In this clip, listen to mixed race students describe their experiences navigating their mixed identity in a world that constantly wants to figure them out or force them to choose only one. They talk about dealing with people asking probing questions (‘what are you?’), having to only select one racial category when filling out forms, being written off as just one race based on how they look or wear their hair, etc.
I’ve definitely started to think of my racial identity not as so binary but sort of like… a spectrum. But I mean even on that spectrum I stay on one place sort of in the middle.
Throughout this conversation, these students push and question the boundaries of ethnicity and identity that the world has set. They deal with labels and categorization based on how race and ethnicity are learned.
The thing about people saying, ‘that’s so white,’ it’s like, what makes it ‘so white’? What is white about it? What I do is what I do. And it gets under my skin…
