[Dancer Post] My Mixed-Ass (part 1)

Editor's Note: This week features a multi-part reflection from Sarah Chien, one of the extraordinary dancers and artistic collaborators who is bringing this dance to life. Here she reveals quite a bit about perception versus reality, and privilege. (And all the BOLD for emphasis is mine.)
 
It all started with a story I told Sydnie during rehearsal. Since joining The Window Sex Project this summer, I’ve been viewing my everyday interactions through the lens of topics discussed at the community workshops and rehearsals: personal space, our rights as women and people to exist in our neighborhoods, and how small instances represent larger threats.

Looking through this new magnifying glass at my daily movements in public spaces, I noticed a parallel invasion of my daily commute was happening in the form of marketers, missionaries, merchants---all trying to get a minute of my time. Much like potential “hollerers” they were looking at me, and making a snap judgment before interrupting my daily routine.

Blue-shirted Children International campaigners would often say “You look nice…” before trying to get me to pledge to their charity.

Slick hair salon promoters would say “You’ve got great hair… Can I ask you a question about it?”

And most invasive of all are the black-clad Jewish missionaries called Chabad who seem to pinpoint my Jewish nose and fluffy hair from a mile away, in order to say “Excuse me, Ma’am, are you Jewish?”

In rehearsal I told Sydnie how after a day full of such small harassments and instant profiling, I found myself scheming about clever retorts to launch at the Chabad men before I finally snapped at them: “Jewish?” I scoffed, “Not like you!” While I told this story with remorse, the strong women of Window Sex of course reminded me that I was well within my rights to be a little rude when someone’s not only invading my space, but racially profiling me on the street.

Sara (cap & gown) with her family.

So now we are creating a solo about the many ways I am perceived and the also the ways I choose to present myself. To set the record straight, I am a multi-racial woman, coming from a German-Jewish mother and a Chinese father. I grew up in a heavily Christian, although not-quite as racially homogenous as most Easterners would think, small city in the Midwest. After college, I achieved Spanish-language fluency from studying, dancing, and working in Ecuador. I look ethnically ambiguous and have endless stories to tell about the faux-pas (or revealingly racist slips) that people make while trying to figure me out in a single glance.

If I had to pick a single piece of text for the solo, it would be the question “What ARE you?”. This seems ridiculous when you say it here, in New York City, in 2011 right? The answer should be “A human, duh.” But growing up in Illinois I used to get asked this question all the time. It would go “What ARE you? Black, white or mixed?” I can’t remember ever feeling particularly angry about this, just sort of exasperated by other people’s ignorance. The answer they were looking for was a list of my minority heritage, “half-Chinese, half-Jewish,” which is usually what I would say. But what I really felt like saying was “Well, think about it a second… I mean look at me, if I’m not white, and I’m not black, then I must be…mixed.”

I wasn’t even annoyed at the dehumanizing aspect of the question as much as the fact that with such narrow categories the answer seemed self-evident. People would ask in genuinely curious ways, not necessarily maliciously at all. It often happened with total strangers including the girls bathroom in high school! Much in the same way that transgendered and queer people deal with mis-classification, this question highlights the embeddedness of social categories, and the rejection or confusion that is created when someone renders grey what was thought to be black and white. I can’t recall the exact words, but my parents received similar questions during their marriage or when my mother was pregnant with me, such as “what kind of babies are you going to have?”

 to be continued...