What Colour Am I?

I have been sitting in front of my computer for almost an hour, staring at the entry form for a chronicle competition. At first, it seems a simple question: colour. But for me, that question has never been simple. I was registered as white, but as I grew up, people began calling me moreninha, Indian or dark-skinned. My uncle called me moreninha cor de cuia — the colour of a cuia, the gourd we drink chimarrão from. Perhaps only people from Rio Grande do Sul will understand the reference. In any case, I knew from an early age that I was neither white nor Black. I was somewhere in between.

You may be thinking: this person is parda, so what is the problem? The problem is that being parda in Brazil is far more complicated than it seems. Because of structural racism, there are people with skin the same colour as mine who take offence when I say I am parda, as though I were placing them in a position of disadvantage. And I understand their discomfort. When I was younger, I thought saying I was white might protect me from the jokes disguised as banter that have followed me all my life, but it never could.

Saying I am white has never brought me any benefit. In fact, it has always had the opposite effect. Every time I said it, there were stifled giggles, pale arms pressed against mine without permission. Then came the remarks, thick with irony: “Your skin is such a beautiful colour! Look at mine, as pale as a heart of palm. I’d give anything for your tan!” But deep down I knew they never would. Or something more direct: “Do you really think you’re white?” As though I did not know the colour of my own skin. As though I did not know that my great-great-great-grandmother, Nena, was a dark-skinned Black woman enslaved in the city of Itaqui, her back scarred by the whips of white people. As though I could, or wanted to, erase the ancestry I carry.

At barbecues with my husband’s family, they have made jokes about what our children would look like if they took after my side. “Imagine how lovely a little Black girl would be, dragging her big lips along the ground.” But they did not think it would be lovely, and I knew it. So what colour am I? Perhaps my colour is that of resistance, of memory, of the history I carry. Or perhaps it is simply the colour of someone who spends every day trying to understand where she belongs.