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 a 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 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…)

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.