r/mixedrace

i don’t really have a cohesive way to say this so it’s going to be a huge brain dump. perhaps i’ll forget a few details as well but i just had to rant this.

for reference, im half filipino (mom), and half an ethnicity that doesn’t have its own country (dad). i have never met another person beside my sibling that has the same mix as me. on top of that, we grew up in the uk. i have no family members from my dads side in the uk but almost half of my mom’s family is here, with a lot of cousins just above our age. therefore we were raised with filipino culture, their food, their traditions and customs, religion etc. i picked up the language from hearing my family talk to each other but we were never taught. my dad never taught us anything of his culture, nor were we raised with his religionetc.

now to the main part. many filipinos (myself included) usually are able to tell when someone is a filipino. i myself usually can tell when someone is mixed filipino as well. compared to my sister, i don’t have as many filipino features. people can’t really put the pin on where i’m from. they usually can tell that i’m “some form of asian”, some say i look middle eastern. some people can actually tell im filipino but this is usually never another filipino. if you’re filipino you know that we have a strong sense of community. especially abroad, there are many filipino communities where all the families like to hang out often and the kids are raised together. the community in the school i grew up with had many filipinos. but i was never invited to any function. their mothers always commented on how i looked saying i should go for modelling (probably because i was mixed) but again we were never invited for functions nor did any of the other filo kids in my class really include me. this continued on for as long as i know, even in highschool/ college and where we live now.

i always wondered why i was never included in these hang outs, especially because all of these other filo kids were raised in the uk. we have the same customs, food, and way of bringing up. i can only relate to their upbringing as i was not raised by my dads customs at all. yet its like i’ve been alienated from my own people. because of this since i was younger i developed hatred for the way i looked, especially my nose because i thought the way i looked stopped me from being accepted by my own people.

because i dont know any of my other half, nor do i know anyone that is the same ethnicity i cant even say i’m closer to that side or that side would accept me. actually they probably would but it wouldn’t feel right to me because i have nothing in common with them nor do i know the language or any tradition of theirs. it doesn’t feel like home to me. that makes me feel like i have no home or identity.

it makes me even more sad when i see comments online. every time a mixed filipino makes an achievement on the behalf of the philippines you always find comments saying “where’s the real filipino representation? this isn’t a real full blooded filipino”. yet when there are celebrities or thereof that make achievements but not on acknowledgement of their country the filipinos are so fast to say “did you know they’re half filipino? kuya! ate!” it’s like we’re only representative of our people when it benefits them. i don’t mean to use this lightly but it just feels sorta racist? we didn’t choose to be born mixed, so why can’t our own people see us as just filipino? why is it when we are filipino it’s always about “how filo you are” or if you’re half. and most of the time if you aren’t mixed white they don’t even see you as a filo at all. i feel like an alien. i remember when eala was achieving so much during wimbledon, and my mom was so happy about it, but as much as i was happy for her as an individual and amazed, i had a pit in my heart because i felt like i wasn’t even allowed to feel pinoy pride and feel proud that she brought my country far, because i feel like i don’t belong to the only place i know. it made me think of which country i would even represent if i was an athlete. because my other ethnicity has no country, i want to represent the only place and culture i am proud of, but my own people alienate me and don’t even see me as one of them until i earn it. it pisses me off and i don’t even know what to think.

by the way, when i say that i don’t know anything if my dads culture, i am not saying i do not claim that part of my ethnicity. i am ethnicity 1 AND ethnicity 2. not half this and that. i hate it when people say that as if we are machines made of parts from different places. we are human beings and we are lucky enough the world brought people from across the globe to bring us here. i am fully a filipino and fully the other ethnicity, but my parents are from two different places. yes genetically i know its half and half but when people talk about filipinoness are we really reducing that down to genetics? because wouldn’t that mean that almost none of us are really filipino because we have such mixed blood? it’s so stupid.

another thing that bothers me is that filipinos all look so different to the point where we have different terms for each type of beauty. i don’t understand why we can’t celebrate everyone’s appearances equally instead of praising how mestizas look and then belittling morenas because of internalised racism. but then i don’t understand how hating on mixed mestizas will help us fix that. and also we happen to take looking anything except filipino as a compliment. it’s very stupid, the whole thing makes me hate how proud yet hateful filos are of their own roots.

I was born in Italy but raised in Brazil since i was 4, my father is southern Italian and my mom is a Lebanese Maronite. I frequented a bilingual English school and most classes were in English rather than Portuguese, so I grew up on the English speaking part of the internet and that just made me more alienated from mainstream Brazilian culture. I tried to connect with my Lebanese side but Lebanon is currently being bombed, I have a Lebanese friend and I went to mosques and talked to people, but they still treated me like a n outsider and my friend told me in a moment of honesty that I was "white" and wasn't actually Lebanese. My Italian family is closer to me and I visit them but I can notice that I'm not "Italian" as well. I feel like I have no culture of my own, and I sometimes ask myself if I should even want to have a culture of my own. Idk. Any of you had similar experiences?

I'm not mixed but have know ln a ton of mixed folks in my life and I hate seeing so many of y'all so down on yourselves here. In my experience mixed people are some of the most empathetic and broadminded people out there. Not to mention just straight up beautiful! Who else has a foot authentically in two or more cultures? Its a bridge of understanding that few can match. Anyway fuck all the gatekeepers. Y'all are great the way you are.

**Am I crazy for thinking “mixed is mixed”? I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself just one race.**
I’ve been thinking about this after seeing a discussion online about mixed people and racial identity.
Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I don’t understand why people get so adamant about taking someone who is literally mixed and insisting they are *only* one race.
Both of my parents are mixed. One of my parents comes from two racial backgrounds, and my dad comes from three. So what does that make me? Mixed. Multiracial. 😂
Obviously I can break down my individual ethnicities and ancestry and say, “I’m this, this, this, and this.” I’m not denying any part of my background.
But I don’t think I will ever look at myself and say I am exclusively one race when my actual family tree says otherwise.
And I think that’s what throws me off when people say things like, “No, that person is BLACK. Period.” about someone with, for example, a Black parent and a white parent.
They absolutely can identify as Black. I’m not arguing that they can’t. They may have been raised in Black culture, be perceived as Black, and feel much more connected to that side of themselves.
But they’re still mixed. Their white parent didn’t disappear from their ancestry just because they identify more strongly with their Black side.
To me, **mixed is mixed.** It doesn’t mean you’re rejecting either side. It means both sides are literally part of you.
Am I looking at this too literally? Do other mixed/multiracial people feel the same way, or do you consider yourself primarily one race despite having parents from different racial backgrounds?

I’ve seen a few videos saying this and it genuinely feels like a micro-aggression. As someone who grew up with a white mum I understand I probably haven’t had the same experiences as someone with the opposite but why does that make me less”black”.

I visit my black side of the family a lot and love my Jamaican culture, but when I also express how I love my English/Irish culture and heritage I get called whitewashed and told my mum is taking my true culture from me. Which is unfair to say as I don’t align with a singular culture since I know I’m both. I’m simply just happy to have such a diverse background.

Me being raised by a white woman isn’t going to change my DNA nor has it stopped any racism/colorism from BOTH white and black people. I know it’s not that serious but I do take it to heart when I’m called whitewashed especially because i hear it most from my own family.

Also for those that don’t believe mixed race people face colorism, I have been mocked by people saying I’m trying to be black by wearing braids then told I think I’m a white girl for having my hair straight. Same way people compare my skin to things like shit while others say I purposefully lighten my skin to try pass as white which I’ve never done.

I could go on forever but I just wanted to make a point.

(Sorry if there’s any spelling errors)

We live in an age now (and have been for a good decade) where we're seeing a lot interracial relationships in TV shows, movies, games, etc. And this is awesome. There are still stigmas towards interracial relationships (and by extension mixed raced people) that come from all camps. Interracial relationships have been around forever and it's great seeing more representation out there. Being a product of an interracial relationship myself (dad is African American, mom is white), this is something I'm very interested in.

However there is something that I noticed about the depictions of a certain type of interracial relationship, particularly when you have a black man and a white woman. You can point to cases in media nowadays where you'll see an interracial couple of this sort, but its not as common as it is with a black woman and a white man.

And I find it so interesting there is a lack of loving, intimate depictions between a black man and a white woman. You'll see plenty of onscreen mixed couples but how often do you see them be loving and intimate? I'm not asking for there to be a crazy 5 minute Euphoria style sex scene, I'm saying that it is rare that you see this type of pairing displayed in a healthy, intimate format.

You see this plenty when the roles are reversed, when the woman is black and the man is white; you'll see more often that the relationship is healthy and they don't stray away from intimacy, like in Bridgeton (and Im not trying to demean this when its shown in media. I think its awesome.) Not every movie has to make a point about the relationship being mixed and I do like that when there is an interracial couple on screen its mostly just treated as normal. But when the man is black and the woman is white, the relationship tends be shown as being on the rocks, abusive, distant, or problematic, and usually it seems like the black man is at fault. Take Backrooms for example. Or even Jungle Fever (even though the couple does get intimate, but they're both cheating on their partners).

Again, its great to see more and more interracial couples in media as time goes on, but the BM/WW depictions still feel like they're "otherised". I understand it's not always the case; Stranger Things didn't do this, neither did Sinners, and it felt like a breath of fresh air seeing that. But ask yourself: how many instances of interracial relationships in the (Western) mainstream space show a black man being intimate with a white woman? You see a lot of it the other way around, but why not this? Something to think about.

Earlier this year, my father was caught talking and sending gifts to other women. This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. When my mom confronted him about it (dad is white; mom is Black), he started blabbering about how he should’ve married a white woman who “shared his ideals” (he is super republican and hates people of color) and told my mom “haven’t you ever thought about marrying a Black guy?”

He’s never taken Black issues seriously. Whenever my siblings and I dealt with racist comments and micro aggressions, he just…didn’t care. He openly called certain people of color slurs because he thought it was funny and would get mad when we told him to stop.

I am currently going no contact with him, and this is just a sprinkle of some of the things he’s done. I’m sorry if this is kind of all over the place, but I needed to get it off my chest. I know I made the right decision cutting him off, but I’ve had family members tell me that I’ll “probably regret it later” and that I “shouldn’t say things I’ll regret.” I’m just tired of it all, honestly.

just been fed up of years people asking me what race/ethnicity i am, worst ive gotten is "where are my people from" - my mom is black, my dad's white, I'm tan with very curly hair, most assume I am hispanic.

I just started this job, a black co-worker that I don't even know the name of and haven't interacted with previously came up and said "So are you mixed race or hispanic or both or what", I said "Yeah sure." and he said "yeah both or which one" and I said "yeah sure whatever you want to believe" and he said "so which is it." I told him he shouldn't be asking people's ethnicities at work and he shut up after that!

Always black people asking me what race/ethnicity i am too. Mexicans do it too I guess by automatically trying to speak Spanish to me as If I'm going to understand. A white person would never ask only because they understand how that's going to look on their part! It infuriates me how being not white, people suddenly think they get a pass to question total strangers on what "race" they are. I hate this country.

If you don't say you're half-Black, they'll think you're Mexican, Arab, or even Filipino. I find African Americans to be the most ignorant when it comes to identifying phenotypes.

https://preview.redd.it/jy8ks5rk35kh1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b7ac0262585ba11e7722bbf28635b78142d0c73

They said it was for people who were X. I’m half X. Feeling really down.

for context: my father is white, my mother is southeast asian and i am mixed race (asian and white). I have mixed features but i look more like my mother/asian side and get mistaken for just asian most of the time.

also for context: my parents had a messy divorce in the previous years.

I honestly don’t really know what to make of this experience and how to feel about this. Me, my sister, father and his parents were out in public having drinks and we were talking about my plans to move to a bigger city than the city i currently live in for university- which is a small city by the coast in the country we live in. My sister, father and his parents all live in a rural area of the countryside which is where i grew up and i hated it. Being the only mixed race poc in my small town, going to a predominantly white school with maybe five other poc kids in the entire school was not a fun experience growing up. There was a lot of racially motivated bullying and harassment, especially during covid. There was even an instance where i was physically assaulted by two people who had issue with me because of my race, because i was “dirty”.

My father disapproved of my plans for the future and his reasoning and response was along the lines of “cities just aren’t safe. you’re a vulnerable white woman and cities are full of so many (insert horrible words/slurs for non white people) who have taken over this country”. Reminder- i am half white, half asian, and monoracial asian passing.

By this point im used to my father being openly, loudly and publically racist (he has said some very racist things about almost every race on the planet that isn’t the white race) and i am fully aware that he did not take the divorce to my asian mother well at all. I am also transgender- ftm- and my father is aware of this and has been for the past seven years but chooses not to acknowledge it. Doesn’t surprise me, i’m used to that by now. That being said, im BAFFLED that he called me a “vulnerable white woman” when i am very clearly not white and he knows i’m not a woman and am in the process of transitioning. Like i expected him to ignore the transgender aspect but to call me white??? HE is the one who decided to marry my asian mum, move her half way across the world, and have two children with her (me and my sister). For him to call me white despite being fully informed about my heritage and having functioning, working eyes in his head… it definitely upset me, invalidated me and also stunned me. Even now i’m stunned that my own father is basically ignoring my heritage and white washing me because now that he’s divorced from his “exotic wife” i guess he hates asians or something???

He made some passive aggressive comments regarding my race in the past (e.g “the way you are sitting isn’t very english” “that’s not very english of you”) but i never imagined that he would be getting bolder and more ludicrous in this way. Is this a relatable experience for other Wasians here or is my family just straight up terrible??

CODE SWITCHING:

Merriam‑Webster: changing one’s speech or behavior to suit different social or cultural contexts; specifically, switching from one language or dialect to another.

Need an opinion on this one cuz i am genually wondering the flip might be wrong

So classic family dinner scene, around w parents uncle cousin grandparents. And we started talking about my studies (i will learn chinese at Uni) and then they start making jokes abt chin cause HOWWWW funny to jokes about them w racist slurs RIGHT ? (its ironic ofc)

Jokes like "ow u gonna eat noodles" and other racist slang used in my maternal language.

Im used to, fr, but this time it get me to a point ; i am not even chinese (im mixed black and white) but dang racism is something that could turn me into some kind of crazy looking person cause HOW IN 2026 YOU STILL RACIST ?

anyway, what shocked me the most was the fact that my mom was like "yuh, us black people have problem w identity" cause i said that if we were talking about black people, they wouldnt make those kind of jokes.

I was GASSPED LIKE BRO ?

if an asian person was around, they wouldnt say that and it makes me sick.

The racism seems like a freaking variable geometry.

And i continued by saying that if people didnt speak up, things would have never changed right ?

But yet, joking on asian is OK cause they dont says anything, at least i feel like it starts to.

But anyways, makes me sick cause my mom who is POC didnt help me, didnt stand w me and even said "do like asian, stay calm and shut up" like when something goes wrong.

Gurl ?

Like

Anyway

I just wanted to vent tbh cause i was so angry at them that i left the table. Its horrible to feel like you arent being listened, and that people makes fun of you CAUSE YOU ARE YOUNGER too.

Anyway, any tips for surviving w that ?

Pls do not insult my parents, even if they piss me off they still nice but after that convo...my mind changed abt them...

For context, I’m Caribbean. I have an Indigenous grandmother, a Black African grandmother, an Asian grandparent, and mixed-race parents. I don’t have any American Caucasian ancestry, but I look white, I have a red beard, my hair is type 3C, and I have somewhat Asian-looking eyes. In my home country, I’ve never really had any bad experiences because of how I look.

I moved to the South of the U.S. two years ago, and so far, I’ve had some really bad experiences with Black people giving me an attitude or giving me a hard time when I’m trying to help them at work or take care of whatever they need... off course, I’ve also had bad experiences with white Americans, who seem to lose their minds whenever they hear an accent and become immediately rude or harsh towards me, But the proportion of those situations is nowhere near comparable.

But I’ve noticed that I seem to get the most negative reactions from some Black customers. They’ll look at me while I’m smiling or trying to talk to them and immediately roll their eyes or purse their lips. I know I have an accent, but the fact is that most people have an accent, regardless of their skin color.

I’m someone who genuinely cares about customer service and always tries to give people a 5-star experience because I like to treat people the way I want to be treated and solve their problems and it’s really discouraging and exhausting to feel like I’m putting so much effort into helping someone only to be judged based on how I look or how I speak. I understand that Black Americans have experienced a long history of racism, but assuming that someone who looks white is automatically a white American or a racist (and treating them accordingly without even taking a moment to assess the actual interaction) its driving me crazy.

Hey there, just found this community by chance after getting back home from a trip to Birmingham. I should mention upfront that I'm not much of a traveler. The last time I went somewhere far from home was back in 2012, visiting family in Vancouver, Canada, when I was around 19 y/o. Since then, it's mostly been trips around Chile and a couple of visits to Argentina, but nothing much beyond that.

Of course, I know some of you might wonder why I "picked" Birmingham of all places, given Brits have plenty of more "touristy" spots. Truth is, I work remotely as a 3D artist for a Brum-based game studio and got invited to their bi-annual team-building event. Since I'm still the new guy, this was actually my first time at HQ, so I was excited but also pretty nervous, since I'm a bit of an introvert when it comes to big social gatherings.

Anyway, things got off to a rough start at passport control after landing from my connecting flight out of Paris-CDG, which, for context, had been smooth and pretty respectful in comparison.

Now, I know "race" is mostly a social construct these days, and how people read it depends a lot on culture, personal experience, and who's looking. As for me, I've got pretty generic features, since I come from a mixed background of Hungarian, Jewish, and Hispanic roots. Back home, people generally consider me "white", even though I don't have particularly light hair or eyes. Most assume I'm Southern European and never thought much of it until this trip, tbqh.

So, long story short: when it was my turn in the "rest of the world" line, the person at the booth, a black British guy, gave me an odd look and started firing off questions about who I was and why I was there. Some of that felt normal, since I get that they deal with a lot of people and some cause trouble, but it kept escalating until it started feeling genuinely uncomfortable. I tried to stay polite, though that wasn't easy, since the situation itself was already tense, and on top of that, with English not being my first language, my accent probably threw him off a bit too.

Eventually he stamped my passport and waved me through. I felt relieved, at least for a few secs, until I got stopped right as I was about to leave the airport, this time by a white, blond guy in a suit who looked like an immigration officer.

I told him my passport had already been checked, but he seemed suspicious anyway, even though I hadn't done or said anything to justify it. What really got me was that he didn't even glance at where I was from, since he went straight for my ID photo instead. After another round of questions, similar to the first, he asked if I was Turkish and whether I'd just landed from a Turkish Airlines flight, which made zero sense, since my boarding pass clearly said I'd flown in from France via Air France. I was speechless, because the bare minimum would've been to actually read the documents before grilling someone.

It was pretty obvious what triggered it: dark beard, dark hair, and coming straight out of the "rest of the world" line meant, in his head, that I wasn't European, so not white, and therefore some kind of threat or unwanted visitor.

I took a breath, explained I was Chilean, not Turkish, and that I was there for a work event. I asked him for a minute, pulled up the work emails on my phone with the event details, and just handed it over so he could read it himself, since I was too rattled to explain everything again, especially with the racial undertone hanging over the whole thing.

A few seconds of awkward silence later, he handed my phone back, apologized, and let me go.

Obviously, that left a pretty bad taste, since nothing like it had ever happened to me before. Once I got to the hotel and started talking to people, I realized not everyone here is like that, and it was probably more of a one-off, tied to the local climate rather than the norm. Still, it was awful, and I wasn't at all prepared for something like that.

(Context: I watched a yt video by Antonio Speaks where he basically said he was against interracial couples/marriages because it's always done out of self hate and I just feel gross and sad now.)

I'm just so fucking tired honestly. Like I love both of my heritages, they are like my children. Yeah I mean it's hard having to deal with the worry that I was born because my dad hated himself, but it's worse when people say that there's no ethical way/reason for two races to be with each other. Like we're two different species that have nothing in common.

I love all of my ancestry, I would never want to pit one against the other.

Plus there was this point made by him that people who are mixed (black/white) always go for white people and then eventually make their kids even whiter than they are which is a huge generalization and probably isn't true. Like we can only love white people because we're just a product of racism and should be avoided.

I am writing this out of frustration because I feel like my brother is more family with my own family than me because he looks more like that side of the family. I am only a quarter black I know that doesn’t count , but it gave my brother skin 4 shades darker than me and curls , I am pasty with straight hair , I am the lightest amongst my cousins I think and sometimes I envy my brother because he has brotherhood with black boys and I can never have girlhood with black girls even though I have friends , they don’t and won’t ever see me as black and I really get it , but it’s something I just wish deep down I guess. I also am very big on BLM and I feel like an outsider to that too. Idk if anyone can relate.
I am sorry if I offend , it’s not at all my intention and I know I have privilege.
I just wanted to vent , I hope I don’t offend anyone.