So I’m mixed with Asian (THAI specifically) and Black American. My grandmother is full and my mother is biracial and both born in Thailand. They came to America and I’m the FIRST American born on mother’s side. Grew up mainly with my grandmother, translating things, helping ppl understand her accent, going to the markets, eating the food, going to temples, listening to the music, etc. I would say I’m culturally very in tuned.

So I’m at a work dinner and I have an ignorant coworker who is loud and thinks she knows every thing. Her tone is condescending the whole time and thinks she’s can speak for everyone.

We are on the convo of moving out of the city because it’s getting bad. She starts talking loudly and says her friend and his wife are moving to Thailand. I said oh nice, that will be great. I hear it’s beautiful. Then she starts to list every stereotypical thing you can imagine. “Yeah they’re going live there for 10 years and live like gods” “The kids and people there are so humble, sweet and can do no wrong”

I chimed in and said well, that’s not true. Like any country Thailand is not perfect. It’s beautiful and it’s known as a country that’s more open but it can be dangerous and ppl are not always friendly. Depending on where you go of course.

She continues to say, well that’s not what I heard. My friends WIFE(she exaggerates it loudly) is Thai. They have a house out there. So I get triggered and irritated. I said okay? I’m part Thai and my whole maternal lineage is from there. I have family STILL out there and with houses. She continues to say her friend knows a lot and his wife tells him they’re going to do great out there. I already know the dynamic of that relationship before she can even tell me how they met. It’s obvious with the way she talks. (Old white man who snagged an Asian wife trope)

I explain to her I thinks it’s stereotypical to think the place is a utopia just because many ppl are moving to the country. (Basically gentrifying it). I said some of the ppl there are classist, spoiled and colorist. Some are very racist to darker skin too. I was getting triggered at this point. She continues to say well that’s what I was told. I’m just going off of what my friend said. Then she asks have you gone or will you go? I’m already irritated as hell and I said no, I experienced too much racism. (I just said that bc I was irritated. Of course I’ll go. Why would I not?). But I did apologize and say, sorry this topic is triggering for me. A lot of ppl have an idea of what it’s like but it’s not always the case. I was just trying to shut the convo down.

She then proceeds to say, sorry that was your experience but that’s what my friend and his Thai wife told me. You know she’s from there so I’m going off what she said. At this point I stood up, said thank you for dinner I have to go. If I stayed longer I would’ve exploded, yelled or became unmannered in a restaurant setting. I was visually annoyed but it irritates me when ppl don’t get the complexity. Just because someone’s DATING an Asian person doesn’t mean they know everything. There’s layers. I may be over dramatic but I also know being around ignorance irritates me. It felt like she was diminishing me when I told her how the culture CAN be. I have family in Thailand that don’t even rock with me because I’m mixed but mainly because of my skin tone. (We know how that goes)

So, I'm embraced my heritage of being mixed race (Half white, Half Black) all my life, I love both my mother and father and embrace both of their identities and combine them together and make it my own. Everytime someone asks me what I am, I usually say Biracial or Afro-European. I used to live in southern america and they use to refer to me as mulatto, and I always liked the word as it clearly refered to me and it sounded nice. So I sometimes said that i'm mulatto when people asked.

My new school, I made a new group of friends and I refered to myself as biracial/mulatto, and I noticed they got annoyed and told me to just call myself black, but i responded with saying but i'm not only black, i'm half white and half black and they combine and make a new race. They got visibly irriated and made a few racial remarks but in a joking way like "you'd be shot down like us by the police too white people still see you as black", and then I responded saying that it doesn't change what I am.

Now I'm getting all confused lol.

m25, half Belgian, half Rwandan.

Currently in Rwanda for the first time with my father to discover my roots. Met my lovely family a week ago. <3

Week 3 now and I've never felt as lost as I do now.

Lots of people staring at me, kids yelling 'mzungu' meaning 'white/european'. I don't speak the language except greetings, so almost no conversations can be made with anybody here.

Bonding with my father has been very nice tho.

Being mixed almost feels like having no nationality.

Where do we go from here?

Peace

I’m half white and half Indian. My parents are divorced and have been since I was 8, im now 23. My dad is Indian, and he is a genuinely difficult person who I’ve never gotten along with. He’s a very manipulative person who uses others. As I’ve gotten older and experienced internalized and externalizer racism towards my Indian side, whenever i see him (maybe once every 2 months), and I’m reminded of his bad personal traits I call him racial slurs in my head or even out loud where he can’t hear me. I know I have trauma from being bullied, but having him as a role model for part of my heritage makes it hard to not be racist. It’s even so bad that whenever I am critical of myself, I’ll look myself in the mirror and call myself racial slurs and hit myself. Also he doesn’t have any family where I live and he never bothered teaching me about his culture/ religion/ language. It was even so bad that when I was a little kid my mom tried to show us Diwali stuff because he didn’t care enough to take the time to show me. I feel so disconnected from that side and have dealt with suicidal thoughts and depression as the fallout from all this.

It’s so hard when I view him in such a negative light to not be racist towards that side. He’s really a fucked up person, the worst thing is that he doesn’t know how terrible he is, and always wants to spend time with me, but I just can’t take it. I hate him, and moreover don’t care enough about him to spend time with him.

He also in his older years (he’s 65) has become a fanatical yoga believer. Any problem you have yoga is the solution. He won’t let me eat meat at his house (he’s controlling), even though he took me to McDonald’s all the time when I was a kid to get burgers because he was too lazy to cook. He thinks westerners are dumb and ignorant, yet he married and had kids with one, and post divorce has dated 2 white women long term.

How can I break the cycle of being able to recognize that I have a bad father and realize he doesn’t represent an entire culture/people. I’m not interested in having a relationship with that side of me, it’s too late for that and it wouldn’t be authentic to take up a culture I wasn’t raised in.

I just don’t want to be ashamed and flat out racist to half of my ancestry.

I recognize the POC in BIPOC stands for “people of color” so that should include Asians, but I also know these spaces are a place to center black and indigenous people who face an entirely different system of racism. And just because you’re “technically” part of a group doesn’t mean you’re actually welcome (as we all unfortunately have probably experienced).

And then I’m mixed, white and Asian. I’ve always struggled with whether I’d be accepted in Asian spaces, AND I’m not even sure whether Asians are accepted in BIPOC spaces. Have any wasians been to BIPOC events or spaces? Were you welcome there or did it feel like you were intruding?

I’m trying to find queer friends to go to sapphic-only events with me this summer, and I’m trying to figure out if I can join a “Queer BIPOC” social get together

My mother is white and my dad is black and I get this a lot. I used to work in a pharmacy during secondary school and one of the sales assistants said “oh yeah, it’s hard for single mothers” while staring at me, one of the girls was talking about their mother. People just assume that Black men have kids with white women and leave, and I find it disgusting.

I also saw a TikTok of a youtube thumbnail of a girl showing her boyfriend and then, supposedly nine months later, saying she was a single mum. I don’t know whether it was genuine, but it had 100k likes and comments saying “well well well”, as if one relationship proves something about an entire race.

My mum was out with my younger brother once and a man called her an “n-word-loving single mum”. She isn’t even a single mum, but even if she were, that wouldn’t justify speaking to her like that. It’s actually revolting that people see a white woman with a mixed child and think they know her entire life. I feel they do this to shame women for dating interracially, but it really doesnt do anything but show their own insecurity. Obviously this doesnt apply to every mixed person but the stereotype is just racist.

For me, this also stems from a NPE and finding out about it later (and it was pretty fucking obvious, when I was a kid. I have no idea how my mum bullshitted her way out of it - to my verbally and physically abusive *not actual* dad).

I get a lot of people assuming I'm Italian or Turkish. No biggie on that. I've progressively looked more and more indecipherable the older I get though - which is wild. Teenager, I looked like a very light skinned south asian and the racism was fucking astounding. My face has continued to change, jaw bigger, skin tone got lighter - grew my curly hair out, etc...

Now, it's the flipside. I have people saying jokingly racist shit to me - without realising. It's genuinely insane. Accidentally chatting to a Reform voter that's going full spastic, is so odd. I always give a quick fuck off, but even still.

I think the weirdest side is also absolutely not fitting into any inkling of Indian culture (sans loving the food). It's weird. There's a disconnect - and also, a sense of xenophobia from those groups too.

I wouldn't say I don't fit in anywhere - I live in Central London, so it's all reductive conjecture, right now. Imagine a lot of people have similar feelings.

Ever since I was a kid, my mother used to tell me that if a kid had a White father and a Black mother that they had more curly hair than if they had a White mother and Black father. She said it was something to do with pregnancy or something and that those of us with Black mothers always had more curlier hair than those with White mothers. But 2 days ago while walking outside I saw a young Black mother with 2 Mulatta daughters, one daughter had dark blonde hair and one with red hair, the mother had a typical Westernised African look. The daughter had largely wavy hair, less curly than the protagonist from the Disney film "Brave".

In reality genetics are complicated and hair type is a highly polygenic complex trait, but for a long time I did also believe this as almost all other Mulattoes I had met all had Black mothers and they all had very curly hair.

this happened in August but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I’m not even actively working there rn since I only work at this restaurant when I’m on break from college.

but one day I got a text from my boss asking if she could ask me a question, and then minutes later got a message from a coworker where she outright asked me what race I am. I was confused but replied, and then another few minutes later my boss responds and asks if I’m latina. she says “I’ve got $5 on no”. and I just said like lol sorry for your five dollars but I am, and then coworker replied like “haha I knew it!” and I felt really weird about it. I don’t like that my heritage was being bet on by two white ladies and discussed while I wasn’t even there. the next day I went in to work and we are right next to a Mexican restaurant that sometimes gives us food as like a trade, and so there was a ton of street tacos in the back when I walked in. first thing my coworker that had texted me says is “we’re eating the food of your people!” (not even Mexican btw like at all) and my boss comes up and starts trying to talk to me in really bad spanish. this isn’t the first kind of like small racistish interaction I’ve had, not even close, but for some reason I can’t stop thinking about it, maybe because I’ve never had someone explicitly bet on my status as mixed before or whatever. additionally I’m from a small rural farm town and my boss is super alt right which made me a lot more nervous in this whole interaction.

am I overthinking this? when I told my friends about it they didn’t seem to care (most of them are white though), so I don’t know why I’m still thinking about this months later even when I’ve had genuinely worse things said to me on this topic before many times in my life. am I being silly??

In the year 2000 the United States government decided to issue a 1 Dollar coin, the person they decided to put on this coin was the Native American girl Sacagawea, she is known as the teenage girl who assisted Lewis and Clark on their expedition to explore the newly acquired territory of Louisiana (basically the midwestern United States). While she died in her early 20's and no known portrait of her was ever made, an image modeled after a modern Shoshone-Bannock woman, Randy'L He-dow Teton, was made.

But on her back she carries a baby, the baby's name is Jean Baptiste Charbonneau and he was a mixed race individual. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau lived to become much older than his mother and he became an explorer in his own right as an adult man, later becoming a fur trader, gold miner, and a military veteran of the Mexican-American War.

Of course, this post is about the US Dollar and most countries have their own currency, but as this is such a widely circulated currency (you can pay almost everywhere with it around the world in tourist destinations) and most people will come in contact with the USD at some point in their life I decided to write about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau as "the mixed race person in your pocket".

Please delete if not allowed.

I’ve been more active in this sub lately and just need to get this out.

I’m mixed Mexican and white. Being asked what are you, not fitting in with either sides of my identity are not things I worry about anymore. Pure ignorance and other people who are mixed being so delusional in their ability to be white passing that they act superior to me can irk me.

Story time.

I’m in Texas and born and raised in this currently embarrassing state that hates my gender and ethnicity.

So at work this lady I work with just says unhinged stuff about non white people sometimes. Funny enough her grandma is black, her mom is mixed black and white and not white passing but she has dyed red caucasian textured hair and pale skin.

So let’s use the last name Lopez for example. She says their last name is Lopez or one of those foreign last names. I say jokingly : Girl, I forget you are so not a Texan. This is central almost south Texas. Lopez isn’t a foreigner last name. She snaps at me and says yes, it is. I’m being nice and she’s from Louisiana and ask her if let’s say I said Thibodeau is a foreigner last name there. She quickly says no. That’s Louisiana.

And here is where it went unhinged. She starts going on about how her white privilege allows her to say stuff like that because Lopez isn’t a white last name. And that she apologize if I offended my people . (I’m thinking to myself, my people. Who the Lopez’s)

I was just umm, I was just joking about how you’re not Texan but so Louisiana. And she says yes, I’m proud to be from Louisiana and not from Texas. I don’t understand why you claim to be Mexican when you have a white last name. I didn’t say a word, just dropped it as she was leaving work and said have a good night.

Afterwards I was alone at work and was thinking to myself. Well that didn’t go as expected. Then a little mad. Claim to be Mexican? All you have to do is look at me and can tell I’m mixed with something. The white last name just confuses people more.

Then I was like how the F does her “white privilege give her the right to speak like that. Idk I think white privilege is more about the doors being opened for you not an excuse to pretty much just go on a racist tirade.

Then I’m like, does baby girl have any clue she is not actually a white girl. Not even her darker skinned mom or sister who is not very white passing but very much looks mixed. Someone has had to tell her.

Thanks for listening. I have been very wtf was that since it happened yesterday.

Im quarter jamaican but my mam is pretty black and i get called lightskin quite often. I always see jokes about mixed people with one race calling them the other and vice versa but its really like that. Its annoying because all my white friends call me black, black people call me lightskin or just mixed. I feel like i dont have a place in either. And my hair doesn’t help either since its a mix of curly and afro.
Essentially if i think im white, white people say im black/mixed. And if i think im black, my percentage throws me off. Since so many people see me in so many ways i dont know how to see myself

This isn't a rant but it kinda makes me sad almost nobody recognizes me as American whenever I'm abroad. A lot of Americans abroad I notice always seem stuck up or I'm better than you mindset. If not, they give you looks. On the bright side of things, I'm ok with it because I did a good job trying to blend in with locals. As I said it kinda hurts but I don't know. Some people in Europe think I'm Arabic even though I'm mixed with Black, White and Polynesian.

My daughter is 3, she is a quarter Cuban and the rest white, and I’m not sure how I should go about explaining that to her when the time comes. She is very white presenting, and I am all for her identifying however she wants to identify. But I am white and I have no idea what the perimeters or “rules” are when it comes to this. Can someone who is more knowledgeable than I am educate me a bit on this topic?

I know Google exists, but I wouldn’t know where to start on this topic or where to look. I feel like I’m overthinking it a little, but I want to stay ethical and morally correct.

Like do you find yourself randomly wanting to go to the country club? eat mayo and bacon sandwiches? putting raisins in potato salad? and if you hear a strange noise in the house, do you find yourself wanting to go towards it instead of running away?

Mixed guy here, ever since dating a black woman (not mixed, i'm talking pure black), mixed women have been giving my girl dirty looks while they just stare at me doing faces. I try to ignore them but its genuinely weird. I like looking at my surroundings and trying to ignore them, to me, it means putting my head down. Which i dislike and feel uncomfortable. I sometimes feel slightly paranoid because i dont know if thats a girl from my past and shes still angry over some meaningless stuff But i'm also not about to have a verbal discussion with these ladies who I cant tell if they are trying to tell me something or its their natural reaction. Either way it's disgusting and I want a way to let them know I'm happy and confident with my woman and their opinions of us have no affect on us. And I cant do that pretending I dont see them. But like I said, i'm not about to have a discussion with them. I'm after some middle ground here. What do you personally do?

Like I’m an Aussie citizen, and look ethnically ambiguous. I’m neurodivergent too and don’t feel belonging to any group. So why should I carry the burden of this ethnicity when it is so meaningless

It’s so dumb

For context I’m Black+SE Asian

Just cuz I mentioned (for the first time) that I’ve been mistaken countless times by people of different ethnicities from East Africa, to East Asia to South Asia.

Like it’s just a fact, that’s my experience. But I think I look like what I am anyway and I love myself and that made ppl mad for some reason tryna humble me by… telling me what I am? Like no shit, I literally said I think I jus look like what I am

Why the fuck would being mistaken as another ethnicity or race be a flex unless you think those ethnicities are superior to Black or SE Asian ppl? Whatever they just racist or have internalized racism 🙄🙄🙄🙄

Like it the internet it fake anyway but I think there are more ppl who are weird towards mixed ppl more than there are those problematic mixed ppl who just say racist bs and act like they’re better than other ppl 😭 but that’s just how I feel

Something ticking you off? Want to get some frustrations off your chest? Post your rants here and go into the weekend feeling refreshed!

As always, please follow reddit rules and our own rules (https://www.reddit.com/r/mixedrace/wiki/rules).

In an attempt to both stimulate conversation and also to collate a few commonly recurring posts on r/mixedrace, welcome to this week's What Am I weekly thread!

You are free to use this thread to post photos of yourself or family; DNA test results; or to ask questions about identity questions.

Or, really anything that even remotely falls under the theme of "What Am I" is fair game here.
You may wish to use Imgur to upload your photos.

Please remember to keep our sidebar rules and reddit rules in mind when posting.

I've always grown up being told I was or to say I was white by my family, my dad is white and so is that entire half of the family, but my mother is dark and there's some family ambiguity about my real grandfather, as both her parents and siblings are white.

Me and my sister don't look like it either, I have tan skin and dark hair, and constantly people ask where I'm from, what country my family is from, etc. It doesn't especially dwell on my mind a lot - theres more important things to think about - but it'd be nice to know if people out there can relate to this specific experience of feeling like there's just a big gap in their identity and ancestry.

I feel so alienated because I was raised by an assimilated mother and a white father. I wasn’t taught to speak Spanish, I wasn’t raised with much cultural influence. My grandma doesn’t like talking about stuff like this and I don’t have a meaningful relationship with my cousins to ask this kind of stuff. there’s like little to no panamanian community where I live, and I continuously get pushed out of more general latino communities bc I’m too white or americanized. I’ve been trying to learn and engage how I can but I feel like I’ll never be enough for peers or cousins. I’m tired of being told I don’t belong because I wasn’t raised bilingually or don’t have the same experience as a Mexican kid, and I’m tired of being othered by great aunts at cousins quinceañeras and worrying about coming off as a total gringo when I try to engage. I’ve tried to just ignore it and make myself out to be total white, but white people love to clock you no matter how white passing you think you are and push you out and degrade you just the same, even if they’re family. there’s no happy middle and I feel lost and I just want to finally connect to that part of my heritage and identity but it’s so daunting and I feel like no matter how much I learn I’ll never be welcomed