to spread and soon became unspoken yet understood when my father was around. But considering that he worked for the contracting industry of the Guyana Government, he was hardly ever there. So, my mom had to listen to insults day and night from all of her in-laws. The verbal abuse came from her mother-in-law and father-in-law as well as her brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Mind you, this only happened when my father was not around. For example, when she would get home from work at 3:30 p.m., they would complain and tell her how I was a bad child and made a mess, and she “needed to do something about this white man’s child” insinuating that we should leave. Not only the insults, but also my mother never made any attempt to tell my dad about the abuse because she didn’t want any disparities between my dad and his family. She simply went about her business that included a full-time job as a teacher with a baby boy to take care of. All that was left for her to do was to listen but yet to ignore all the insults and accusations that were made against her. She never chose to inform my dad about it. She endured this all for about a year and a half until it was time for her and her son to migrate to the United States.
I was approximately nineteen months old when I came into this country; obviously, I don’t remember anything except for what I’ve been told. Unfortunately, my father was unable to accompany us to the States because my mom and dad were never married legally. The Hindu ceremony had just given them to right to live together as a family, but a marriage certificate was never actually issued to them, thus leaving my mom without the proper proof of a marriage license to present to the US embassy in Guyana. My mom’s sisters had sponsored her and the laws of immigration gave me the right to come with my mom, but it prohibited my dad from coming with us because of an illegal marriage. I was almost three years old, which was about a year and a half later, that I was able to see my dad. After leaving my native country, Guyana and coming to America, the same problem arose, except in a subtle manner. Residing in one of the several small apartments in an apartment building located on 5608 Palisades Avenue in West New York, NJ, my mom and I resided with several of her brother and sisters. Her siblings did not believe that her husband and my biological father could ever be the same person. But, my grandfather knew her daughter, my mom, and loved her dearest among the rest of her brothers and sisters. He knew and believed my mom that my father was her husband, and that she had not seen nor spoken to, much less slept with any “white man from the States”. After my father left Guyana to come to the United States and saw the existing tension between his wife and her family, he asked her what was going on and she was left with no choice but to tell him. She had kept this problem bottled up inside her for about three years and just couldn’t go on any longer hiding it from him. Mind you, she had experienced it first with her in-laws back in Guyana for a year and a half and then with her own siblings for another year and a half after coming to the States. When my father became aware of the situation, both he and my mom decided it would be best if we moved away.
Early one cold Tuesday morning in late February of 1984, we packed out 1972 light brown Datsun 210 and left the apartment in West New York, NJ for Houston, Texas. After arriving and settling down in our new apartment, both of my parents got full time jobs, so I was left with no choice but to go to a daycare center. I went there for one year and then went on to Kindergarten. Finally, at the age of six years, I began my grammar school education as a first grade student. It was here at this local public grammar school in Houston, Texas, where I realized that a difference in color and race mattered. One day while standing on the lunch line with a few “friends” of which I had recently met, I experienced something I would never forget. As the line moved on and we came closer to the “lunch lady” who took our lunch tickets, all of my “white friends” turned on me. They all somehow managed to scheme on me, telling her, “he cut, he cut the line!” The “lunch lady” then replied by asking, “who, who did?” Then one said, “him. The brown boy”, and so the “white” lunch lady ordered me to go to the very back of the line and wait my turn like the rest of the students, and so I lowered my head and returned to the back of the line.
Another situation, such as the previous one happened in the third grade when we had our weekly spelling test and one of the “white boys”, specifically Timothy Kent, told me that if I didn’t let him copy off of me during our test he was going to “get me during lunch time”. So I was left with no choice but to let him see my spelling words, he even went as far as to copy me extra credit word, which was “material”. Unfortunately, I had spelt it “material”, and Timothy had copied it that very way as well. So, the teacher, Mr. Brauer called us both up to his desk, and told Timothy and myself that our tests were exactly the same and that both of our extra credit words were incorrectly spelled the same way. Not to mention, none of the other students in the class ever bothered to do the extra credit. This left me with an extremely surprised yet frightened look on my face. However, Timothy’s facial expression showed no guilt or any feelings whatsoever. Before I could bring myself to say anything, Timothy had already begun speaking, “but, Mr. Brauer I didn’tÉ” and before Timothy could finish, he interrupted by saying, “Yes Timmy, I know you didn’t. But you” turning to me, “how dare you do something like this in my classroom, this behavior is intolerable and unacceptable, did you really think you were going to get away with something like this? Your grade for this test will be a zero and from now on, you will have an assigned seat during all tests”. And so once again, “I lowered my head” and returned to me seat.
I never actually attempted to tell my parents about any of the experiences that I had encountered because somehow I had the feeling that these “experiences” were not finished. Another incident involved a book report each student had to do for every marking period, in this case four. So, I did my first one on “The Hardy Boys” which I read every chance I got. Reading every chance I got did not work in my favor as I thought it would. I realized this because one day, one of the “white boys” came up to me and told me that I had better give him a copy of my book report or else. Considering the situation, I decided to give him a copy, being very aware of my experiences, I did not want to find out what “or elseÉ” meant. A few days before it was due, I had finished it in order to have it ready for Steven, but suddenly I reconsidered, I had decided not to give it to him. I thought to myself, “I can either stand up for myself now or be taken advantage of for the rest of the school year”. And so said, so done, he asked and I kept on procrastinating until time ran out and I accidentally tripped and fell on my face with a bloody nose. In short, I found out exactly what “or else” meant. He and his friends had tripped me while we were all walking from class to the school bus after school one day. Had I known “or else” meant “bloodshed”, I would have simply given him a copy of the book report and evidently once again suffered the consequences of being the “colored cheater”.
As I grew older and moved up into my educational endeavor, I learned to accept the fact that I was perceived as a colored person no matter my family thought of me when I was a child. Some people might think or even say that the issue of color in the 21st Century has decreased significantly. However, in actuality, racism remains the same way it was when I suffered nosebleeds and emotional distress from being the person that I am. When I was a child, I was ridiculed for being “whiter” than the rest of my family and the majority of the people around me. For, the hot tropical weather in Guyana has made a mass amount of its citizens acquire the most original “honey brown” or even “black” complexion, thus leaving leaway for discrimination against those very few children with a significantly different skin color. Migrating to the States without the knowledge that it was the complete opposite has made my mind grate with fury and disgust, because the only difference is that the discrimination against me has shifted from being “too white” to “too dark”, from “family” to “friends”.
In fact, I am now able to say that being colored has molded me into the person that I am and has made my character a stronger one by far. Without a doubt, one question has lingered in my mind from the time I realized that I was able to use my memory. Presently, in my past confrontations, I have continuously asked myself, “Do color and Race matter?”