I sing you to me, redone

Well, I found this among some papers I had written when I was 16. I haven't changed any of the wording, and I am actually pretty impressed with how well it was written. If it seems familiar, it is likely because it is very similar to my thoughts on the movie Australia, though I have to admit, I expressed my thoughts much better when I was 16 than my previous post. :)

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The best of both worlds

That is how most people look at being biracial. I tend to agree--by being partially raised in two different cultures, AKA worlds, I can take the best that each has to offfer & create a better combined culture.

However, this system is largely flawed, for it may be able to create a better, more well-rounded person, but from my own experience, one must still choose which of those two worlds to live in. For, you cannot inhabit them both at once. The simple answer for this dilema would be 'follow your heart' or 'just be true to yourself.' But the answer is not so simple if you consider that by having the benefit of being raised in two cultures, neither of them will ever be without flaw in the minds of those involved.

I was greatly blessed to grow up 1/2 Tongan and 1/2 white, because I was able to take the good parts from both the American culture and the Tongan culture and combine them in my self. The trouble comes when I contemplate the huge choices in my life...I must choose one of the two worlds to make my primary home, yet in my mind, they are both flawed. Am I thus cursed to wander aimlessly; serching for something that does not exist?

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Well, I still stand by my 16 year old thoughts. There is not a perfect culture; one without flaw. The difference is that I no longer feel like I need a perfect culture. The imperfections that I see in both cultures are no longer enormous obstacles that I have to overcome. Neither will ever be perfect; I just have the unique opportunity to be able to see both for what they are, and still choose the best aspects for my own personal life.

I sing you to me

That line is from Australia (the movie). The narrator said it constantly to Nicole Kidman's character. I absolutely adored the movie. It was a great movie, and I was crying pretty much constantly for the last half of the movie.

It was a really blunt look into the race struggles that Australia has had in the past. It was odd, to be honest, because it was set during WWII. When I think of the war and that whole era, I just assume that Australia was still an island full of convicts. There were several profound moments in the movie for me.

The first was when someone said something to the effect of to breed the black out of them! It was in reference to the island where they were sending kids who were 1/2 Aboriginee and 1/2 white ("Creamies"). That struck a chord with me because I realized that, had I been born just a few decades before I was (and obviously in Australia, too) I could have met a similar fate. Not because I had done something wrong, not because my parents had, but because Society as a whole looked down upon the mixing of the races.

That's the odd thing about society. We live in a free country. We are free to do pretty much anything that we want. The hold up comes when we do something that infringes on the freedom of someone else or something that society has deemed bad. Usually, all it takes is a few people to agree about any given point for it to become taboo. 12 jurors can decide the fate of one person. 9 judges interpret the constitution. We are free to choose our actions, but not free to choose the consequence. That's done by society as a whole.

I feel like I'm on a soapbox right now, but society once saw me as the product of some sort of deviant behavior on the part of my parents-Labeled an anomaly. It makes me think pretty hard about the types of labels I apply to others. I know that for myself, I understand the part in the movie where the narrator explains that he is a Creamie- He doesn't belong to the white man, and doesn't belong to the black man. He belongs to no one.

We often get on our high horses and preach about how much further we are from our racist, hate-filled grandparents/ancestors, but the truth is that we are not. Perhaps the hate is gone from the labels, but they still exist. When I am around white people, I am labeled as Tongan. When around Tongans, I am labeled white. Neither is willing to accept me blindly as one of them. I myself apply labels to people. Skin color is the most noticable characteristic you see. Maybe that's ok, as long as it is not acompanied by hate. Who knows.

The bottom line is that I could ramble on about this forever, but there's a line from the movie that I love.
Just because that's how it is, doesn't mean it should be.

I hope to be able to one day fully raise above the "labels" of our society. Someday, right?