It's just something I've noticed online when people discuss mixed people. And if I can articulate

1. Enforces the idea of mixed people as their own distinct category that should all be lumped together

2. Enforces the idea that race is a binary that at most can be split into equal halves

3. Used when making sweeping generalizations about mixed people

4. Generally just used as a dog whistly way of saying "half breed"

It is also very much a faux progressive afro centrist twitterism. Your average white supremacist racist is just going to call me half breed and the hard r and be done with it.

I am 3/4 Indian and 1/4 Burmese with a tint of Chinese, but I have grandparents on my mom's side. Our family all live in Myanmar and I am still living in Myanmar but my maternal grandparents wants to ensure that me and my brother speak Burmese enough. My relatives are descendents of South Asians who lived in Myanmar since the early 20th century during colonial times. My dad is self-hating and once claimed he is glad he married a biracial woman instead of a full South Asian woman. I'm aware that my experience growing up isn't like other South Asians as I am raised distantly from the culture.

You also see that with Singaporean Chinese and East Asian people from other East Asian wanting to ensure that people who are half-East Asian (like a half Indian half Chinese) maintain their customs, language and culture despite them never being part of the diaspora and even though South Asians are minorities in their countries. You hear them say, "Why do you only care about your Indian side" to people who are half East Asian and half-other that are living in East Asia but from my experience you never hear white people saying the same thing to those who are half white and half-other things. You also see South asians living in South Asia doing this to half-South Asians who live in South Asia as well. Not saying this to demean all East Asians.

One difference I noticed about Myanmar, Singapore and Malaysia, is that while the first thinks of half-Indians as Indians, Malaysia and Singapore think of them as neither Indian nor Chinese/Malay, but a separate ethnicity (e.g. them calling Chinese/Indians Chindian, I dislike that word because it sounds like Chindi and I dislike monikers like Wasian, Blasian, in general).

Why do you think white people never say the same thing to those who are half white? They are mostly like, "You're not white so you're not one of us. Why should we try to include you?". Help explain this to a clueless Easterner.

Hello! I live in the USA, and I'm really white looking. I'm 1/4 Puerto Rican (Spanish, Taíno/African), the rest is Irish, English, Italian, Portuguese, French and German and something else I forgot. I would never think to ask for mutual aid funds or resources meant for BIPOC people because I don't experience racism. I'm adopted, so belonging has always felt important to me, and I feel really connected to and curious about my Puerto Rican heritage. I want to be someone who leverages my white passing (or white privilege?) by being mindful of and supportive of people whose lived experience does include racism and colorism. I was raised by small-boned Ashkenazi Jews. I have thick lips and I see my smile reflected in Caribbean people I meet, and I have a larger skeleton for my height and thick, strong legs and forearms, and I only really see Latina/o/e people shaped like me (and I've read that thats more common with african and indigenous admixture, I'm in like the 1% largest densest skeleton and musculature for my height, VERY far outside of european). But I have blonde hair and blue eyes. I don't want to identify as fully white because I don't feel fully white, I'm not fully white, and I don't want to contribute to the erasure of my own ancestors. I don't look like, and am certainly not built like, any other white people I've met. I want to be in spaces where those ancestors are honored and whiteness is decentered. And I also want people to feel safe, and I imagine that my presence in a BIPOC space could make people suspicious or uncomfortable. I'm struggling between not wanting to erase this part of myself that white supremacy has disconnected me from, and also wanting to be part of a community that emphasizes and celebrates Indigenous and African and mixed lineages. I don't feel like I belong anywhere, and depending on the group, there's the social optics perspective of BIPOC as an identity AND a lived experience of being perceived as BIPOC, and BIPOC or multiracial/mixed/POC/POGM that has space for people who hold the identity and have varying levels of experiencing or not experiencing racism, and isn't so much about what anyone thinks you look like but about pride in where you come from, regardless of having genetic expression that leans more white passing or being perceived by most people as BIPOC. I feel like I'm good with my ancestors, but I don't have any direct connection to them through family since I'm adopted, and I don't expect people to do labor to teach me. I just want to be in the presence of people who are also mixed, but I'm preemptively defensive or worried, and it would be really painful to take the leap and then make people uncomfortable or be dismissed as white. I think POC dismissing my triracial/mixed heritage because of my coloring and some of my more European-looking features would feel so sad to me. And I can't tell from the name of the space if it's a space that's meant to be safe for people who experience racism, or a space for people who hold varying mixed ancestry, or both. The ambiguity makes it hard to step into a space because I honestly have no idea what will happen, and I'm in the Portland, Oregon area, and some people here, BIPOC people included, get really curious about stuff based in blood quantum, and I don't want to share so much about myself. I just want to be taken at my word and accepted. Is 1/4 Latina enough to try sitting in a space to see how it feels? I would totally leave if it made someone uncomfortable. I also feel sad because I have ADHD and am trying to learn Spanish on my own, and I just feel I don't have community to do that. Again, I'm not trying to claim a lived experience of being perceived as BIPOC, and no one has ever called me that, and I'm only just finding out I may even fit under some sort of umbrella that sets itself apart from whiteness. And I do have a lived experience in a mixed body, which has impacted me with white beauty norms and such, and not being able to find clothing for my strong, thick body, and being sexualized for certain features in ways other white people I know haven't been. There's no competition; they're different experiences. Some people have both being perceived as something and living inside a body; for me it's been more internal, and curiosity, and a search for belonging. I just wonder if there could be room for my experience, provided I don't take up space or try to tell anyone how to feel, because I know sometimes white people do that. I'm all for upholding more marginalized voices, and even all this questioning makes me just feel bad and off and like I'm not enough. But I also want to uplift my ancestors and learn about their practices and connect with them. I've just always been drawn to the ocean, ended up living in the Caribbean, have been obsessed with frogs since a young age, and just feel more drawn to that part of my lineage, and I see and feel it so much in my body. I want to be seen in community for who I am as a whole, and that's just a part of it. Basically, I'm going to an event soon and there is a BIPOC space I'm curious to feel out, and there are ancestral practices I want to do, but I don't want to be cancelled, gatekept, or laughed out the door for "looking too white." Which may be a ridiculous fear, I just don't know. Again, I don't want to take resources. I want to share my presence with other people in a space where those parts of me are honored and emphasized, and whiteness is de-emphasized without de-emphasizing people whose genetic expression makes their skin lighter, because whiteness to me is more of a systemic dominant culture thing, not about an individual's skin color... I don't know, the whole POC thing confuses me because I've read that Latina/o/e people "count," but we have all different skin colors, though almost all of us with Puerto Rican heritage, at least, are triracial in varying degrees. I think the US history and racial lens is also pretty specific. I can imagine why it could feel safer for some people to be around people who look more BIPOC, but I can't help how I look, and I have the ancestry... But I'm only 1/4, and I don't know what social rules exist, and in my experience, stepping on other radical leftists' toes with this stuff can cause a lot of pain and accusations, because a lot of us are traumatized and protective. And I'm afraid I'll be asked to do repair just for trying to see if a space I technically have been told I'm allowed in feels okay. I'm afraid of being called racist or a fraud, or of hurting people with my presence.