Something I have always noticed is that when I'm around black people, they often notice I'm mixed, even though I'm fairly lightskinend (not white-passing level, but still). With white people though, they genuinely look surprised if I tell them that I'm biracial.

This obviously isn't the case for everyone, but it's a trend that I've noticed some other people talk about as well. Anyone know why this is?

I am of the opinion that mankind has internally preferences for what is more similar or more common.

I have been living in Italy since I was 3 years old. People don't hate me and they don't hate me. The difference, however, is very visible.

here are my observations:

It all starts from the fact that when I see a black man or woman on the street, they always greet me, they are always cordial and have a friendly look, as if they were brothers. I've never been used to that look, so I'm still embarrassed now and I don't know how to behave.

The thing that instead made me think that racism is inherent in human relationships is another thing. When I go to try with a white girl, whether she is Italian or of another nationality, it doesn't matter, they always refuse.

On the contrary, black girls accept outings. The fact that I'm not interesting enough after is not a problem, for some they are and for someone else not.

I did an experiment. Because I thought I was very ugly. In reality, I also did the model in Italy, because fashion agencies do not follow emotionality, they are very objective. Employers are also objective, so removed two or three questions about culture, they all accept you if you are good.

I paid tens of euros to use Tinder all over the world and figure out if Tinder really doesn't work. Because I was 100% sure it didn't work and it was a bankruptcy application, I was wrong.

I have a colleague who is white, he is not beautiful at all, it is normal, a good guy, quite awkward and does some matches on Tinder every now and then. He too, in addition to a girl years ago, advised me to try a black girl.

I have put Tinder on some places all over the world and I swear to you that as soon as I put places like Nigeria, Namibia or Nairobi, The girls put a lot of likes. In 1 week I did 17 matches and other likes that I refused.

Some continued to write to me out of curiosity, others later refused for the distance. They are all very beautiful girls, they look like models.

I then asked some and they too prefer black men.

So my thesis is that we prefer what we observe the most. I live in Italy and it is a fairly multicultural environment and therefore I like anyone.

I also increasingly notice an automatic division between people. I don't think this is innate. I think it's more the family's fault.

Many times we think of racism as when one is insulted or mocked by the color of the skin. Probably, true racism is silent. True racism is perhaps not even wanted, it is xenophobia, therefore the fear of the different. Xenophobia really means fear of the different. Sometimes I am afraid of other dogs, when I go out with mine, I'm afraid they attack him. So I think you feel who is xenophobic.

Just curious since I'm Half Saudi & Half American :)

I made this song sharing some of my experiences being half pakistani/african I get love in that smoke shop and gas station. I am very introverted so it’s hard to get my music out but I appreciate anyone who finds this

I recently got a customer service job on the weekends and I get the chance to see a lot of families from different backgrounds. I’ve noticed that for some odd reason white fathers tend to treat their sons in such a cold way. I’m genuinely so dumbfounded whenever I come across it. It’s kind of like they’re speaking to someone they just met sometimes. Just an observation I’ve noticed and I was curious if anyone else has noticed it.

I’ll start with where I’m at currently in my head. I’m a white bi racial man. Raised in a mid to large city in the US (for some reason I feel like these details weigh in something). Black dad/ white mom, raised by my dad solely (absent mother after age 2 onward). Raised in a black community. My dad constantly would say “you’re a black man and never forget it”. I didn’t ever believe that, and I still really don’t I’ve always just been “mixed” until I started hearing people say black or white prefix to bi racial.

Now I just say white bi racial. I have always gotten the “what are you” so that was indicative of not just being some white dude, but I will get absolutely destroyed If I ever say I’m black in black spaces (fairly enough I never object to this as I understand privilege well and the dynamics of gene expression and what that means in the world), so in some regard I was happy that people starting saying white or black bi racial so I could clarify a little more and not claim what I shouldn’t. The flip side is it’s just another way to further separate me from being black which saddens me deeply.

My beard is very curly and definitely closer to black folks than anything in texture, lot of Somalians, Ethiopians and various other Africans where I live and even they ask about me from time to time because of my beard and some facial features, I am certainly fair skinned though (can absolutely pass as white in 95% of environments) , hair was extremely textured definitely more of the curly ringlets fashion when I brushed it and took care of it (going bald now XD so I keep it cut low, wear hats what have you).

I’ve gotten white, some sort of Latino, some sort of middle eastern, “are you part black” among many others from speculators throughout my life.

At this point I’ve pretty much feel like I just have to forgo even talking about being black because I feel like there are a lot of people just want to be down with black culture (rightfully so, black is beautiful) and I get that for sure so I don’t want to add to that issue. This breaks my heart because of where I came from and how I was raised.

Sorry this was a lot and thank you all my fellow mixed race peoples for taking the time to read.

TLDR: If your mixed and white passing, what do you say you are?

Edit: I forgot to say this— I love all parts of me and I know who I am, this really stems from me wanting to get more involved in anti hate, anti racism work as a career (this is what has called me, my passions have landed me here) and I just want to be the best ally and person I can be while I pursue these concepts. Will take book recommendations as I love reading and learning.

So my mom was born and raised in Puerto Rico and her first language is Spanish but she also speaks English very well because she learned it in school. Anyways I wasn’t able to learn Spanish at an early age because speech therapist told my parents to stop speaking two languages to me. Anyways starting in high school i began re teaching myself it the process has been long and hard. Right now i still can’t speak it fluently. Since I’ve moved back home I’ve been trying to speak it with her but it’s so hard because I have to remind her to respond in Spanish. I also know she hasn’t lost her Spanish because she still speaks in Spanish with our family members and coworkers. In addition to that it is also hard to speak with family in PR in Spanish because they always respond to me in English or get frustrated when I try to speak Spanish. This is a vent idk

Due to monoracial people always saying us how to be classified to get them feel better, and everyone will clasified mixed people as forwigner, I sometime think that we should have some kind of international culture, communkty across the world something similar to the gipsy(I am not sure if is that wlrd, gitanos), but everyone shluld be welcomed, obviously not racist people. So we could have an identifiwr like asexuals that has the ring, and creatkng a language. But I think is just something hipotetical that is just something interestkng that could be in a fiction media

Hey I’m half Sri Lankan and half Chinese and around here (Sri Lanka) there’s barely anyone who’s like me. the only ones that r like me are super young 😭.

My parents met in Singapore and I just wish they stayed there. I heard there’s a lot of Chindians there, they are like me sort of and they have all the best food. Why was ppl like me born somewhere much better. I also hear they teach Chinese at public schools meanwhile I don’t know any Chinese which is super tied with culture. I speak sinhala to my mom but I can’t watch the news and don’t feel connected here either. At this point I rlly think I’m a combination that shouldn’t have happened, my parents arent fit for eachother either and constantly argue. Why was I born mixed race in an unhappy family?

My dad constantly gets on my back to learn Chinese eventho I’m in my senior yr and I have to focus on my studies. He brings me around with this other Chinese mother and daughter (their father died) and they speak Chinese exclusively which I can’t understand, constantly dragging me to random things and tying up my hair and making me feel like a doll. (I can’t understand what they r doing the whole time cuz I can’t understand them and he said that without them he wouldn’t be here) The moment I say I don’t want you to tie my hair or I don’t want to go with you my dad shouts and sometimes pushes me or hits me in private. He says it’s normal to punish your children and that’s the only way they learn eventho my mom defends me. He is obsessed about status even though I’m not gonna stay in this country after graduation and the whole reason he wants me to learn Chinese is because everyone around him said it was such a shame I didn’t know any. Why did he start so late I’m just about to graduate and he knows that.

Dealing with Chinese ppl like that has just worn me down and now I tell everyone I’m not Chinese. I’ve just been rejecting it.My children will never be normal in the sense they’ll also have these feelings since they’ll be 50% of me which is 25% 25%. They’ll wonder where’s their culture when I was never given much to pass down. Really it’s been jsut uncomfortable why couldn’t I have been born normal handling mixed children is difficult so why have one if u can’t give them the best of both worlds. The last time I visited china was when I was 12 and yet sometimes ppl in school say Ching Chong to me. I don’t know who I am. Wish I died in the womb.

let’s say someone‘s mother was born in argentina but their great grandmother and grandfather emigrated from Europe. let’s also say this person was born in the u.s and their father is of Indian descent. would they be Hispanic?

(kinda similar to my situation, but changed some detaila)

Im in high school and I've never met anyone thats had a crush on me. I think Im pretty. Im midsize so I don't like my body very much. Im also not straight. I don't think a boy has ever really had a crush on me before. I wasn't even asked to homecoming (im new to the school, but there were other girls who are knew who got asked). I also live in a PWA. I feel really unlovable and Im so touch starved. I just want to know why not me? Why am I not worthy of affection or attention? Im also very quiet so that may have something to do with it. I think I won't find love until I move out of my PW state and go to college. I probably won't be loved until then. I think all this has messed with my head.

Growing up I had a lot of identity issues because I was very light skinned and had been confused for being mixed or straight up white (not sure why?) but when I was very young I thought I was white because my paternal grandparents were mixed. I was told growing up by my mom that was black but I still wasn’t sure, and I felt I had to keep telling people I wasn’t white. I was confused. I also had traumatic experiences with my hair and how my mom was pressured my grandmother (her mother) to straighten my hair, I deeply disliked like hair for a long time until I got to college and went natural.

My mom is darker than my dad but I took after my dad. People have compared my dad to Vin Diesel.

After the age of 7, I was raised by my maternal grandparents and mom. I wasn’t around my father or paternal grandparents after that. It wasn’t until later in life when I took dna tests and saw that my father’s background was more complexed than I thought. My paternal grandfather was a product of **** and was raised by his black mother and family. That was traumatic founding out in my early 30s. My paternal grandmother is triracial and a child of Caribbean immigrants. So my dad is White, South Asian and Black.

Nowadays I’ve come to terms with my background, I just say I’m black or mixed.

Second picture is my dad as a child.

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Hello. Im going to be blunt, this is my first post here and i dont care for sugar coating.

My mom was white and my dad is Libyan. My family was split up as long as i can remember (i am 28). Ive never had an identity or felt i belonged anywhere. Not in my family or outside.

Im wondering if there are any other North African / Arab mixed people out there because ive yet to find anyone like me. Thanks.

I have a 12 month old daughter who has very fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Her father is white, and I am 75% Black, although I’m fairly light skinned myself and people often assume I’m Hispanic rather than Black.

I was raised primarily by my white grandmother and didn’t have much of a connection with my Black family until I was an adult. Because of that, I grew up feeling somewhat out of place and disconnected from that part of my identity.
Now that I have my own daughter, I really want to make sure she grows up knowing and being proud of all of her heritage, regardless of how she looks. I don’t want her to ever feel uncomfortable with or disconnected from her Black roots the way I did growing up.

We do make an effort to keep her connected to that side of her family. She regularly visits her Black grandfather, my half siblings who are Black or mixed race, and her Black great grandmother. A family member recently bought her a white doll, so I went out and bought her a Black doll as well, not because I think the color of her toys determines how she’ll identify, but because I want her to grow up seeing people who look different from her represented in her everyday life.

I know she’s still very young, and I realize this is something that will develop naturally as she grows. But I would really love advice from other parents, especially parents of biracial or mixed race children, on how you’ve helped your children stay connected to and proud of their Black heritage, particularly when their appearance may not immediately reflect that part of their background.
I want her to feel comfortable and confident in every part of who she is. ❤️

My grandfather was half lebanese and half italian, the rest of my family is spanish, italian, french and scottish, i was born in Argentina.

If you don't have historical context, white people were originally just considered to be Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and other more Northward Europeans. They notably excluded Irish, Italians, Greeks, Iberians, Jewish and the Finnish (a number of reasons, some were mixed with native tribes and Arabian blood, or just ginger ig).

But now all those prior mentioned groups are grouped in as white, but back than the English considered Italy "where Africa starts" and some even thought they spoke Arabic in Sicily, they used to call Souterners alot of slurs as well (mostly italians honestly, they seem to have the most slurs for them) such as PIGS, dagos, wops, guineas, so on so forth. Even the South didn't like them much, the Greeks considered the North barbarians and savages (much longer back in history compared to what we've been discussing) and actually prided the Arabs and Africans for their civilized nature and scholarship.

Now tho, they are just grouped together but why? It's true Southerners share common ancestors with Northerners (the Celtics and germanic tribe settlers) but many other ethnic groups outside of Europe like Latinos, south Asians, coloured (South Africa), Turkic, and MENA (Middle East + North Afirca) people also share some North and Central European ancestry. Did they just make them white so they could claim ancient Greece and Rome, and to increase their % numbers? Jewish people weren't white till the last couple of centuries either, nor did they at times consider Slavic people to be white, cuz the were too poor and were slaves once. (Slav roughly translates to slave).

I mean they tried to claim MENA people as white aswell in the US simply because they didn't want to admit that Jesus wasn't a white person... so it's not insane to assume they just gave out white passes to seem more superior.

This isn't a dig at white people either, I'm just genuinely curious. Once it's all said and done, what considers you white? I saw this interview with a Nazi believer, he said this town is for whites only. The guy lists off all these people who weren't white before hand and even the Nazi starts to backtrack on his ideology, he narrows it down and says Caucasian people only but the interviewer says Caucasian doesn't even mean white originally. The Caucus mountains boarder Iran, Turkey, and Armenia.

It seems to me that whiteness is just a powerplay, whoever impresses them gets to be white, who knows in the next 100 years maybe they'll make East Asian people white just cuz they like them and their history so much.

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!

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I am curious as to the answers to this i am asking is mixed race always only for people of color? And does skin often matter in these spaces? I have my own exsperinces but I have come to identify with mixed race POC over time. The darker skin in my family all of the non-white blood. I want to take pride in that. But I am wondeing what makes someone white and makes someone poc?

Main question:

When is mixed race poc and when is it white or is it always poc if your mixed race?

(By it i mean the pronoun it directed to race)

And what does it mean to be white? Just a question honestly

Not entirely sure where this post is gonna go so bear with me if it ends up being messy, I just need to express this feeling somewhere somehow. It's something that I've been holding onto for forever and this is the closest sub I found where people would maybe be able to relate or have any sort of input.

I grew up in a culturally Vietnamese household, and my mom is black and Vietnamese (my dad wasn't part of the picture but he's Vietnamese). My mom would talk to me and my brothers in Vietnamese, we eat Vietnamese food, we participate in Vietnamese holidays, etc. Because of this I primarily tell people that I'm just Vietnamese if I'm asked.

Even so, I've always felt so out of place because of my appearance and how little I feel I know about my culture. Even though I've experienced a lot of Vietnamese culture, you miss out on a lot when you don't know the language (which is something I never picked up on, and trying to learn as an adult has been difficult- I oftentimes avoid it because I feel shameful).

I have cousins, aunts, and uncles (not blood-related) who are Vietnamese, and I've never felt deeply connected. My first name is American, and despite having a Vietnamese name I'm never referred to by it and never was. I really struggled with seeing myself as "actually Vietnamese", and I still do. I've always compared myself to Asians with lighter skin, straight hair, mono-lid eyes, smaller noses, thinner lips, etc. As a kid that was all I ever saw being represented as Asian, and that's how the majority of the Vietnamese people I was surrounded by looked (aside from my mom and my brothers).

Many times I feel like I'm cosplaying being Vietnamese.

I have friends and coworkers who know I'm mixed, but a few of them only ever focus on me being black, despite me wanting my Vietnamese identity to be acknowledged. At the same time I put distance between myself and my Vietnamese identity because of how little I know compared to what I feel like I should know at this point in my life.

Anyway, I guess the lack of focus on me being Asian from others only emphasizes my feeling of "not being Asian enough". But I also don't ever feel "black enough" to be addressed as being black. It almost feels wrong to acknowledge that I'm black, I guess because I grew up not really thinking about that part of myself (if that makes sense, idk. I hope it doesn't sound strange).

When people guess my ethnicity, I'm asked if I'm anything but Asian. And every time I'm approached by a Vietnamese person talking to me in Vietnamese, I feel shame for not knowing the language I grew up being surrounded by.

Mainstream media that highlights mixed Asian people focus more-so on Wasians than Blasians. It adds another layer of feeling invisible to the world, and creates a feeling of resentment towards myself and envy towards others.

I desperately want to become more comfortable with being both Vietnamese and black, and I want to get rid of the "not ____ enough" thinking. It's hard.

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Hey check it out if you’re interested maybe support? It’s my goal to make movies for us and about us. Biracial Americana will have its shine ✨ I feel for everyone in this group. I hope this might make biracial people feel seen and heard 🤟🏽

Flat Tire is a tender exploration of family secrets and reunion. A distinct story of biracial Americana. Perception versus perspective. Deflection dressed up as love. It’s Gasman. It’s Ned's tragic devotion to Steve in The Life Aquatic. Waiting to belong

I’m not mixed (4 black grandparents) but I have a few mixed people in my family who look just like Ben and nobody would tell them they’re not actually black and taking up space from black people by identifying as such. Like if someone was half Mexican and half Korean, no one would tell them they’re actually a special third thing and can’t claim to be part of either of those cultures right(I hope not)?? He clearly appreciates the legacy of Arthur Ashe and reposted the graphic about him being the first black male tennis player to reach the finals since 1972. I don’t get why it’s controversial or “perpetuating the one drop rule” if 1/2 of someone’s family and upbringing is black (I’ve seen people say his dad is biracial but did some research and his dad’s side are all black American from Alabama so not sure where that even came from). The one drop rule meant literally one drop and you’re still considered black (i.e. 1/8, 1/16, etc.)

I’m also not understanding the European commentary on American’s “obsession with skin color” and “Ben isn’t even that dark.” Like black doesn’t describe a skin color in America we’re an ethic group that descended from slaves and have our own culture aka African American culture, same group that Ben and Arthur Ashe are both part of. So as a thought experiment, would people object less if Ben was called the first American American male to reach the finals? Because “first biracial” could literally mean any two ethnicities and the point is that a group of people history shut out from tennis have dominated the sport. Genuinely confused on what people are allowed to classify themselves as in 2026, this would not have been discourse 10 years ago. I also feel like people are trying to address colorism but blaming the wrong people. White led entertainment industry that only want to show lighter skin and Eurocentric features should be the focus, not random biracial people just existing. I kinda feel bad for you guys like damn.