On Being Bi-racial.

My friend's daughter is half-white, half-black. One day I took her to a family event. She saw my family members and asked what we were. (Puerto Rican) For many years she identified as Puerto Rican because those were the only people with her skin color. Of course that wasn't (isn't) true. She only had my family as a reference.

She even pretended to speak Spanish. One day, in first grade, she welcomed a new Hispanic boy to the class. He didn't speak English so she turned to her Spanish skills, which was gibberish. The boy got upset because he thought she was making fun of him and he slammed her face on the floor.

It's been pretty difficult for her.

I'm black and portuguese but I was only raised by my mother, who is black. So I identify as black. I get a lot of flack for that. People who say "you're not black, you're mixed." And then I say something like "cakes are mixed." Not because I'm insulted by the word, but I am insulted at the suggestion that I should identify my RACE as "mixed." It's so vague, everyone is "mixed."

I've also received the "compliment", "are you mixed? You're too pretty to be just black." I usually chew them out for the implication that how attractive a black woman is depends on how much of her ancestry is non-black. Ugh, why do people say things like that?

Also, my husband is from a French island called Reunion. It has no indigenous people, so everyone there is mixed, but different types of mixed. His father is creole/mulatto from Guadeloupe, his mother is Zarabe, Chinese and Malagasy. That kind of mix is really difficult for American people to conceptualize because after I explain they go, "so then what is he?"

One day we'll have kids and they'll be so mixed that there won't be any point trying to explain it to other people. I'll just call them "brown."

missesdash said:

I'm black and portuguese but I was only raised by my mother, who is black. So I identify as black. I get a lot of flack for that. People who say "you're not black, you're mixed." And then I say something like "cakes are mixed." Not because I'm insulted by the word, but I am insulted at the suggestion that I should identify my RACE as "mixed." It's so vague, everyone is "mixed."

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"Cakes are mixed" reminds me that my friend (white) used vanilla cake mix and chocolate cake mix to create a black and white cake while explaining to her daughter that she (the daughter) was half of each and not Puerto Rican. When I went to visit. The girl said, "Do you want Puerto Rican cake?"

I'm Chinese/Irish-American and I've identified as white most of my life because I look pretty white (I have a lot of freckles) and growing up I lived with my mom, who is the white one (my parents are divorced).

I went to a school that had a high Hmong population so I was always surrounded by 100% Hmong people and they looked WAY more Asian than me so I always felt all white.

Then eventually I moved to a really white neighborhood and I work in a workplace with only white people and now I feel super Chinese. We all went out to some Chinese place the other day and everyone asked me what to get. When I talk about how my grandmother plays favorites when she hands out hong-bao and gives my brother $600 and me $50 because I'm engaged to a white girl and he's got a Chinese girlfriend, everyone is like WHAT??? Well, that's culture for you.

Another thing about being mixed - I get slack from OTHER "mixed" or bi-racial people who say I'm not really mixed and I don't know what it's like to be bi-racial because my "non-white" half is Asian. For some reason "Asian" (nevermind that my family is from central China, and no, I'm not Japanese also) doesn't seem to count most of the time...

jmlee said:

Another thing about being mixed - I get slack from OTHER "mixed" or bi-racial people who say I'm not really mixed and I don't know what it's like to be bi-racial because my "non-white" half is Asian. For some reason "Asian" (nevermind that my family is from central China, and no, I'm not Japanese also) doesn't seem to count most of the time...

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I can totally relate to this as another Chinese/white American. My father's family is Chinese, although my grandfather was born in North Borneo (now part of Malaysia) and my father was born in Hong Kong while they were both under British rule. As far as I can tell, all four of my Chinese great-grandparents came from southern China, specifically Guangdong Province. My mother's family is of Scottish/English/Irish/German/Welsh/French descent, primarily from ancestors who came to the U.S. in the 1600s and 1700s.

I was once told by a Korean classmate that I wasn't "really" Asian. Despite having grown up listening to my dad, aunt, and grandparents speak Cantonese to each other, I often don't feel like a real Chinese person. And yet I don't feel like a white person either. Many people assumed I was a white person with dark hair until I told them otherwise. My siblings and I have sometimes been mistaken as being Latino/a. And yet there have been people (mainly the intelligent ones) who could tell I was part Chinese or at least that I was biracial.

Because of my light skin, I often feel like I'm not "really" a PoC. I've always described myself as half Chinese and half white American, but it wasn't until my teenage years that I started to think of myself as biracial/multiracial and a PoC.

thebloodfiend said:

If that's you in your user pic, I would've guess either or. I'm not one to assume that because your last name is Lee, you're automatically Chinese because my mom's maiden name is Long.
I feel that way whenever I'm around other black kids my own age. BTW, what is Hmong?

And that sucks. I had a cousin who used to married to a white guy. My family gave her so much shit. And I have another cousin who's dating a white girl. They call "Becky", for whatever reason. Interracial dating, despite how much they say they don't care, is a no go for family reunions.

That doesn't even make any sense. When I lived in Hawaii, my mom was friends with a Japanese woman. Her kids looked Japanese, except that their hair was brown. I didn't know that their father was white until he came back from a month long business trip. I was... surprised to say the least. For most of my half-Asian friends, I've always been able to tell. And I can typically differentiate between Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. I wouldn't have guessed that genetics could mix enough to give you freckles.

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Most of the Hmong in the Twin Cities are from Laos, though according to Wiki they also come from other central regions of Asia, including China and Thailand. Minnesota has one of the largest Hmong populations in the US. I didn't realize until highschool that other people in the US had no idea who/what Hmong are/were

Yeah, and one of my cousins married a Nigerian guy and my grandmother excommunicated her. Awesome. The best/worst part was that that cousin was adopted from China, so she is technically the only grandchild who is full-blooded Chinese. Then she went and married some guy from Africa. What're you gonna do?

Aaand finally, my favorite being-Chinese and Hawaii-related story is... when I worked as a barista I was once commenting that my Chinese grandmother had gone to Hawaii for the winter (she does every year) and the woman responded, "Oh, she must like that there... her people are there."

Yeah... her people... what?

When I was younger most people thought I was Native American. My brother has hardly any freckles, though, so I don't know why I got them. he has super curly hair, though, and I don't.

Then again, I also get called "ma'am" a lot when I go out and I was carded for gasoline when I was 23. I think a lot of people don't know what to make of me for other reasons, too

Alan Yee said:

I can totally relate to this as another Chinese/white American. My father's family is Chinese, although my grandfather was born in North Borneo (now part of Malaysia) and my father was born in Hong Kong while they were both under British rule. As far as I can tell, all four of my Chinese great-grandparents came from southern China, specifically Guangdong Province. My mother's family is of Scottish/English/Irish/German/Welsh/French descent, primarily from ancestors who came to the U.S. in the 1600s and 1700s.

I was once told by a Korean classmate that I wasn't "really" Asian. Despite having grown up listening to my dad, aunt, and grandparents speak Cantonese to each other, I often don't feel like a real Chinese person. And yet I don't feel like a white person either. Many people assumed I was a white person with dark hair until I told them otherwise. My siblings and I have sometimes been mistaken as being Latino/a. And yet there have been people (mainly the intelligent ones) who could tell I was part Chinese or at least that I was biracial.

Because of my light skin, I often feel like I'm not "really" a PoC. I've always described myself as half Chinese and half white American, but it wasn't until my teenage years that I started to think of myself as biracial/multiracial and a PoC.

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Word. I relate.

And! The ONLY person who has ever tried to really bond with me over being half-Chinese was this guy I worked with, and he called me "happa-brother" a lot and then finally called me "chink bro" or something similarly... weird... really loudly while we were working and some lady called our manager and said he had been racially harassing me. Haaa.

Do you ever feel weird checking the "Asian/Pacific Islander" box in demographic surveys? As if all of Asia and the Pacific is one big Japan?

(Errr just re-read your post, if your grandfather was born in Malaysia, then maybe you feel less weird? Ha ha now I don't know)

jmlee said:

Do you ever feel weird checking the "Asian/Pacific Islander" box in demographic surveys? As if all of Asia and the Pacific is one big Japan?

(Errr just re-read your post, if your grandfather was born in Malaysia, then maybe you feel less weird? Ha ha now I don't know)

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I do feel a little weird about checking the Asian/Pacific Islander box, because it *is* a huge region. While mainland Asian ethnicities have their differences, they are more similar to each other than Pacific Islanders such as Filipino, Indonesian, Melanesian (Papua New Guinea, Fiji, etc.), Polynesian, and Micronesian.

As for my grandfather, he was born in Malaysia, but his parents were both ethnic Chinese born in China, so for all intents and purposes he's Chinese and not Malaysian. North Borneo had and to some extent continues to have a large ethnic Chinese population.

You know, from my perspective is really weird seeing how much fuzz is done about being bi-racial since here in Venezuela being bi-racial is the "usual" leaving people who is quite defined as black or white (like me) feeling weird. Heck, I did not notice I was white until I was 17 when an Australian girl pointed it out to me in my class picture that I was the only white person in my classroom.

But at the same time, it seems to me that these ideas of this group or that group seems at the end deeply cultural than anything else. My sister's mother is white and her father is mixed-race (some black, with some aboriginal in it, it's hard to tell here, most people don't know their families beyond two or three generations before) and I suffer a bit when people question that we're siblings, which is kinda hurtful. Also, I know she will never grow having people question her Latino ethnicity has it has happened to me and my father and my grandfather, we are all proud of being Latin Americans and we are all being asked routinely our ethnicity and the all sadly too often "You don't look Venezuelan".

Y'all know I don't really 'count', because I'm a completely white-looking girl raised in predominantly white neighborhoods as a kid, etc.

But there are enough things my mom, particularly, believed and were normal to us that got laughed at by my friends growing up. It was much worse for my mom, who actually had to go to a preppy white school wearing all sorts of herbal remedies and tonics, lol. I laugh, but she really was mortified.

Mostly it's beliefs. I still believe many things I know mainstream white culture thinks are silly. They aren't silly. But I keep all that quiet, mainly

I did have a best friend in TN who was a pale white girl whose live-in grandmother was Cherokee. They were from Louisiana. I could be completely myself with her and her family, including all of the beliefs and stories. Very often Black friends (in the South) have grandparents very much like mine, too. Typically the golfing country club set are the ones who have no clue what I'm talking about -- at all -- and it is funny how cultures can clash that way

I had so many moms fussing at me for filling their kids' heads with strange ideas! It was customary where I grew up to spend Saturday night at a sleepover and go to church with the friends' family in the morning. Some of those moms are rather strict about which exact beliefs are acceptable to discuss in their homes

thebloodfiend said:

And for those of you who are half-white, half-something else, or not even half-white at all, do you feel like outsiders in both groups?

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Yes.

Ironically, the most at home I've felt is with my native American student association on campus. We're from different tribes, often a mix or only half-blooded, and all refugees in the middle of nowhere, whiteland Midwest. Culturally, we're as different as any other cultures. But lots of us share the same experience of not quite belonging. Both the ones who grew up on the rez and are now somewhere totally unfamiliar, and those of us who still feel a connection to something back on the rez but can't quite figure out its nature or what it means, and have never quite fit in anywhere.

Back on the rez, I get treated like I belong, but only superficially. There's still the feeling that I'm not really one of them. The land feels more like home than anywhere else I've been, but still, I never grew up there, and the people who are my family can sometimes feel like total strangers.

It's purgatory.

missesdash said:

And then I say something like "cakes are mixed." Not because I'm insulted by the word, but I am insulted at the suggestion that I should identify my RACE as "mixed." It's so vague, everyone is "mixed."

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i think a big part of race is that you can be mixed race without being mixed colour. Maybe you are French Nordic, or maybe you are South African Caribbean, or Inuit Cherokee. As a species we have defined 'race' to be something so specific that even members of the same family can't identify.

My own family is a pretty huge melting pot of race and religions. I would say that about half of our immediate family is South Indian by descent. My folks are the whitest people you will ever see (seriously, we are Irish so our skin is pretty see though) but how do I identify in terms of my grandparents, or cousins or aunts etc who don't share my parentage,but who are still part of my racial make up.

I think it's a very expansive issue that encompasses so many people.

One day we'll have kids and they'll be so mixed that there won't be any point trying to explain it to other people. I'll just call them "brown."

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i figure that eventually we will all be a sort of beige colour.

jmlee said:

Another thing about being mixed - I get slack from OTHER "mixed" or bi-racial people who say I'm not really mixed and I don't know what it's like to be bi-racial because my "non-white" half is Asian. For some reason "Asian" (nevermind that my family is from central China, and no, I'm not Japanese also) doesn't seem to count most of the time...

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I've actually gotten this quite a bit as well. I'm Japanese and white (a European mutt on that side, but mostly French), but my Japanese ethnicity is often erased by people who are white, PoC, mixed, you name it. Not always, but often.

jmlee said:

Another thing about being mixed - I get slack from OTHER "mixed" or bi-racial people who say I'm not really mixed and I don't know what it's like to be bi-racial because my "non-white" half is Asian. For some reason "Asian" (nevermind that my family is from central China, and no, I'm not Japanese also) doesn't seem to count most of the time...

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Looks like many people can relate, but I've never gotten this.

I think it's because where I live, there is a very significant Asian population. And people who are biracial here are most commonly half-Asian, at least in some areas of the city.


My mom was Chinese-Canadian. She was born in Canada, but my grandparents came from southern China in the fifties. My dad's white, and his family has been in Canada for a very long time, originally from England and Ireland.

I definitely feel like an outsider with other Asians. But so did my mom. She grew up in a city with a small Chinese community (at the time, anyways), and assimilation was encouraged much more then than it is now. She barely spoke Chinese (toisan) and it was a different dialect than what is spoken in most of the Chinese community here. So if we were at a Chinese restaurant/mall, people would speak to her in Cantonese or Mandarin (*this is becoming more common, but the dominant language in the Chinese community was Cantonese for the longest time due to the significant number of immigrants from Hong Kong), and she wouldn't be able to answer.

My boyfriend is from a small town. When we go to weddings there, I'm often the only person there who isn't completely white, and I do feel a little...out of place.

J. Koyanagi said:

I've actually gotten this quite a bit as well. I'm Japanese and white (a European mutt on that side, but mostly French), but my Japanese ethnicity is often erased by people who are white, PoC, mixed, you name it. Not always, but often.

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There's a trope for that.

thebloodfiend said:

And for those of you who are half-white, half-something else, or not even half-white at all, do you feel like outsiders in both groups?

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I'm Ashenazic/Japanese American; both my families have been in America for 100+ years. When I was growing up, I 'felt' more Japanese and Jewish, but I also never really noticed anything that made me feel different from others. Sure, I celebrated Hanukkah, went to services and look fairly Asian, but I really considered myself part of the mainstream community. As I got older, I noticed that I was different from others, namely that I'd be a minority wherever I went. I felt a little self-conscious, and became upset when people 'lectured' me for not speaking Japanese, or because I looked different from other Jews.

As I've gotten older (after my Bar Mitzah) I started to drift away. I never really did anything specifically Japanese besides playing taiko and martial arts; I didn't know the language, history, or culture. I'd gone through some 'heavy' thinking (for a kid) about my religion, and I stopped being religious. At the moment, I consider myself tenuously Asian/Jewish; I don't do much with my heritage except read about Israel/Jewish affairs and doing martial arts. I'm no longer self-conscious about being so 'un-Asian', and people stopped being assholes and lecturing me.

I am not mixed at all-- pretty much 100% German (American, but you know...my family is still pretty tight about marrying people exactly like you. lol)

I married a mixed man however. Which, when I married him, I had no idea what I was in for. He's Scottish/Swedish and Chippewa. Raised off rez, and much of his family would outright deny their mixed background, except his grandpa and his uncle-- who taught him the culture, the stories, their history-- gave him an identiny as Chippewa. My husband feels like it's his responsibility to continue keeping the culture alive. He has the facial markers of that background, but he's got freckles, and depending on what he's doing with his hair he either looks "mixed black" or a "skinhead" <this is what other people say to me>

My father continually gives him a hard time about identifying as native. His mother (my husband's mother) has only recently started identifying herself as such (she used to straight up deny it-- despite her looks, which definitely identify her as such) but she still doesn't get why DH keeps our kids hair long or anything...

And our kids? I don't know. They look white. Maybe my oldest doesn't look as white, but my baby certainly does. But we keep their hair long and they'll be taught the same as my husband was. I feel out of place identifying my sons as NA, but my husband doesn't. Course, he rarely feels out of place anywhere....I'm not sure why.

Lemonhead, it's a rough situation. My grandfather had strict rules that my mom had to follow (and she agreed with them) that bumped up against my dad's white (German) culture and mainstream culture overall. Then people don't understand how the cultural elements make sense because they always expect Native Americans to be so fully native and look it.

OTOH, Indians will often also make fun of folks who they assume are poseurs. Even if the family is just trying to respect the grandfather, which makes obvious sense if you stop and think a minute. It doesn't help that there really are all sorts of poseurs with that particular kind of combination of blood (or more likely the idea of it).

I don't know. Stay true to your grandparents and tell everyone else to screw off. That's always been my take We were made to respect both sides of the family; that was the compromise. So many things were done in an Indian way even if folks would laugh at us. My dad did support us in respecting elders and doing those things, because his side was still big enough on respect themselves, thank God.

My white grandmother always thought the Indian parts were 'quaint', lol, but she wouldn't dare criticize them, because she got her grandmotherly respect, too

And for those of you who are half-white, half-something else, or not even half-white at all, do you feel like outsiders in both groups?

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Chinese/ white.

And, yeah, I feel pretty uncomfortable in both groups.

I pass as white I guess, so sometimes I encounter this wall of resistance when I tell people I'm Asian and it'd be easier to not even mention it but I kind of can't.

backslashbaby said:

Lemonhead, it's a rough situation. My grandfather had strict rules that my mom had to follow (and she agreed with them) that bumped up against my dad's white (German) culture and mainstream culture overall. Then people don't understand how the cultural elements make sense because they always expect Native Americans to be so fully native and look it.

OTOH, Indians will often also make fun of folks who they assume are poseurs. Even if the family is just trying to respect the grandfather, which makes obvious sense if you stop and think a minute. It doesn't help that there really are all sorts of poseurs with that particular kind of combination of blood (or more likely the idea of it).

I don't know. Stay true to your grandparents and tell everyone else to screw off. That's always been my take We were made to respect both sides of the family; that was the compromise. So many things were done in an Indian way even if folks would laugh at us. My dad did support us in respecting elders and doing those things, because his side was still big enough on respect themselves, thank God.

My white grandmother always thought the Indian parts were 'quaint', lol, but she wouldn't dare criticize them, because she got her grandmotherly respect, too

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After I responded to this, I asked my husband if he ever felt non native. He asked me what I meant....I said, do you ever like...walk into a room full of people who look traditionally native and feel like don't belong?
He laughed and said....do you ever walk in a room and feel not-German?
Point taken.
So, apparently he has no issues. Haha.

There are definitely times in Zuni when I feel like I don't belong.

But there's nowhere else I feel I belong more.

It's an unpleasant ambivalence.

I'm black/Mexican but was adopted into a white family (Irish mom/Jewish dad)...I guess I feel like I've always known "who I am," but I get a lot of confusion from other people who want/need to classify me according to how they view the world. The question "WHAT are you?" got asked a lot when I was a kid. I also experienced the being "too white" to fit in with the black kids and "not white enough" to fit in the white kids. Like you (OP), I went to a lot of predominantly white schools and one thing about being perceived as "acting white" was that white people ended up being casually racist in front of me, which was an interesting thing to witness. Oh, and also, because I don't look identifiably Hispanic (just "mixed") and because I wasn't raised in a household that has any connection to that heritage, I don't have any Hispanic identity.

Anyway, I don't have any answers, but it's always been interesting to me to try and parse out whether or not ethnic identity comes from internal or external forces. And I don't personally care for the word mulatto (I wouldn't use it to describe myself) but people have called me that before.

And yes, I believe class and gender impact the biracial experience significantly.

Personally, I hate it. Being half black/half white and being raised in England by my white mother I feel generally more connected/know a lot more about my British roots than my African ones. I also feel like when I talk about being English or if I'm talking about English history and describe it as 'we' (Eg, when we won the war) I will nearly get comments like 'yeah but you're not really English are you, you were just born here' or something along those lines. That really bothers me, because actually my family tree is a lot more English than a lot of my white friends'.
I also don't really like being referred to as 'black' or 'mixed race'. Black I personally don't appreciate because I am closer in skin tone to my white mother than I am to my black father and it would be ludicrous to call me white, so I see it as just as ludicrous to call me black. I don't like mixed race because that refers to any mixing of races, i.e. Me and a Half Asian/Half White person would both be described as 'mixed race' although we would look entirely different so if 'mixed race' is considered to be a race label then it seems an entirely void one.
Personally, I like the term brown, because I am brown, but then again so are most people on the planet. In fact, I'm really anti the terms "black" and "white" because most of the world falls into that 'beigey-browny-various-levels-of-milky-coffee' colour that can't really be described as black or white. In an ideal world I'd much prefer it if people described others not by race but by ethnicity instead. I think we can generally infer what sort of colour someone will be by where they come from in the world so I find these simple colour block labels fairly stupid, and they make my life really difficult because I don't fit into one.
I genuinely think that most of the psychological turmoil I put myself through comes from being biracial and not being one race or the other, as it were.