1. You Were Clueless About Your Hair for the First Half of Your Life

It wasn’t that bad until your parents gave you free reign. If you’re like me, it wasn’t until the end of high school that you and your hair reached an agreement, and even then it’s tentative. But even on your worst days it’s still pretty damn good.

What do you mean I should flat iron my hair; we leave in two hours?

2. You Can Recognize “The Look”

This is the look a stranger gives you when they’re trying to place what ethnicity you actually are. And if you’re thinking “there’s not a ‘look’” or “you can’t possibly tell what someone’s thinking” then you’d be in for a surprise. You can recognize the look because at some point in the upcoming conversation, the stranger will not-so-subtly inquire about your ethnic origins. I know I can’t be the only one.

"So where are you from?"
"Here, Tulsa."
"Oh, where’d your parents move from?"
"My dad’s from Sand Springs… "
"No but like what country is your family from?"
-Actual conversation I had with a person I just met (trust me, this isn’t the only one). It’s fine though, sometimes I forget that beige people are American too.

3. Which Is Usually Followed by an Attempt at Rationale

After you tell someone your ethnicity, they then rationalize how that answer makes sense. As if someone’s appearance and ancestry needs to “make sense.”

"Oh, part Native American, I can tell by your hair."
-Another thing a person I just met once told me.

Really? Can you REALLY see that I’m like maybe an eighth Native American? Can you really? Are you SURE it’s not because my hair is in two braids? Are you certain? Are you absolutely positive?

4. You Wonder If People Associate You and Your Parents

I just wonder when I’m out, especially with my middle-aged white father, if people see us and assume that we are related. I feel like the general public forgets that interracial relationships and their mixed offspring are a thing, but maybe I’m just wrong.

5. Sometimes You Feel Stuck in the Middle

For me, I grew up in a predominantly white environment and was one of only a few people of color, and the only clearly bi-racial child, in my classes. Even then there was a distinction between being black and being bi-racial. It was never negative or hurtful, but always there. It was something you noticed and wondered if other people noticed too.

“Oh well it’s not like you’re actually black…”
(Then wtf am I???)
- I don't even know how many times I've heard this

6. But Other Times You Feel Like You Have It All

One grandfather emigrated from Holland, the other descended from slaves. It's weird that my life is a point of convergence for two completely different spheres of the world that likely never interacted (considering the Dutch role in the slave trade though, I’d rather not investigate too hard). It reminds me how small and mutable everything is, how crazy it is that my parents managed to end up together, and how strange the future will likely be.

7. Your Makeup Shades Follow a Gradient with the Seasons

Makeup companies repeat after me: make your tans darker, deeper, more varied, more tonal, whatever you want, but STOP MAKING THEM ORANGE I DON’T HAVE AN ORANGE UNDERTONE AND NO ONE DOES, please.

Pictured above: foundation from January - August

8. Your Existence Shuts Down Genetic Racial Differentiation Arguments

Oh, so you support your own ‘race’ because you are genetically closer to them? I’m half white so we’re practically cousins. What do you mean that’s not how it works? It has to do with dominant/recessive genes? Well your wife has a widow’s peak. Oh, that one’s not important? Please educate me: which ones are?

9. In Fact, Your Existence Pisses of Racists You’ve Never Met

Continued miscegenation is destroying our country according to racist internet people. I AM THE END INCARNATE, eroding the foundation of our good, white nation and I didn’t even put on pants today.

10. The Word Mixed Isn't Precise

I am mixed: my mother is black and my father is white. If your mother is Indian and your father African, you are also mixed. If your mother is Jewish and your father Chinese, you are also mixed. If your mom is half-Lebanese half-Italian and your father Puerto Rican, you are also mixed. Even now, I’m writing with respect to my life, my experiences as ‘mixed-race’ are not completely universal.

11. The Word Mixed Isn’t a Bad One

Mixed is not necessarily synonymous with bi- or multi-racial, and perhaps in some places, it has a negative connotation. To me, though, it’s just who I am. If you haven’t figured that race in America is a completely arbitrary standard created by white men in order to make more money, maybe you never noticed the difference between ethnicity and race (READ: color). If saying that someone is mixed rather than biracial makes you uncomfortable, figure out why.

12. You Don’t See People Who Look Like You Often in Media

Sure, a beige-skinned love interest will pop up on precisely one episode of your favorite sitcom, but they’ll just be ambiguously ethnic enough to classify as “not white.” And sure, the mainstream media loves their racial ambiguity, but how about a dark skinned girl?

13. But When You Do, You Get Really Excited

Hey, someone in this country doesn’t think my existence is an abomination and then convinced an entire marketing department that it would be okay. Amazing. (just don’t check people’s comments)

14. You Get to Check More Than One Box on Standardized Testing

I always felt so cool coloring this in. You KNEW what was up when you colored in more than one box on that motherf’er. Damn right, my identity cannot be contained in one of your tiny boxes, it takes at least TWO! And when they upgraded from "circle one" to "circle all that apply" elementary-school me realized that maybe, just maybe, we were making progress.

15. You’re A Part of the Future… and the Past

If you heard that statistic that by 2050 half of American’s will be non-white, specifically multi-racial, then maybe it made you happy, for a moment. But that’s not the “solution” to racism. The idea that it takes a majority of people to look the same to end systematic racism is both incredibly shallow and inherently problematic: it in no way forces us to reevaluate how the system in which we live prioritizes different lives.

Believe it or not, I don’t hate white people (I’m even related to a few), and I don’t think that moving people with lighter skin to the minority does anything to address the issues with color we have in our society. Creating homogeneity through appearance is not the solution to our problems, in fact, it’s how we got here in the first place. Being mixed is a unique, varied, and wonderful identity, but it has to be more than a tan baby with the cutest blue eyes that you saw on Twitter.