Here it is: Let mixed people identify however the eff they want.

People here in this community most likely don't need to hear that, but I think everyone else does.

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Mixed people should not be judged for:
-"claiming both/all sides"
-"choosing one side"
-"assimilating into a new side"
or anything else....

It's up to each individual how they choose to identify, and they are not obligated to, nor should they be expected to identify as anything that other people have pushed onto them or pushed them out of.

That includes relatives and/or members of the group(s) someone may identify with.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed people should not ever be accused of:

-"pretending" to be something they are not
-"erasing" parts of themselves

or anything else just for identifying X way.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mixed people are under NO obligation to provide curious strangers or other community members with long explanations about why you "look the way you do", or a full list of places and proofs about "where you are from".

Your identity requires no explanation or proof. It's not up for debate.

If someone doesn't like the simple answer you gave when they asked you "what are you?" , too bad.
"I am __________, end of story".
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As someone who is pretty much everything except East Asian....
.....The level of policing around Mixed people's identity is ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS....and that's also not how identity works....

The other day I was doing some research and it turns out that mixed people have significantly worse mental health than non mixed people, look it up yourself! jee i can only wonder why... hmmm

I for one am putting my foot down on the fact that your identity is yours to choose and shape as you see fit. Having a stable, self-chosen identity is one of the best ways to care for and protect your mental health.

Even if you are not "accepted" by the group(s) you identify with, you'll be sure in yourself who you are, and that consistency without the need for external validation is the key to success!
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

...From the people you've known all your life... to people you've never met... all will try to dictate everything from how you should look, act or identify. (Ya'll have lived that, right?)

But the best part is that it's not up to them,
It's up to YOU!

With love,
Ms. Worldwide‧₊˚☆

Hey!

I'm half white european half Egyptian. I was born in my mom's country but grew up a bit in Egypt. Then my father got a job in the US so i stayed with my mom's country cuz she didn't want to live in there.

I speak arabic but with a bit of accent and unfortunately i'm looking more like my mom which is not so arab look.

That's why i am so insecure and always trying to prove everybody who i am because i heard so many times "You are Egyptian? Really ? But you don't look like"

it hurts. When your own people denying you.

How to deal with it ? How to respond ? Is it makes me really not Egyptian ? Even if i feel the bond with it and i share my life by language films music cuisine especially living abroad i take care of it.

Is the look only determine if you are real person from that or other country ?

I sometimes have identity crysis.. and i know how many times this topic probably appeared here but i needed to write this here..

As someone who’s mixed European x Polynesian, I find it so annoying how most people assume that all mixed people are African x European or European x Asian. I get they’re the most common combos on social media, but I hate how they’re treated as default categories and everyone else is “exotic” when in actual fact non-African non-Asian indigenous populations have been interracially mixing for a long time too due to eugenics and cultural insecurity but often times out of love

Idk it just feels like even among mixed people (black-white) I never could fit in. Most mixed people I know lean one way or another, and I’m stuck in a limbo. A lot of people assume I’m Hispanic even though I don’t have any Hispanic features just because they can’t figure out what I am. I feel like instead of being blended together, my genetics just picked parts and put them together. Like a fruit bowl instead of a smoothie if that makes sense? Idk I just don’t feel like I belong anywhere. It hurts but I’ve learned that I have to carve my own space in the world, especially in our very race-centric society. Nobody else I’ve ever met looks like me, and that’s going to have to be okay because I can’t control other people. I am my own representation in this life, I represent me. And that’s okay.

This is seems like a weird topic, did anyone else find that in university they made friends with mostly people from their poc side? I don’t think anyone’s racist, whenever I do try to make friends with white people for some reason it never sticks, which can be due to a multitude of factors. I am studying law, again that may be another factor, and I have been told by my white peers that they forget I’m white (despite me also having European features). But I’m curious if anyone else has experienced this.

Hypothetically, if your parents got dementia and didn’t remember you, do you think they’d believe you if you told them you’re their kid? Or would they be confused by the fact that you’re a different race?

Okay i hope no one recognises me but i still have to get this message across. I am a Singaporean girl. My race? I dont know. I feel like i have no identity. My dad is chinese. My mom is indian mixed scottish (basically urasian). But even that isnt so simple. My mothers side family lineage extends way beyond comprehension. We are so diverse and diluted. With not only western sides (British, scottish, aussie, italian) and the asian sides (fillipino, Anglo-indians.. etc).

But this isnt me wanting to disclose what kind of mixed person i am. its me wanting to vent out my pure frustration. Coming from a mixed girl, i sometimes feel so lost. its like i never fit in with the chinese, the indians or thr eurasians and westerners. Im not saying im alone but sometimes it feels like i am. Not to mention, i was brought up by my parents in their own way. Not asian or western parenting. just a unique way. Their my best friends and my parents at the same time.

But it comes with a cost, i lose out on all the understandings of local and traditonal singaporean things. I am always that friend who will never get refrences. I also get looked down on the way i speak chinese (to the point i dropped to CLB from express chinese). There are just many instances whereby i feel foreign to even my closest friends. It even got to a point i had a massive fight with my friendgroup and now its in pieces.

A few days ago, me and my mom started talking about it. Like me, my mom went through similar things in secondary school. She said to me that in a way she wished all the singaporeans could be labelled as "singaporeans" in their race rather than having being labelled as "indian" "chinese" "Eurasian". Now, dont get me wrong, people are what they are and it is an easier system. But apart from SG and malaysia, Other countries have labelled their own people under the countries name, not their ethnicity.

In finland, people are called finnish. In austrailia, aussies. In Phillipines, fillipino. Thailand, thai. I CAN GO ON. why cant we all be known as singaporeans? Isnt that what singapores about? unity? diversity? (gosh this sounds like elec ss). Not to mention how confusing it is for the mixed population. Because, I for one, am very confused with what i am. I always have a headache trying to explain what i am to people when asked because heck, i dont know either.

This sounds so whiney and everything but genuinely, i think singapore should replace the race thing as singaporeans for everyones sake. If not, make emphasis on the mixed population. Not everyone is pure or even euraisan. And before any of you come at me in the comments, this is purely a rant. i have so much more to say because honestly, i feel discriminated by a lot of ppl and in a lot of instances. I feel lost. Maybe one day people can just look past race and everything and see ourselves as humans but that is unlikely. I just wish i could figure out my identity and to not take the critisism and judgement from people around me.

The end lol. If theres anyone potentially like me or feels this way? lmk. It would be nice to know people understand and im not some delusional freakazoid.

TL;DR my partner hates me for being mixed/non-white + i'm horrified.

wasn't sure whether to tag as a rant or discussion, kinda long.

it's been 9 years today since moving in with my partner (34) .. they just admitted last week that they hate me (33) + it's due to my race/culture.. when i asked them what i did or why they would hate me they just said something along the lines of idk, the way i was raised.

we have created a whole human + raised two kids (5yo + 10yo) together.. i'm disabled + rely on their help around here every day. no family around + only a few (mostly new) friends.

they say they no longer hate me, but i don't believe that.

idk what to do, i'm still in shock. as soon as they said it out loud in the heat of the moment i said i knew it .. felt it all these years, but was in denial, thinking i was being sensitive or it was just a culture shock cos they're from florida + raised by a white mom + a light-skinned Metís dad until they divorced when my (ex?) partner was young.

growing up i didn't realize i could be the victim of racism because i'm very light skinned with loose curls (irish bio-dad) + saw what my afro-indigenous mama went thru on the daily so by comparison i figured white people couldn't be racist towards me, but quickly have been learning how wrong i was.. there's privileges that have come from being so melanin redacted in this caste system fs, but in hindsight i'm starting to think they still will never see me as fully human.

i'm shaped different, move different, speak + act different in ways i can't control + they hate. looking back it's very clear to me that i'm not accepted as one of them + never will be, which i'm fully good with; what chills my bones is that i have been sleeping next to someone for the greater half of a decade who literally hates me for being me. therefore they hate my children, too.. trying to protect my children's spirits feels like a hopeless battle when we all live in the same home + i often need bed rest, so their other parent does a lot of the childcare, too. which is great in terms of taking care of the home + keeping the kids fed, etc. but i'm living in silent horror every day, feeling paralyzed + terrified for my children's futures; just stayin prayin to the Great Spirit + my ancestors right now.

i knew deep down that my white dad hated me, but he never said it out loud. it's something different to have the hate confirmed like that + laying beside me as i sleep.

has anyone else experienced something similar or suspected a partner hated them for being mixed? just looking for some innerstanding + insight here.. feeling very alone + disempowered😞

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I genuinely don't understand my mother (her thought process).

Also be warned I will be complaining a lot...

We always get into fights and Im starting to believe it's because were from diffrent cultures. I was born in Japan but raised the African American way (if you know you know). I don't live in Japan anymore. But one day my mom told me she didn't like my accent and I was wondering what she ment and she said "hood accent" she said I was faking it. I don't know what she ment and I still don't know till this day (In Japan I went to a military school so I spoke English all the time never Japanese). She keeps bringing up my fake accent till this day even though ive spoken like this ever since I was born.

There was another point in time where when I was in middle school I was bullied really badly and instead of helping me she blamed me for getting bullied? Is this an Asian thing because I'm assuming so. Recently I talked to my mom about some kids making fun of my lashes and she said "its your fault". I said "no its not" and she proceeded to blame me again.

And sometimes whenever I speak perfect Japanese she wants to say, "you said that wrong" even though I know I said it right. I lived in Japan for around 10 to 12 years (dont remember but it was a while) so I know what I was saying is right but she always wants to correct me when there is no correction to be needed.

Another thing my mom does is ignore my mental health a lot. Like...a lot. I was diagnosed with depression and I needed my mom at the time but she acts like I don’t have depression.. Im used to it but I do wish she could acknowledge my mental health which she doesnt do. She never has actually. She also thinks Bs are bad....I tell her I got a B and she says, "you can do better". Im standing there wondering why she says that when she could have just said good job.

She's sabotaged me when I had a job too. At first she accepted the job and she was the only way I could get to it then all the sudden on the third day of working she tells me to get a uber...I haven't gotten a pay check nor allowance yet. Though I was able to keep the job for 3 months until she told me to quit because I needed to focus on school. I quit and try to hunt for a new job because I need money. All the sudden shes always so negative to me getting a job but she won't buy me any necessities.

Is there like any way me and her could get along? I do know that Japanese culture is very weird when it comes to family relationships and they protize good grades over health (sometimes).

So, for context my mother is a fully Black woman, and I'm mixed.

My mother came home today very upset, she told me that when she was at a restaurant, the server was acting extremely dismissive. She made my mother feel stupid and completely ignored her to instead talk to my white father, so basically racism.

Because of this, she was already heated when she came home. I didn't know this at the time, and I was equality upset though because some fucking lunatic almost shot up my house literally 30 minutes pior and I had to hide in the damn basement, but that's a different story.

When my mother finally talked to me about it, she began to speak about her stuggles as the only Black woman in this household. This caught me off guard, because I am also a Black woman of this household, regardless of me being mixed. She then told me that I am basically white. I have the exact same face and hair as her, the only difference is that I have light skin.

This got me upset, but I understand her point, being the only fully Black woman in the house with a White husband who didn't comfort her in the face of racism and two lightskinned children must feel isolating in a way I'll never understand.

Her comment just made me feel weirdly alienated from her and Blackness as a whole. I've just finished dealing with some identity issues, and her making thay commet kinda made me feel some type of way.

It really doesn't help that she keeps making those commets every one and then saying stuff like "you wouldn't be a slave" I most definitely would have, "people would look at you weird if you said you were Black" I freely talk about my Afro culture and no one bats an eye, "If you could choose a race category on a job application, you would choose White" I always choose Latino and Black.

Sigh. I love my mom dearly, I just feel like shit sometimes when she says these types of thing because it completely ignores my experiences with racism. I understand that I have it much better than fully Black or darker skinned folk, but it still hurts.

Let me know if I'm stepping out of line with this, thanks for reading, I'ma go cry myself to sleep now, idk why I'm so upset by this.

I’m half white and half Pacific Islander my mom’s Pacific Islander and immigrated from her home country to Hawaii at a very young age. She met my dad while he was stationed in Hawaii and moved back to an extremely white community in Illinois with my dad. Recently I’ve noticed a new trend with the white people around me (around me for now but I’m likely cutting them off soon) where they deny my mixed race identity and call me white. They will say I look Caucasian, I’ve heard some claim that Pacific Islanders don’t even experience racism and they’ve never heard of people being racist towards Pacific Islanders (ignorant af but I’m not getting paid to educate willfully ignorant people). My own white family will also deny my mixed race, but love to hear about my trips to see my other family members. I am fairer skinned but carry most of the physical traits of a Pacific Islander, my hair, the calves and the muscle 😅 and the slight beige/ caramel skin color. I would also like to preface this that although I am fairer skin, growing up the people around here could immediately tell that I wasn’t just white. My first day of school kids were telling me I was black and mom had to teach me about our heritage. Since then it’s been a big mix of people rudely assuming my race and making racist Mexican jokes about me, calling me the n word, or throwing micro aggressions calling me the d slur. The D slur one kinda hurts more than anything else bc it’s one thing to be denied my racial identity but to be denied my sexual orientation or gender just irritates me even more especially because I’m cisgender and heterosexual. People would call me Maui from the movie Moana and just generally equate me to a man. People purposely mispronounce my indigenous name and even my Eurocentric first name. Random people at the bars would ask if I’m Native American and honestly I’m not offended when people just ask my race, but my friend group freaked out and started calling the random guy out for being weird bc why does my race matter.

I want to know why some white people feel so comfortable denying another persons mixed race identity. I don’t think POC need to act or look a certain way necessarily to share part of the experience of racism and I can admit I do still receive privileges from being fairer skin. I do have it easier compared to my ancestors and my fellow Pacific Islanders but idk I just wanna add to the conversation and nuance of racial matters.

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I was thinking about history and where you’ve seen large amounts of people from different parts of the world mixing with each other more, compared to other parts of the world

A few places I think of is the American South, America's southwest, the majority of Latin America, the levant, due to joining Africa, Asia and Europe. With deep history, madagascar and South Africa

and by most mixed, I don’t mean the most amount of mixed people, I mean where you’ll find the people with the most stuff making them up, like European, African, Indigenous, north African/middle eastern and East Asian etc

Obviously there’s other places that should be on the list but idk too much about East Asian history so I’m asking

But as for the list, I can’t think of a higher amount of mixed than Latin America since they can have African, European, indigenous and even middle eastern via the moor rule of Spain/sephardic Jews who both fled the region and went to latin America

I know they went to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire too, but I mean those places don’t have the same result as the americas for the different groups interacting

​

I'm genuinely curious to hear different perspectives, especially from people who grew up in other cultures and moved to the US.

What is something that is considered normal or acceptable in American culture but that you personally find rude, disrespectful, or difficult to get used to?

Not trying to bash American culture. Every culture has its own norms, and sometimes what one person considers direct or normal can come across as rude to someone from a different background.

What has your experience been?

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.

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??

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?

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.

Completely lost it 😂😂💀 too f-ing real

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.​

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.

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.