u/Organic-While1664

My story: I was acquaintances with a few people at the beginning of this year and we got into a heated argument about what race *I* was and what I was allowed to say and do. 🙃 When I was explaining to them the experiences I went through as a light skin biracial girl, they said I was lying. There is no way someone like me could be called the N word or be treated poorly due to my proximity to blackness.

They didn’t believe me that people don’t automatically assume I’m Latina unless I tell them. They said I have “Latina features” and don’t look black at all. It’s easy to say someone looks Latina after they told you they were Latina. That’s hindsight bias. Ik quite a few mixed people that get told they look Latino even though they aren’t, simply because they are light skinned.

It seems like they were trying to put in “the Latinos who think they are black” box. The conversation started off super aggressive and authoritarian. It seemed like another person who wants to gatekeep race.

Context: After doing DNA ancestry (ik isn’t 100% accurate) I’m only mixed with African and European. My closest celeb lookalike would be Manon from Katseye.

Every morning around 8 am, sometimes even as early as 7:30, my neighbor starts blasting music. Personally, I try to wait until at least 10 a.m. before making any noticeable noise.

Just because you’re awake doesn’t mean everyone else is. It’s really frustrating to be woken up 30 minutes to an hour earlier than necessary because of someone else’s noise.

It might not bother me as much if she didn’t also play loud music or blast her TV until 3 am. I honestly don’t know when she sleeps (maybe between 3 and 7 am plus a midday nap?

To make things worse, I think my downstairs neighbor has started retaliating by blasting music at all hours too. The problem is, that affects everyone—not just the original neighbor—and it probably doesn’t even bother her since she’s already so loud.

Update (since this is happening in real time): the downstairs neighbor started blasting music and the upstairs neighbor turned off her music and now the downstairs neighbor turned off her music as well.

I’m actually surprised that worked. A coincidence perhaps?

Sorry in advance for the length of the post.

For context, I’m a biracial (Black/white) Latina. I’m Dominican, and appearance-wise I have a light-brown skin, 3b hair, and features that most people read as mixed. (The closest celeb match is Manon) Because of that, when people ask what I am, I usually just say Dominican. I don’t always mention being biracial unless they specifically ask about my race—I’ve always assumed it was obvious, and most people treat it that way.

Growing up, though, my identity wasn’t that simple. In high school, I had a bit of an identity crisis. I’m U.S.-born, don’t speak Spanish, and wasn’t raised closely with my Dominican side, so I already felt disconnected from it. At the same time, my other parent is white, but I’ve never been perceived as white, so I didn’t feel connected to that either. As a kid, I just said I was half white, half Dominican. It wasn’t until high school that I learned the difference between race and ethnicity—and also realized that many Dominicans don’t strongly identify with race at all. That definitely shaped how I saw myself.

By the end of high school, I became comfortable identifying as a biracial Latina. That felt like the most accurate way to describe both my background and my lived experience. Still, in everyday life, I usually just say I’m Dominican. Not because I’m hiding anything, but because being biracial isn’t really a “culture” to me, and most people either assume my race or don’t ask.

Recently, though, I had an experience that made me question how others perceive this. I was getting to know a group of people—two Black individuals and one Latino. Over about five months, they only ever asked about my ethnicity, not my race. I assumed they understood I was biracial based on how I look, like most people do. But it turns out they were treating “Latina” as my race.

One of the women in the group took issue with my identity. She told me I wasn’t Black and didn’t belong in the Black community at all because I’m Latina. That confused me, because I never claimed to be anything other than biracial. She also said I had “Latina features,” but couldn’t clearly explain what that meant. It felt like she had already decided what I was and wasn’t, without really listening to me.

Looking back, I wonder if she thought I was hiding my Blackness or only claiming it when convenient. I can understand how she might have had past experiences that shaped that perspective. But that’s not what I was doing—I just don’t typically announce my race unless it comes up.

So I guess what I’m really asking is how do y’all move through life knowing people basically think you’re racist for simply existing as a mixed person? Like it really feels damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Some people think if you say you’re biracial it’s because you’re trying to prove something and if you don’t it’s because you’re hiding it.

TO NOTE: I did use AI to help this sound more coherent because it was really hard to put my thoughts into words.