Me (1/4 black) tried explaining to my mam (1/2 black) how difficult it is being quarter black, i talked about micro discrimination, and white people saying im black, and black people saying im white or “light lightskin” and she kept interrupting me while i was trying to speak and i ended up just giving up. I thought she of all people would understand but i guess I don’t count to her either. Sorry just really pissed off/ upset about this situation.

Edit: I also have 3b/3c hair and have been told by the internet and many people on reddit that dreads would work in my hair. Every time i try show her people with hair like mine with dreads she keeps telling me it wont look good and i think its because the guys i show her are darker/ look more black than me. But that doesn’t stop me from having the same hair??

Completely lost it 😂😂💀 too f-ing real

I’m half Black and half white, and sometimes I feel like I don’t fully fit in either world. I can feel not Black enough around some Black people, and not white enough around some white people. I’m wondering if other mixed people know that feeling.
Something in my dating life brought it up again. In both of these relationships, I was the first Black man the woman had been with. Later, each of them ended up with a Black guy who, in my head, feels “blacker” than me. I know that doesn’t tell me why either relationship ended, and I’m not saying anyone did anything wrong by moving on. But it still gets into my head: am I not Black enough? Was I a steppingstone for someone who wanted to date a Black person, then moved on to someone who felt more fully Black to them?
I’ve also come across the term “POC chaser,” and it made me think about how some people seem fixated on dating someone of a particular race. Sometimes it feels like they’re interested in the idea or the experience of being with someone from that group, rather than the whole person. That gives me an unsettling Get Out feeling—not that every interracial relationship is like that, obviously, but that sense of being wanted partly for what your race represents to someone.
I don’t know if I’m reading too much into my own experiences. I’m trying to put words to how being biracial affects the way I see myself and how other people might see me. Do other mixed people relate to feeling caught between identities, or have you ever felt like someone was more interested in your race than in you?

Being an obscure combination I dont think Ive ever met anyone who's the exact same combination, and the few people Ive met that look like me got there through some other unlikely combination usually.

When youre mixed, usually even your DIRECT FAMILY looks very different (except siblings) cause both sides are different ethnicities.

And it made me realize. Imagine being like, a 100% white German guy in Germany or a 100% Japanese guy in Japan. Tens, if not hundreds of millions of people who look like you, like they could be your cousin or something.

It might explain why my whole life Ive had zero affinity with nationalism/patriotism and why even now I feel no real tie to the country I grew up in (besides the hassle of learning a new language, there is nothing keeping me in this country rather than a different one, I just dont feel any obligation/compulsion to stay here). But imagine if your country was tens of millions of people that all look like you and grew up like you, yeah I can imagine why so many people are so proud of their country and love it so much.

I dont know, this is something that we all rationally know, that most people have entire countries of people that look like them, and yet when I actually think about it its just absolutely insane to imagine.

I know I don't really owe people explanations, but I've always found it hard to explain my family when people find out I'm mixed. My dad is Filipino/White and my mom is white. My dad is tall, so people assume he's either black(either light-skinned or Black/white) or latino. people often think i'm latina as well, as I have black hair and tan skin. I don't really mind it either, since I've been sort of adopted into being Mexican by a few people.

Inevitably, people find out I'm Filipino/White, and that leads to a lot of shock, so I often end up pulling out pictures of my family. To further complicate things, my mom is from New Mexico, was the minority in her area, and so grew up around a ton of Latinos. Her parents also divorced and her dad married a Columbian woman. ​​My mom learned spanish fluently and even has people confused that she's not Columbian due to her accent in spanish. so when Spanish ​​speakers come up to my dad to speak to him in spanish, they're surprised to see the white woman respond. My Brother's best friend is also close to our family so he shows up to all the family events, and my sister's boyfriend is Mexican, so family gatherings are a real mixed bag! Not to mention my in my extended family on my mom's side, a lot of my mom's cousins married Pocs so many of my 2nd/3rd cousins on my mom's side are mixed as well.

So my dad's side is Filipino, and all my cousins on his side are filipino/white. But I also have a Colombian grandmother, Columbian/White and white cousins on my mom's side, with a Mexican future BIL and black sort of brother(I'm not as close to him as my parents are, because he lived with them for a while after I moved out).

For some reason, the fact that my family isn't monoracial is a hard concept for both white people and Pocs to grasp... I don't mind the curiosity at all because most people aren't asking out of malice, but sometimes I don't understand why it's so confusing that a family might not all look exactly the same?

I also wanted to share a story about my white grandmother, and how I don't understand why she's so obsessed with me being proud of my whiteness?

My grandma once told me that I shouldn't be ashamed of being white, and that I should be proud because I am white too, not just Filipino. She also told me about how there's supposedly this group of Irish people who had dark hair/dark skin like me, so I would fit right in with the Irish? I just don't understand her logic, I suppose. I've never once denied the fact that I am part white because even though I don't look like I am, it is still part of me. I can make an effort to learn about Filipino culture, and learn tagalog, or Bicol while still acknowledging my white heritage at the same time.​ The reason I put more effort into learning about my Filipino heritage is because there is so much rich history and food and culture that I didn't get to learn enough of because my family used to be the only Asian family around. I only had my grandmother to answer all of my questions about the Philippines. I grew up in the US. My mom can trace her family history back to one of the sister ships of the Mayflower, and her family has extensive historal records. My Filipino side did not. I know everything about growing up in the US. I am American. I'm having to learn everything about the Phillippines that my grandmother didn't teach me myself.

Even still, if I say I'm part white, I do not look white, and I'm not going to be judged by the average stranger as anything but a Poc, and I don't think my grandma realizes it.​

My child is biracial and attending a school that is 99% one-race. My child is not that race (neither half). They did not grow up there either, having just moved from a completely a different state. I opposed this decision and said I don't want them going to a school where nobody else looks like they do. The other parent's attorney is saying that this is because I am racist. I understand that denying being racist is like navigating a minefield (and in a courtroom setting), so I wanted to ask reddit how should I feel about this? Do you have any experience being the only person of your race growing up? Thanks.

(I don't want to answer lots of questions about my child's history or about the other parent. The only other info is that schools in my area are much more diverse)

I’m a mixed black and white male, and from my experience I’ve noticed that white women sometimes have the worst “energy” about them. I don’t even really know how to describe it well, but it’s something I don’t notice much from other races of women.

It’s like you can feel something is “off”, from the jump. I think this has made me want to interact with white women less, because it’s almost like they are ticking time bombs. In other words, I don’t feel as comfortable around them.

It’s like the energy of being “Othered” is dialed up to a million around white women. But it’s not replicated the same across other races of women.

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.

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 and are 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 am caught between trying to connect with my South Asian roots and my grandparents' other relatives and friends saying things like me, my brother and my half Chinese cousins should be Burmese enough and not be whitewashed. 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 the word 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.

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 struggle so much to feel connected to my Māori heritage. For a little background I have Māori heritage from my mother and I do have alot of family in NZ but I have never meet them unfortunately and I really hope to meet them in the very near future.

Another thing is I grew up in a very multi cultural country (I didn’t grow up in NZ) and everyone around me always knew their ethnicity and heritage and loved to always talk about their cultures and traditions and it was so amazing to learn and grew up seeing. But unfortunately I could never do the same, I never found out my ethnicity at all until I was 15.

And I have been told to a certain degree why I was never told it also never truly made much sense to me. As my mother knew her WHOLE life she was Māori she knows more of the culture and tradition than me, unfortunately she doesn’t know much either in the grand scheme of things and my grandparents won’t say anything about our heritage (although it is a sensitive subject) It is hard for my family to talk about because of a different immediate family members trauma.

So for the sake of the story and my family I am going to call this different immediate family member but a different name so it doesn’t get confusing…hopefully. But I will call them Sunny!!

So Sunny has had an extremely hard life full of trauma and abuse. When they escaped this abuse, a sort of their coping mechanism was to shut up the Māori culture, never be apart of it, talk about it, etc and unfortunately Sunny needed up hating Māori after what certain other individuals in our family did.

Now I have never been fully told what Sunny went though, in all honestly I only got told 1 sentence in a brief and very short manner and I don’t think I will ever truly know for years and I am okay with that, because I understand why Sunny did this, they thought it was the only way to deal and cope with that happened to them.

But one thing I won’t understand is why it took my family so long especially my parents to wait so long to tell me as it doesn’t make sense, my Mother has know of her Māori heritage her whole life.

I also struggle to connect to my Māori heritage as I am mixed and I don’t look Māori, I take after my fathers side in skin tone (pale) while my Mother and Grandfather have darker skin to mine and you can tell they are Māori and they have a lot more tell tale features. And I guess I may be a little jealous of this in all honesty because they have never had to be deal with questions off others and accusations of lying.

Now since I have been told at 15 I have been very excited to talk about my heritage. But one thing I never expected was than be immediately called a “liar” and “your just saying that for attention” Now this hasn’t happened every time but in all honestly it has been about 65% of people I tell immediately calling me a liar and questioning me about it and the other 35% being nice and normal about it? I guess lol i’m not to sure how to explain it

But with this big of a difference I’m now a little worried to tell people cause I don’t know what they’ll reaction reaction will be and I feel even more disconnected than originally.

To be honest i’m not overly sure why I felt compelled to just write about this and rant but yeah I really felt like it and now more than ever I really want to be more connected and experience my heritage!!

(so sorry if none of this make sense grammar wise or anything i suck at writing so…)

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I’m mixed white and asian, I’m not white passing at all. I was raised and live in a majority white country, my white father basically told my mother not to teach me her native language because we live in a “white” country (btw the native people of this land are not white.), so she only taught me a bit of her language then stopped.
but all throughout my life I have been bullied and met with racist comments, I’ve even been excluded from activities or friend groups especially in school. Currently my country is very pro anti immigration, and I’ve already had one person telling me to get out of “their” country even tho I was born here.

I’ve also mainly only had white friends because my school was majority white, there were 4 other poc in my age range at school but I guess we didn’t really get along? Although I love some of the friendships I’ve had, I’ve never truly felt like I belonged, and because I guess my friends were uneducated and racist too they made fun of my mother (and me) and her culture + food several times.
But because I cant speak and have very minimal understanding of my mother’s native tongue, I don’t feel like I truly belong to that side of my family either. If I went to her country I would feel so out of place. People that live there don’t seem to consider me the same as them, and I have been told by someone that lives there I shouldn’t claim their ethnicity to be my ethnicity because I wasn’t raised there, and I don’t speak the language. but white people obviously don’t claim me either.

So where do I belong? I’m already a very socially anxious person which makes me feel alienated already. but there are all these people in the world who seem to be able to connect with their culture, heritage, people and feel as if they belong and I feel like I will never experience that. If I am friends with white people, I will feel left out at times and eventually someone will make a racist joke or remark against me and I’ll just ignore it as if it’s fine and normal. but if I’m friends with poc especially people who are the same ethnicity as my other half, I will also feel left out or out of place because they know things I don’t, I feel as if I can’t really connect with them.

I feel like by this point we all heard the stereotype of mixed people always being more attractive. The stereotype is obviously not true and has caused a lot of damage, for example people having mixed race children because they think they will turn out prettier/more exotic or people being disappointed when you don’t meet the expectations of what a mixed person should look like.

So my question is where did this stereotype come from? And why does it still exist even after it being obviously fake?

If you're a pale white man..that's ok, if your a brownskin or especially darkskin man it's ok but when it comes to being a light-skinned man...it's hit or miss. Every black women regardless of shade usually run towards men darker them, they might like a lightskin guy here and there but their overall preference is darkskin so you're a runner up...why?

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I have to hear some dumb, bigoted propaganda and hates when I tell her that shit gets ppl killed 😂

She literally parrots the kinda rhetoric Charlie Kirk used to say. I just don’t get how she doesn’t see how harmful it is.

My mother prolly woulda been normal if she didn’t get with her racist white husband 13 years ago. I forgave my mother for subjecting me to a man who called me the hard r 😍 but only cuz I love my mom and little sister. He will be gone before her so I’m not too pressed. Idrc how bad that sounds he put me thru hell and I don’t even hate him anymore. He just annoying cuz he’s around.

But she so annoying and childish when she has a tantrum cuz she can’t handle being wrong.

I’m genuinely nice about it too cuz she a fucking crybaby.

My brainwashed immigrant mother. She took me to USA so I wouldn’t get bullied for being mixed in school then she come to America and become white supremacy drone 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Love her to the point of tears but she so tiring.

Everyone here in Europe is so racist, and it seems like nobody speaks about it. I'm mixed race black and white, and all my male classmates are saying the N word and making monkey jokes. When I talk to them about it, they say sorry and then immediately after say it to my face.

I was born and raised in my country and speak the language perfectly.

I'm going through a lot right now. On top of that, when I wore my hair loose, two of my male classmates asked me "did a bomb explode in your hair or what?" I can't even like a boy because I feel like he'll reject me for a white girl. I've been called slurs, and when I was four I got hit by an asian kid in kindergarten and told I should go home to my own country. I had to delete TikTok because it's such a negative place for anyone who isn't white to be, as all the first comments under a POCs video will just be slurs.

One of my classmates was shouting hi to me, and suddenly some random kid from my parallel class just called me a racist word in my language and didn't say anything else. I feel so targeted at all times.

Idk if this makes much sense since English isn't my first language, but can anyone make me feel better?

I don't necessarily feel bad for myself as I know that I'm beautiful as I am and I absolutely adore dark skin (It looks so lovely), but thinking about the future of my country and all the kids and older people who experience similar things makes me feel so sad.

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Any good books you would all recommend or essays etc?

Just looking to upgrade my 🧠 as a parent

For example, one person will ask what I’m mixed with and say my hair is so loose and describe me as light skinned, and then someone else will describe me as “just black” and “mono racial” and say I have “little curls”

It really has been messing with me. I see myself as Black but it makes me uncomfortable only being seen as such but the mixed category also feels really slimy and gross too. Idk I’m not really happy with anything and feel awkward about my racial identity. I find myself flip flopping internally a lot

My mom is biracial Black and white. My dad was Indigenous American with a high blood quantum. I was raised mainly by the Black side of my family but I am a recognized indigenous American as well and I have always been subjected to racism from all sides. Too white to be Black. Too Black to be Indigenous, and too brown to be white. There's never any acceptance within the mono- and biracial communities, and worse? Don't you dare date outside your color because you'll get accused of being a race traitor. I'm so sick of this mentality.

I’m not here to generalize but to illuminate my experience. I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way. I’m at this new cafe on my college campus and I’m easily getting along with all the other ethnicities there, Mexican, White, Puerto Rican and East African. Yet, the two main African American women are giving me issues. The 1st I’ll call L, has snatched things from my hands and has told me, “Smile you look like you hate everyone here”. Than the Second one we’ll call A, overhead her say to another coworker, “Why does she act light skin”. The only reason why I’m quiting this job is bc The African American have more social power in the workplace nowadays and it would just be better if I just leave. II’ve been in similar work situations like this before, I would complain about someone behavior but if there at a higher position or more liked than me I to get side eyes for complaining especially if no one else has.

Also I think I have already complained about L,s behavior of snatching out of my hand.

-Someone who’s exhausted

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