When I tell people that I’m multiracial, I get a variety of questions.
“What countries are your parents from?” “How many races are you a mix of?” “What ethnicities do you identify yourself with?”
These questions almost never bother me, as they are inquiring about my cultures, my lifestyle, and the qualities that make me the person I am today. Sometimes, though, as they get more used to my mixed heritage, the microaggressions arise.
“You can say two different slurs, right?”
“If you could pick one of your races for the rest of your life, which would it be?”
“Which side of yourself do you feel more connected to?”
I usually brush off these questions and answer them the way I always do: “I don’t have a ‘preference’. I feel 50 percent White and 50 percent Asian, just the way I was born.” While it’s easy for me to answer these kinds of questions and stand up for myself when the jokes go too far, there are many multiracial individuals out there who do not feel the same way. It’s hard for them to figure out their identities, and the pressure society puts on them to “choose a side” is not making it any easier for them to exist in today’s society.
Being multiracial is all about identity and what a person feels comfortable calling themselves when the common question of “What’s your race?” comes up. For me, it’s simple: I’m half Asian, half White. There is really no other option for me. This is the way I feel. For many multiracial people out there, however, this question triggers feelings of confusion, anxiety, and self-hatred. Why is this still the case, even after the dramatic 276% increase of interracial peoples in the span of a decade? Here are three main reasons, if not more, as to how society makes it difficult for some members of the interracial community to peacefully exist in today’s world.
Stereotypes and microaggressions
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “stereotype” as “a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not true in reality.” Stereotypes threaten individuals by causing anxiety from the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about their group. Just as these assumptions harm people of one race, they also affect mixed race individuals by pressuring them while they are in the process of figuring out their identities.
A 2019 Northwestern University study found evidence that there are some stereotypes that seem to be universally applied to biracial groups in the U.S. “We found that biracial individuals tend to be stereotyped as not fitting in or belonging,” said Sylvia Perry, co-lead author of the study and Assistant Professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. “Because they represent a mixture of two racial groups, people perceive that they do not really belong in either racial group.”
Unfortunately, the stereotype that mixed race individuals do not “belong” to any of these racial groups influences multiracial people to believe that they are supposed to choose one side of them only. Identity is about discovering who you are without the demands and thoughts of outside opinions who assume things about you that are not true. Multiracial identities are hard enough to figure out on their own, and certainly are not made easier by others planting stereotypes and misconceptions in their heads.
However, it’s not just biracial individuals that are being constantly stereotyped. It’s multiracial couples as well. One of the most common thoughts and stereotypes associated with interracial couples would be a “betrayal” of their own race.
Maria Iankilevitch and Alison L Chasteen, researchers at The National Library of Medicine, conducted an experiment to determine the perceptions of interracial couples compared to same-race couples. Disloyalty was considered a very common assumption when it came to interracial couples.
“Partner effects occurred for specific stereotypes relevant for intergroup behaviors such that individuals in mixed-race couples were rated as more likely to betray loved ones,” the researchers explained. “[They were also expected] to be less conforming and prejudiced than individuals in same-race couples when viewed with their partners.”
Love should be enjoyed by individuals in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Indicating there is deception and faithlessness in a loving relationship because of the pairs’ skin colors is extremely discouraging and disheartening to the couple. Multiracial relationships should have the ability to enjoy their relationship without this type of judgement from the outside world, just as same-race couples do.
These stereotypes against multiracial relationships could make multiracial individuals feel like an outsider within their own community. This once again causes biracial individuals to feel as though others are choosing their identities for them, robbing them of the opportunity to discover their identities themselves.
Clichés about mixed individuals and relationships can affect them just as much as it affects monoracial individuals and groups. Unfortunately, these incorrect assumptions spread like wildfire, on social media. Most individuals online easily believe whatever they see and hear, which allows misconceptions to spread quickly and harm multiracial individuals in the challenging process of figuring out their identities.
Not enough proper representation in the media and the real world
According to the U.S. census, the biracial population increased from 9 million people in 2010, to 33.8 million people in 2020. That’s almost triple the amount in the span of one decade. If this is the case, how come the real world and today’s entertainment is still failing to properly represent multiracial backgrounds and individuals? Where is there room for improvement in what we perceive online and through the screen?
There are many forms of entertainment out there that accurately paint a positive light on the daily experiences having multiple ethnic backgrounds. Examples include TV shows like Mixed-ish, a 2 season drama about a half Black- half White teenager figuring out her racial identity, or movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, where the main character (Miles Morales) is Afro-Latino. However, much of the mainstream media made in the United States invokes challenges and pressure for multiracial individuals while identifying themselves.
Ginny and Georgia, a Netflix series in which a free-spirited mother and her mature teenage daughter navigate love, secrets, and drama in a new town while confronting their troubled past, is emblematic of this representation problem The teenage daughter, Ginny, identifies as biracial, while her mother Georgia is White, and her father, Zion, is Black.
Throughout the show, she struggles with her racial identity and experiences challenges related to being mixed-race in predominantly white spaces. However, the show itself does a poor job of properly highlighting these struggles. Ginny and Georgia also makes it extremely difficult for interracial people to figure out identities. An infamous scene from the show would be in season 1, episode 8, when the only two characters representing multiracial identities get into a dispute about which one is “more White,” as they each have one White parent. While the scene was considered extremely cringy and ridiculous by many individuals across the internet, the scene has somewhat of a deeper impact on the interracial community and how it can affect their journey towards figuring out their racial identities.
The show is sustaining the notion that mixed people will try to weaponize being White to invalidate others, which is a horrible message to send and a terrible representation of mixed people. This can be challenging by individuals that used to relate to characters like them, indicating that one side of them has to be disrespected.
There are many shows out there that don’t explicitly bring down biracial identities as much as Ginny and Georgia does. But there are many shows out there that erase multiracial identities implicitly. Examples of these are frequently shown in shows that kids watch, such as K.C. Undercover, where half White-half Black actress Zendaya plays a teen spy in a secret organization… with fully Black parents. This erases crucial factors that make up Zendaya’s cultural and racial identity, indicating that other multiracial people discovering their own racial identities are pressured into ignoring a part of themselves as if it’s unimportant in the process. “As a light-skinned black woman it’s important that I’m using my privilege, my platform, to show you how much beauty there is in [my] community,” she mentions at the Beautycon festival in 2018.
The number of multiracial celebrities being represented in the world have also increased. Figures such as Dwayne Johnson, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kamala Harris have spoken out about their multiracial identities. However, multiracial icons in the real world still tend to be misrepresented and even put down upon by other figures in the media. One example of this is displayed in an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in July 2024, in which President Donald Trump accused presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, of deciding to “turn Black.” Aimed at discrediting Harris and others like her, remarks such as these from powerful figures like Donald Trump can leave a lasting impact on the members of the multiracial community trying to live comfortably without being constantly misrepresented and judged.
These examples of influence from the media on multiracial communities is called monoracism, which is a viewpoint that insists people only have one racial identity, as a means to oppress multiracial people. While this is occurring in everyday communities, it frequently happens in the media among some of the most influential figures of our century, which has a bigger impact on multiracial communities.
Hate crimes throughout history
The U.S. Department of Justice defines a hate crime as “a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.” In these horrific cases, these hate crimes are targeted towards race, as multiracial relationships and people were seen as unstable… a threat to the community–especially after the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case, which invoked a major change that had occurred regarding interracial relationships.
The Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which struck down state laws banning interracial marriage, was one of the first major changes in history towards a better future for interracial couples and multiracial individuals alike. However, even after this monumental change, there were still major hate crimes and events instilling fear in the community, making them feel unsafe in their own identity and self.
In March 2017, a White man fatally stabbed a 66-year-old Black man in New York City, telling the Daily News that it was simply his “practice run” in a mission to reduce the number of as many interracial relationships as possible. The culprit turned himself in at the police station after seeing his photo on the news. In August 2016, another White man walked up to an interracial couple without speaking, stabbed the man in the abdomen and knifed his girlfriend. The victims survived and the offender was arrested.
These tragic events occurring in the interracial community leave a lasting impact on how multiracial individuals see themselves as people. The hatred and aggression of others, no matter how extreme, can lead to self-hatred, simply because of their ancestry and who they are as a person. Hatred and negativity from others makes it difficult to figure out one’s identity, but hatred from one’s self makes it impossible.
What can be done?
While individuals from the everyday community and the media can negatively impact multiracial individuals shaping their identity, they can also support this long and, sometimes daunting, process. Supportive communities, doing research to find proper representation in media, and open conversations about identity can help them feel validated. Multiracial individuals can shape their identity by embracing all aspects of their heritage and resisting pressure to conform to a single label.
Being multiracial is all about identity and what a person feels comfortable calling themselves when the common question of “What’s your race?” comes up.