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*“At age eleven I learned to make fun of myself. I had yellow teeth because my mom took some kind of penicillin when she was pregnant with me. My teeth were all messed up. I had a big forehead—still do have a pretty big forehead, I just have bangs now.”
Angela Nissel may put a comedic spin on growing up biracial in her new book Mixed: My Life in Black and White, but once you stop laughing, she hopes you will start thinking. The product of a White “Deadbeat Dad” and a Black single mother who was formerly a Black Panther, Nissel’s genuinely intimate memoir about growing up biracial in Philadelphia is anything but black and white. Coveting its own unique set of drama, the intricacies of being biracial seem steeped in shades of gray. Still, the books’ revelations often shed new light on an old, dark issue: That light-skinned, dark-skinned, “good-hair” mentality still permeating the mindset of many Black folk.
As the only Black writer on the NBC medical comedy, Scrubs, Nissel has been described as “barely Black” and has even been barred, at times, from commenting on Black issues with “Oh well, you’re half-White so you’re not really Black” being the excuse.
This bothers her.
“I don’t put that much weight on what White people think about me because I don’t feel that kind of kinship with them, except on a human race level; but when Black people reject me, it hurts me to my core...it’s amazing to me because a lot of Black people will reject you, but the minute you claim to be something other than Black, they’re ready to curse you out.”
Biracials continue to be victimized by accusations they have no control over.
“The book could have easily been subtitled: All Light-Skinned Girls Aren’t Stuck Up because I also wanted people to understand where I came from and why I feel the way I do about race...People’s parents would say-- even people’s mothers’… ‘I don’t like light-skinned girls.’…Other women would say, ‘I don’t hang out with light-skinned girls because they think they’re too cute.’”
Such comments make it even more difficult for the one’s who have chosen to fully and solely embrace their Blackness, like Nissel.
“There are a lot of people who don’t consider biracial people to be Black…when I started really studying Black History and would join groups that would focus on the Black experience…people would tell me I have no place there because I was half White.”
Nissel says she even lost friends, some of them biracial.
“…Some of them chose not to even deal with me…because I had a White father and they joined groups that thought your heritage was passed down through your father. Whenever I felt that I fit in, there was always someone telling me, ‘No you don’t’ because of this one side of my heritage that I felt no connection to.”
In Mixed the author recalls a time when she, her 2-year-old brother, and their father visited her favorite video store. The kids would get to tag along as a treat, especially if they had been scolded or spanked earlier in the week. They would get to choose a video while dad, a tech buff, shopped around. On this day, when dad was at the checkout counter, the white clerk looked down to see these two Black kids standing next to him.
“Who are these children,” asked the clerk of the dad. Without skipping a beat, the dad responded, “I have no idea.” Time passed as the clerk, thinking the children are lost, finally announces loudly to the store patrons, “who do these children belong to” as little Angela stands looking at her dad, unsure of what to do. Finally, confused and humiliated, the young girl tugs at her father’s shirt saying, “D-a-d!” and the father laughs and admits to the cashier that the children are his.
Today, Nissel offers she has not had a one-on-one conversation with her father since she was 8-years-old, barring speaking with him a year-and-a-half ago with her brother on the line as she did research for this book. She has memories of him going to court for not paying child support; and asserts she even met, as a young child, some of the women he cheated on her mother with. She is quick to note that, to this day, he has not apologized.
Nissel, who admits that she learned to make fun of herself at an early age just to make friends and not get beat up by the Black kids in school, clarifies some of the misconceptions about being Biracial.
“I think the biggest misconception is that we’re all ‘flower children.’ People always say, ‘Oh, you’re the Cree Summers like on A Different World. [That] we’re all looking to be one big, happy family... all crusading to check off multiple boxes on the Census when I feel like, ‘Yes, its racist to say just because you have one drop of Black blood you’re Black; because that means that somehow Black blood has tainted the White Blood...I don’t even think some Black people have thought about that.”
Hoping not to be seen as “some sort of spokesperson for all bi-racial people” Angela is quick to clarify that this is HER story. The book has received some impressive, albeit mixed, responses. One friend, a biracial who embraces both her Black and White heritage, was offended by Angela’s choice to identify solely with Black. While some White people, according to Nissel, says she has changed the way they look at race. The first biracial person to read Mixed: My Life in Black and White was actress Halle Berry who quickly emailed Nissel.
“You’ve done it again! This is so funny. I relate to so much,” responded Berry, who liked it so much that she, along with her manager, optioned both this book and the author’s first book, The Broke Diaries, a book that began as an online journal that
chronicled her penniless college days. The project is currently in development at HBO as a sitcom, which Nissel will write.
Today Nissel is looking forward to her career in television writing.
“Books are my passion but I know how many people you can reach through TV; and being in there and being the only Black writer in the room I know how powerful it is when I say ‘no’ to doing certain things. I want to be the person who can say ‘yes’ to doing certain things; getting shows on the air that I can look at and be proud of as a Black woman.”
For more info visit: www.angelanissel.com/
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