As someone who's mixed, I know all too well that multiracial folks deal with a lot of crap.
Well, Reddit user u/MoonMushroom999 posed the question, "What’s an experience as a mixed race person that made your blood boil?"
Here are some of the frustrating and heartbreaking responses:
1. "I was in a class, and one of my classmates was saying how funny it was when white people tried to speak 'fake Japanese' (y'know, with the 'Asian' accent), and my TEACHER used a racial slur WHILE WE WERE LEARNING ABOUT JAPANESE INTERNMENT. He was 'joking around,' but he referred to them as dirty [racial slur]. Then, he remembered I was mixed and tried to brush it off."
2. "The thing that will always piss me off is people telling me I’m not Black enough. I’m 1/2 Black and 1/2 white and was raised by my white mother. And I get sh*t all the time from both races saying how 'I don’t act Black' or 'you're too white,' which pisses me off to no end. I’m sorry I can’t go back in time and change how I was raised. I didn’t know how I was raised determined the color of my skin."
3. "I'm white passing, and I can't f*cking stand when white people think I share their racist-ass opinions. They whisper that sh*t to me like we're on the same team. I went to school in Texas, and it was all [racial slurs]. I'm half Mexican and let them know I absolutely did not play that sh*t."
4. "People tend to think I am some wild Koreaboo (i.e. a non-Korean person who just loves Korean culture) when in fact, I am 1/4 Korean. My father lived there for some time, we cook Korean foods, make kimchi, I am learning the language, etc. Like, I know I may not 'look like it' (though I def did when I was small), but it is a part of me! It's for real, and I am not making it up!"
5. "I'm half Filipino. My mom is from Manila; she moved here to fulfill her American dream to be a nurse, find an American husband, have American children, and have a house. I actually don’t speak Tagalog; I wish I did, and I know my mom regrets it to some extent, but I don’t blame her either. The amount of times I’ve had other people write me off as 'not actually Filipino' despite being literally half because I don’t know Tagalog fluently makes me so mad."
"I once got asked by a guy at a Chinese restaurant if I was Filipino. I was excited because not many people guess that correctly, and I said yes. He started speaking to me in Tagalog, and I answered that despite being half, I wasn’t fluent. He straight up waved me off and said, 'Oh, you’re really not really Filipino then.' Rage-inducing."
6. "It really bothers me when people learn of my Indigenous American side (Mayan), and instead of recognizing me as a Native American individual, they see me as someone with 'a lot of Native blood.' People fail to realize that Indigenous Americans aren't just relics from the past whose ancestry you can claim to account for your 'high cheekbones' and strong sense of 'spirituality.'"
"I once had someone comment on my heritage, 'That's becoming an extinct race,' ignoring the fact that 1) I'm sitting right in front of them and 2) my father is an actual Native person, not just some guy claiming to be 'part Cherokee.'"
7. "I'm 1/4 Japanese, 1/4 Puerto Rican, and 1/2 white – 99% of the time, it's always white people telling me, 'You don't look Asian.' Like, okay??? These are the same people asking, 'So, what are you?' I've tried being like, 'Maybe it's just your first time seeing a mixed Asian?' And one guy was like, 'I had Vietnamese friends growing up, and you don't look like any of them.' Like, wow. Okay."
8. "When this white kid in my class told me that I can’t be Native American because I don’t look like one. He was so adamant about proving that I was lying. My mother is full Native American."
9. "Half Korean, half white. Grew up in a rural area where I was one of two non-white kids at my elementary school. Got the usual racist jokes and stuff. And then, I come to a big city for college, and suddenly I'm not Korean enough for anyone. I’m too Korean to be white, too white to be Korean. Honestly, it just shows how narrow-minded people can be about race."
10. "Currently, it is the chronically online take that mixed Black/white people with white moms are inferior to those with Black moms, purely because there is some brain-dead idea that all mixed children with white moms have zero contact with Black people, and are therefore raised to be racist. It genuinely baffles me how often I see this take online about 'white mom biracials', because from the amount of comments I’ve seen about it from various social platforms, it seems to be a commonly-held belief that biracials with white moms are simply 'raised with white privilege/superiority' and that they don’t have Black female influences in childhood."
"I don’t know about y’all, but I have two parents, and two extended families, plenty of Black cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who informed my worldviews and helped to raise me. I wasn’t born or raised in a vacuum. This type of backwards-ass opinion was either FAR less common when I was younger, or people were at least polite enough not to say it in front of me. It’s tiring because it’s like you have to prove you deserve to be considered even half-Black if your mom is white, purely because she’s white. It’s gotten to the point where biracial hate seems like the default, and that’s sad."
11. "1/4 Japanese, 1/2 Black, 1/4 white here. This sh*t pisses me OFF. I've been told outright that I'm not Asian by other Asians. My default response is I only and exclusively start speaking Japanese to them until they f*cking chill and apologize."
12. "White people usually don’t know how to react around me once they find out I’m half Black, like it’s fascinating to them that I’m half Black but don’t look it, and they think I look Arab or Latino. Or they try to deny me of my other half like, 'Oh, well, you don’t actually think you're Black right?' Even when I used to date white women, some of them would tell me I couldn't claim Black around their family, or they'd get basically disowned."
"With Black people accepting me, it’s usually just an issue with Black men because despite how I act, I don’t appear 'Black enough,' and I guess having 'Black mannerisms' and not appearing that way is an issue for them. I’m typically accepted by Black women as being Black, and they even defend me when questioned. It really annoys me that people can’t just accept that I’m Black and white, or they wanna make me choose sides."
13. "People who ask you to 'prove it.' My dad is white (and a redhead), and my mom is 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 Mongolian. I'm mostly white passing, except for my eyes; I got my mother's eyes. I've had people not believe me until they meet my mom. Or, I've had people insinuate that my mom adopted me."
14. "I'm half white and half Indian. When I moved to college, my white parent got mad at me for making too many Desi friends 🙄. It made me so f*cking angry because I know for a fact they would have been totally fine with it if all my friends were white."
15. And finally, "On the way to my younger sister’s volleyball game, she was talking about how she and I are both 1/4 Japanese. These are people we’ve known for years, they all know we’re mixed. Yet, her coach/my former teacher proceeded to tell both of us that 'we’re barely Asian' and 'basically white' and that we 'don’t even look Asian.' This is the very same man who would joke about how I must be good at math because I’m Asian when he had me as a student."
"This experience made me realize that white people like him only treat mixed people like they’re valid when it’s convenient to them, especially when we’re the brunt of their jokes. So many people act like mixed people just don’t exist because it’s more convenient to tell us we’re white, and they’ll even justify themselves by saying we don’t 'look like it' so it must be true. And most of the time, they know next to nothing about the cultures they decide to exclude us from. I shouldn’t have to tell him that my sister was given a Japanese name, that my dad speaks the language, that he was raised in Japan, that we were raised with the culture, and that I’m learning the language in order for our identities to finally become valid."
Are you mixed? If so, what's the most frustrating experience you've had? LMK in the comments below!
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.