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HANDOUTS Exploring White-Presenting Mixed Race Identity_ Presentation, Authenticity, and Resisting Expectations in Working with System-involved Families

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What the Respect for Marriage Act does and doesn’t do

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The Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), signed by Biden on Tuesday, requires states to recognize lawfully performed same-sex and interracial marriages

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'We're talking about a big, powerful phenomenon': Multiracial Americans drive change

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'We're talking about a big, powerful phenomenon': Multiracial Americans drive change

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Please note that there is an impact on Multiracial people to 'change americas racist past'

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Luna is biracial, Filipino and White, a combination that defined his upbringing and sense of self. He has always felt he was either both identities, equally - or in some settings, not fully one or the other.

"I felt like it was a false choice, because you're saying which one are you more comfortable with, your mom or your dad?" Luna, 49, said. "Identity can be based on how people see you, but that can be wrong for mixed people. It's really based on how you identify, what your experiences are - so many variables go into that."

More than 33 million Americans - about 1 in 10 - identify as being of two or more races, a number that grew by nearly 25 million people in the past decade, according to the 2020 Census. Multiracial people span all different combinations of races and ethnicities and make up the fastest-growing demographic in the country.

In some cities, the growth is stark. Almost 1.4 million more people each in Los Angeles and New York identified as multiracial in the 2020 Census compared with a decade ago, according to a Washington Post analysis. In Miami, nearly 1.6 million more did so.

"The mixing of all sorts [of races] is really a new force in 21st-century America," said Richard Alba, a demographer and professor of sociology at the City University of New York. "We're talking about a big, powerful phenomenon."

In a country that has been racked by racial strife since nearly its beginning, Americans who embody two or more racial identities that are often perceived as being at odds with each other are seen by some as a symbol of hope for a future of racial harmony.

"You're seeing the future of America right now," said Luna, of Quakertown, Pa. "The more immigration, the more people become broad-minded, you'll see more children and we won't all look a certain way. It does give me hope for the future, and even for the present, that more and more people are mixing together like my family."

But social scientists say such optimism may be premature, arguing that the growth in the number of multiracial Americans will not be enough to topple the institutional racism that dates back to the nation's founding, and that such symbolism has the danger of promoting false notions of a post-racial America as its multiracial population grows.

"It's hard to predict what this [growth] is going to do. I do not believe it's going to make our society more racially tolerant," said Reginald Daniel, a University of California at Santa Barbara sociology professor who identifies as multiracial, but is often perceived as Black. "But it is going to require a remaking of the way people think about race and the racial boundaries in our communities."

Just what that remaking of race will look like, however, is unclear. Part of the answer lies in the reasons behind the increase in those who identify as multiracial.

There are a growing number of interracial couples in the United States as a result of the increase in immigrant populations, the legalization of interracial marriage and acceptance of interracial relationships, and technological advancements that make it easier for people to connect with those outside their communities. These couples' children and grandchildren are leading the way for the multiracial population.

Census forms and coding have also been changed to capture more detail in responses to the race question and better identify multiracial people, according to Census Bureau officials. A growing number of people have also recognized that they could select more than one racial category.

Some people are identifying with multiple races for the first time after learning of their heritage through the proliferation of at-home DNA tests or ethnic studies courses that shine a light on their origins - an interpretation of race based on one's lineage, with which some scholars take issue.

And as social scientists lean in to study this growing group with renewed interest, multiracial Americans like Luna are grappling with how to have more than one identity in a racially divided country - and finding a new voice as they grow in numbers.

"This is a newly developing phenomenon, so everything we talk about has no precedent," Daniel said. "We're trying to figure out how to navigate this, how to study this."

Susan Graham, 70, identified as White until she took one of the popular DNA tests a few years ago. According to the results, she was 97 percent Ashkenazi Jewish - and 3 percent Black and Asian, she said.

Graham, who founded an organization to advocate for biracial children like hers - her husband is Black - marked all three races on the census, and now identifies as multiracial, not White.

"If anybody asks me, 'Are you multiracial?' I would have to say yes, I'm multiracial," said Graham, of Los Banos, Calif.

The popularity and ease of at-home DNA tests have led to a problematic conflation of genes and heritage with race, sociologists said. This has contributed to an unknown number of people marking multiple races on the census, despite having grown up identifying as one race, being perceived as that race and living in a culture that reflects that race.

"To say that translates to somebody identifying as White, Black and Asian because their genetic ancestry points to those places on the globe is just really wild and super problematic," said Nitasha Tamar Sharma, a professor of Asian American and African American studies at Northwestern University. "I find this to be in some cases a really racist role of peak Whiteness."

Sharma, who is multiracial, said if DNA testing is leading to more White people claiming non-White identities, that "makes it difficult to uplift and advance causes of historically marginalized groups." It also reifies race as if it were genetic, when race is a social category based on culture, physical characteristics and a variety of other factors, she said.

It's unknown how many people in the census who newly identified as multiracial are like Graham. But there is this: Though the number of non-Hispanic White people in the United States declined for the first time by 5 million - a widely reported figure - there was an increase of 7 million people who identified as both non-Hispanic White and another race, and are thus considered multiracial.

Sharma and other experts also said the country could be seeing a general cultural shift away from Whiteness amid the racial reckoning by a group of Americans who may no longer feel comfortable with an identity that has been associated with racism and the rise of far-right politics.

Graham founded Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) in 1991 with another White mother out of concern for their biracial children. It was the decade of multiculturalism, when racial affinity groups at universities exploded in number and America was touting its diversity, Sharma said.

There was a push in the 1990s for the census to include multiracial people, but exactly how to include them was controversial. Graham and Project RACE advocated for a "multiracial" checkbox. This was opposed by the National Urban League and similar organizations, which argued that adding a single multiracial checkbox to the census would siphon off numbers - and therefore, funding and political representation - from marginalized groups.

A single checkbox also would make it difficult to analyze what racial combinations made up the multiracial population. In the end, the Census Bureau chose not to include a multiracial box and instead allowed people to check two or more races for the first time in the 2000 Census.

Graham said she did not see a problem with claiming a multiracial identity, despite being 97 percent White, and still advocates for a single multiracial checkbox.

"Being multiracial is a full person. When I start to break it down to White, Latino, Asian, whatever - it's like taking parts of a person and building another person," she said. "What we're saying is we exist as a multiracial person. And that's why we want to be recognized as multiracial, not as two or more races."

For more than 30 years, Desirée Boyer's ethnicity was Hispanic, and her race was White. It was how her mother identified her on the census, and it was how she filled out school, work and other forms. Hispanic is considered an ethnicity, not a race, and is listed as a separate question on the census and on many institutional forms.

But a few years ago, Boyer took a Mexican American studies class at a San Antonio community college that changed her sense of self-identification. She learned that her family - which had lived on Texas land for decades, and had uttered the refrain "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us" through the generations - was technically Indigenous to the area.

Suddenly, things started to make sense: the corn-based traditional food like tortillas and tamales, her brown skin, the fact that her family was Hispanic, but not immigrants.

"That's where I started connecting, 'Wow, we're more than what they tell us,'" she said. "We are actually Indigenous, we are part of this land, we have these traditions and things that go so far back - why we don't think about it, why we don't go that far back in our history, is a shame," said Boyer, 34.

So on the 2020 Census, Boyer marked White, in homage to her European ancestors, and American Indian, for her Indigenous ones, on the latest census. For her, marking Native American was both an act of reclaiming her Indigenous heritage and pushing back against the forces that had long told her Mexican American family to act White and assimilate to White culture.

In U.S. history, Latinos have traditionally marked themselves as White to avoid segregation and other forms of discrimination, said Juan Tejeda, a retired Mexican American studies professor at Palo Alto College, the community college where Boyer took the ethnic studies class. He said the growth of multiracial Latinos represents a rising awareness of many Latinos' inherent multiracialism as part European, part Indigenous and sometimes part Black.

But Sharma said one's lineage as Indigenous does not translate to belonging to the Native American racial group, and so people discovering such lineage should not necessarily mark it on the census without sharing culture, community and other indicators of racial identity with Native Americans.

"The stakes for Indigenous people are so high. It feels like another form of erasure," Sharma said. "I don't think race can be put on and taken off. If one thinks one can do that, that shows one has not taken enough ethnic studies classes."

"I think it's complicated, though. Another professor might say they can do whatever they want," Sharma added. "I think it comes with an ethical commitment to community."

Luis Urrieta Jr. was born in Los Angeles, but he and his family are descendants of an Indigenous community in Michoacán, Mexico. On the census, he checked "Hispanic" and specified Mexican American on the ethnicity question, and checked "Some Other Race" for the race question and wrote in P'urhépecha, the name of his Indigenous group.

He said he did not check the Native American box because that racial category is "tied to a very particular experience and very particular political relationship that U.S. tribal communities have had to the United States historically" - which he does not share. "Their issues and their causes for tribal sovereignty and nation-to-nation diplomacy are very particular. And I have deep respect for that," said Urrieta, a professor of cultural studies in education at the University of Texas at Austin.

American University professor Elizabeth Rule said assuming an Indigenous identity after having not lived your life as such is an issue, but not her biggest worry. The larger concern when it comes to the census is the undercounting of Indigenous people. And she said there is no easy answer regarding Latinos who have varying degrees of connection to Indigenous groups and whose cultural traditions themselves have Indigenous origins.

"Even within the Indigenous community there is tremendous diversity," said Rule, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a professor of critical race, gender and culture studies. "We have people who are American Indian who are White-passing. We have people who are American Indian who are Black. And ... this sizable Latino population that now is also understanding their Indigenous roots and reflecting that in a document like the census. What's really important is that we understand the usefulness, but also the limitations, of this census tool."

Latinos in particular often find the census confusing because there is no racial category for them - which some advocates say is its own kind of erasure.

Latinos accounted for 17 million of the nearly 25 million more people who identified as multiracial on the 2020 Census. That means 17 million more people who marked their ethnicity as "Latino" also marked two or more races for the race question. Many of them chose "Some Other Race," which some experts viewed as representing a need for a Latino racial category. The number of Latinos who identified as multiracial increased from 3 million in 2010 to more than 20 million in 2020, according to the census.

Census officials, however, cautioned against using such comparisons, particularly for multiracial and Latino respondents. The agency stated on its website that combining the question of Latino ethnicity into the race question on its survey would provide more clarity on both the Latino and multiracial figures.

Boyer said she wouldn't join a tribe or profess to be culturally Native American. But embracing her native heritage on forms made her feel as if she was embracing the full complexity of her identity as a Mexican American in South Texas.

"I feel more confident in knowing more about what makes me Latino, what makes me mestizo," or mixed, Boyer said. "I'm happy I finally know more about that, and I hope other Latinos will learn more, too."

Multiracial Americans span the spectrum of skin colors, racial combinations, cultures, traditions. Yet they grapple with similar challenges that arise specifically from being at the intersection of two or more races. "What are you?" is a common question many multiracial Americans said they are expected to answer - and tire of answering.

"[It] is a coded question of, 'What is your status? How am I supposed to interact with you? Where do you fit in the racial hierarchy so I can determine how to interact with you?'" said Wei Ming Dariotis, a San Francisco State University professor who focuses on critical mixed race studies. "And that's why mixed-race people make people feel so uncomfortable, because they don't know how they fit in."

She said sometimes when she responds that she is part Chinese and part Greek, people respond: "Wow, what a great mix!"

"I always wondered, 'Is there a mix that you would think is not great?'" Dariotis said. "'You have the best of both worlds' is just the flip side of 'You have the worst of both worlds.'"

Pennsylvania resident Sherry Ornitz, who is part Dominican and part Eastern European, said she often feels she is never Black enough, White enough or Hispanic enough to fit in.

"People need an easy, clear compartmentalized view of the world. That's what they normally have," said Ornitz, 47. "Because I don't fit a stereotype, because I don't fit an easy, compartmentalized ideology, a cognitive construct they were taught - I'm a threat."

Multiple people said their multiracial identity has at times put them at odds with people of color, who perceive them as moving away from their non-White identity and betraying the community.

Daniel recalled a job applicant asking him what it was like being a Black professor at UCSB. Daniel quickly rebuffed her, saying he had no clue. Though Daniel looks Black, and said he would be treated that way if he were behind the wheel of a car and stopped by police, he does not identify that way.

"What she wanted me to do was say I was a Black person - and certainly that's part of my experience," he said. "But that's not a complete component of my identity. And it's taken years, decades for people to even grapple with that possibility," he said.

But several multiracial Americans interviewed also said they've found a larger and stronger community of people like them in recent years that has given them more confidence to speak out about the obstacles they face and hope for what their role could play in the future of the country.

Their presence could "lead to moments in which racial stereotypes and people's expectations are disrupted," Sharma, the Northwestern professor, acknowledged. It won't make systemic, structural change, she said, but it's not nothing.

Multiracial people also often have a unique set of cultural competency tools that may come in handy while navigating an increasingly multicultural nation.

Steve Majors, 55, is biracial - Black and White. He has lighter skin and is often perceived as White. But he grew up in an all-Black household - he never knew his White biological father - and was raised by his Black mother and stepfather, with Black siblings.

He said his ability to navigate within both communities has given him "a sense of responsibility to be aware of the privilege that some people afford me, to be aware of how I might use the platforms that I have to speak out on issues of race, culture and identity."

Majors said that the growing presence of people like him bodes well for the future.

"Our very existence is not going to undo years of oppression and discrimination," he said. "But I hope over time it does create opportunities for people to see we are more alike than we are different, that we have more things in common with each other than we have differences between us."

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'We're talking about a big, powerful phenomenon': Multiracial Americans drive change

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Luna is biracial, Filipino and White, a combination that defined his upbringing and sense of self. He has always felt he was either both identities, equally - or in some settings, not fully one or the other. "I felt like it was a false choice, because you're saying which one are you more comfortable with, your mom or your dad?"

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Interracial marriages to get added protection under new law

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Interracial marriages to get added protection under new law

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - One day in the 1970s, Paul Fleisher and his wife were walking through a department store parking lot when they noticed a group of people looking at them. Fleisher, who is white, and his wife, who is Black, were used to "the look." But this time it was more intense.

"There was this white family who was just staring at us, just staring holes in us," Fleisher recalled.

That fraught moment occurred even though any legal uncertainty about the validity of interracial marriage had ended a decade earlier - in 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning marriages between people of different races.

In the more than half-century since, interracial marriage has become more common and far more accepted. So Fleisher was surprised that Congress felt the need to include an additional protection in the Respect for Marriage Act, which was given final approval in a House vote Thursday. It ensures that not only same-sex marriages, but also interracial marriages, are enshrined in federal law.

The 74-year-old Fleisher, a retired teacher and children's book author, attended segregated public schools in the 1950s in the then-Jim Crow South, and later saw what he called "token desegregation" in high school, when four Black students were in his senior class of about 400 students.

He and his wife, Debra Sims Fleisher, 73, live outside Richmond, about 50 miles from Caroline County, where Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were arrested and charged in 1958 with marrying out of state and returning to Virginia, where interracial marriage was illegal. Their challenge to the law led to Loving v. Virginia, the landmark ruling that ended bans against interracial marriages.

The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate l ast week, had been picking up steam since June, when the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion. That ruling included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested the high court should review other precedent-setting rulings, including the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

While much of the attention has been focused on protections for same-sex marriages, interracial couples say they are glad Congress also included protections for their marriages, even though their right to marry was well-established decades ago.

"It's a little unnerving that these things where we made such obvious progress are now being challenged or that we feel we have to really beef up the bulwark to keep them in place," said Ana Edwards, a historian who lives in Richmond.

Edwards, 62, who is Black, and her husband, Phil Wilayto, 73, who is white, have been married since 2006. Both have been community activists for years and said they didn't consider interracial marriage a potentially vulnerable institution until the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion.

"That reminds all of us that whatever rights we have in this society are conditional - they can be taken away," said Wilayto. "The fact that Congress had to take up this issue in 2022 should be a stark reminder of that fact for us."

For younger interracial couples, the thought that their right to marry could ever be threatened is a foreign concept.

"We never in our wildest dreams thought we would need to be protected as an interracial couple," said Derek Mize, a 42-year-old white attorney who lives in an Atlanta suburb with his husband, Jonathan Gregg, 41, who is Black, and their two children.

As a same-sex couple, they were at the forefront of the long struggle for acceptance and felt the elation that followed the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country.

Still, they see the need for new protections for interracial marriages as well.

"We're really relieved that there is this law," Mize said. "Protections through the courts and protections through the legislation certainly helps us sleep better at night."

Mize said he remembers studying Loving v. Virginia in law school and thought then that it was "ridiculous" that there had to be litigation over marriages between people of different races. But after he read the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, he said: "Who knows where it will stop?"

Gregg, a management consultant, said he sees the Respect for Marriage Act as "an added level of safety" for same-sex and interracial marriages - a federal law and Supreme Court rulings supporting their right to marry.

"You've got two ways to be OK," he said. "They have to take down both of them in order for your marriage to fall apart."

Angelo Villagomez, a 44-year-old senior fellow at the think tank Center for American Progress, said it was "unthinkable" that his marriage could become illegal. Villagomez, who is of mixed white and Indigenous Mariana Islands descent, and his wife, Eden Villagomez, 38, who is Filipina, live in Washington, D.C.

But after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, "it feels like some of those things that have just been taken for granted ... are under threat," said Villagomez, whose parents, also a mixed-race couple, were married in the 1970s, not long after the Loving decision.

Villagomez worries about what could come next. "If we don't put a stop to some of this backsliding, this country is gonna go to a very dark place," he said.

"I'm worried about what else is on the chopping block."

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Associated Press reporter Claire Savage contributed to this report from Chicago.

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Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Interracial marriages to get added protection under new law

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - One day in the 1970s, Paul Fleisher and his wife were walking through a department store parking lot when they noticed a group of people looking at them. Fleisher, who is white, and his wife, who is Black, were used to "the look."

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What is the Hays Code

Origins of the Hays Code

The Hays Code is not as simple as a few rules that filmmakers had to follow, though it was definitely that, too. But before digging into its origins and historical context, let's provide a definition.

HAYS CODE DEFINITION

What is the Hays Code?

The Hays Code is a set of rules and guidelines that Hollywood films were made to follow between the early 1930s and late 1960s. Officially named the Motion Picture Production Code, these were a set of moral guidelines and rules that were meant to make Hollywood pictures "presentable" and "safe" for the public at large, which meant not covering or featuring certain controversial topics, themes, or actions.

Hays Code examples include:

Keeping Catholic and family values

No sexually explicit content

Good guys always win, bad guys always lose

Nothing that promotes "bad values" or "perversion"

No swearing and saying offensive things

The Hays Code got its popular nickname from Will H. Hays, a Presbyterian elder who was made president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), who set up the Motion Picture Production Code and its guidelines.

Hays was brought to Hollywood because their image was not too pretty in the 1920s. Serious scandals in Hollywood and concerns from people across the nation was making the pre Hays Code movies look bad. States were setting up their own censorship guidelines, and Hollywood was very worried about the US government getting involved.

The video below covers not just the Hays Production Code but also censorship in general in Hollywood.

What is the Hays Code * Hollywood Censorship

So while Pre-Code Hollywood was making pre Hays Code movies that covered sex and violence, they were also thinking it was best to self-censor so that they could hopefully prevent anyone else from intervening. In this way, they would have a nationwide rulebook that would cover all their bases and, hopefully, offend no one (especially the Hays office).

By the way, in case you were wondering where the First Amendment was during all this, it had been decided in a 1915 court case that free speech did not cover motion pictures because they were seen solely as a business and not an art form.

Hays Office Movies

The Hays Code in action

The MPPDA had set up its rules of "Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls" in 1927, a set of guidelines that, among other things, said movies could not include "Pointed profanity," "Miscegenation" (that's relations between races), "Ridicule of the clergy," and "Willful offense to any nation, race or creed."

These "Don'ts" were then supplemented by the "Be Carefuls" that included "The use of firearms," "Sympathy for criminals," "Man and woman in bed together," "The use of drugs," and "Excessive or lustful kissing." These "rules" were the basis for what would officially be the Hays Code a few years later.

Hays Code 1934

1929 saw Catholic layman Martin Quigley and Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord got involved to revise and solidify the Code, along with seeking the approval of the studios a year later. Studios were not exactly thrilled about the Code, but better to self-censor themselves than have the government step in.

You can get a better idea of how the Catholic church effectively helped put its values to the forefront with the Motion Picture Production Code by watching the video below.

What is the Hays Code * Cinema and Catholicism

All of this didn't stop trade magazines and filmmakers from balking at the Code, and movies full of sex and violence kept being made. After all, these enforcers couldn't possibly read every script or watch every movie and expect the filmmakers to abide by their silly rules.

Enter the Production Code Administration (PCA), created in 1934 and headed by Joseph I. Breen (another Catholic layman), who helped make it a requirement that all movies produced in Hollywood be given a stamp of approval by the PCA prior to release.

From then on out, studios and filmmakers had to abide by the rules, especially since the PCA now made it more of a requirement than ever before.

Hays Code 1934 * MPPDA Seal of Approval

For the next couple decades, the Hays Production Code was a way of life for Hollywood (but not for movies made outside of Hollywood, which weren't getting widely distributed anyway). Thankfully the Hollywood Production Code didn't stop filmmakers from making great movies, as plenty of classics came out between 1934 and the 1960s.

In some cases, like Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Outlaw (1943), filmmakers challenged the PCA to retain certain elements of their movies.

Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biography, The Aviator (2004), actually covers the situation involving The Outlaw, since Hughes was the movie's writer-director. You can see in the clip below the film's dramatization of how Hughes fought to convince for approval.

What is the Hays Code * Hughes vs Breen

In other cases, like Casablanca (1942), it is said that the Hollywood Production Code actually helped make the movie better. Instead of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) ending up together (which would be adulterous), he sends her away, resulting in the classic scene below.

What is the Hays Code * Casablanca

The PCA also did not allow anti-Nazi films to proliferate at first, since that would go against the whole "don't make other countries look bad" rule. The irony, of course, was that, when it became clear how terrible the Nazis were, the US government actually commissioned Hollywood to make anti-Nazi propaganda and war films.

Hays Office Ends

The Hays Production Code demise

As you may have guessed, the Motion Picture Production Code was not built to last. The 1950s brought the first signs of its demise in the form of court cases and new foreign movies that were not bossed around by the PCA.

1948 saw the Supreme Court disband movie studio ownership of movie theaters, which then allowed foreign films of all types to be screened in the USA. 1952 also saw the Supreme Court overruling its previous decision regarding movies as a business, permitting them to now be seen as art by granting them First Amendment rights.

Some of these foreign films included classics from the Italian Neorealism movement, while the later French New Wave would also make its presence known in North America. These films featured more risque subject matter and helped give Hollywood peace of mind about government intervention, thus weakening the Film Production Code.

The Hollywood Production Code itself got revised in the mid-'50s, allowing films such as Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and (1960) to be released mostly as the directors intended. Anatomy's director, Otto Preminger, in particular was fond of covering subject matter the Code would have prohibited prior to the 1950s, such as drug addiction in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), which was critically acclaimed and nominated for three Oscars.

The Man with the Golden Arm directed by Otto Preminger

If any movie proved that the Hays Code was no longer relevant or something to fear, it was Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959). Featuring men in drag, murder, booze, and Marilyn Monroe, the film was actually not approved by the PCA. But of course that didn't matter because the film went on to be a huge success and is seen as a comedic classic today.

As the 1960s rolled on, the old Hays Code was basically a joke that no one followed. Times were changing, and what was once seen as offensive in the '30s was a lot less problematic in the '60s.

Movies like The Pawnbroker (1964) dealt with the Holocaust and featured not only women's bare breasts but a homosexual character; it got approved by the PCA with only minimal edits required.

The Film Production Code was on its last legs by the time Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) came out, a film that also did not get PCA approval, but the MGM released it anyway. An American film by a famed Italian director, Blow-Up was more frank in its sexual topics, which in itself came with controversy.

An analysis of Blow-Up

In 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code was abandoned for good, and by that time, the MPPDA was renamed the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), who set up the ratings system that we now have today. That same ratings system allowed for the burgeoning New Hollywood scene to be as varied and daring as it was.

Times continue to change, but with the support of filmmakers, law makers, and the '60s counter culture movement, movies were able to finally free themselves from a system that was outdated from its inception.

UP NEXT

The New Hollywood Revolution

Now that we have gone over the Hays Code and what it was all about, why not see what came after its retirement? The end of the Hays Code coincided with the creation of the New Hollywood era, which included giants like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese making films unlike anyone had ever seen before.

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How the Hays Code Changed Hollywood Censorship

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The Hays Code is a set of rules and guidelines that Hollywood films were made to follow between the early 1930s and late 1960s.

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Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage by Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D. - Embracing Diversity

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In the year 1993, 25 years ago, Dr. Maria P. P. Root wrote the Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage, a ground-breaking document to empower people of mixed heritage to assert their identities, whatever that might be.

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Poston's Biracial Identity Development Model

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Poston's Biracial Identity Development Model

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factor model of mixed racial identity development

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factor model of mixed racial identity development

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Identity Development in Biracial Children: Contextual Factors from Social Work

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Identity Development in Biracial Children: Contextual Factors from Social Work

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Newswise - The multiracial population is an ever-growing segment of America. In the U.S. Census conducted in 2010, over nine million individuals reported belonging to two or more races. Expansions in civil rights and changes in social conventions over time have played a vital role in the reduction of social distance between people of various racial backgrounds, significantly contributing to the rising multiracial population. Multiracial individuals' historical experience in America is unique in that they were denied racial autonomy via laws that controlled how they could be racially classified.

The goals of this article are to illuminate the historical context and shifting trends surrounding multiracial individuals in America, and to share research findings on factors that influence racial identity development. Recommendations to support multiracial youth and their families will also be described.

HISTORICAL UNDERPINNINGS

A number of historical factors have influenced the rights and social perceptions of multiracial individuals. These include the understanding of race as a social versus biological construct, Jim Crow laws surrounding interracial romantic relationships (miscegenation) and the assignment of multiracial individuals to a subordinate racial group (hypodescent), the landmark Loving v. Virginia case, and changes in how the U.S. Census records racial/ethnic data.

Race is a man-made social construct, conceptualized during the 1700s to subdivide the human species "scientifically" based on geographic region and phenotype (Cameron & Wycoff, 1998). Anthropologists have since confirmed that race does not have biological grounds. Differences in physical characteristics, considered to be "race traits," resulted from migration and adaptation to climate and geography over time, and more variation exists within than between racial groups (Cameron & Wycoff, 1998).

If race is not a biological classification, what is its function? Race has been used to stratify groups, create a hierarchy to justify one group's domination over another, and perpetuate the demotion of certain groups to a non-human status (Cameron & Wycoff, 1998; Smedley & Smedley, 2005).

Anti-miscegenation laws of the 17th and 19th centuries made interracial romantic cohabitation and marriage illegal. During this time, "Tragic Mulatto" was a label used to describe individuals that emerged from Black/White relationships. This descriptor portrayed offspring of such unions as social misfits due to their ambiguous phenotypes and perceived difficulty fully fitting into the "White world" or the "Black world" (Winters & Herman, 2003).

In the 19th century, the Jim Crow Hypodescent Law, known as the "one-drop rule," was instituted to account for the offspring from interracial unions. It stated that by virtue of a single drop of Black blood, a multiracial person was relegated to the Black race (Herman, 2004; McClain, 2004; Qian, 2004; Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002). This law was developed to maintain segregation between races and ensure the racial purity of the White race by prohibiting multiracial individuals from assuming a White identity (Colker, 1996). This law also rejected any previous White racial membership, regardless of distance from Black ancestry or ambiguity of phenotype (Cameron & Wycoff, 1998; Rockquemore et al., 2003).

The landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case struck down the Virginia statute which made it a felony for White and "Colored" individuals to intermarry, setting in motion a change that would inevitably impact the racial landscape of the U.S. (Colker, 1996). Thereafter, interracial unions increased significantly, resulting in a "biracial baby boom" (Lee & Bean, 2004). The number of interracial unions jumped from 150,000 in 1960, to 1.6 million in 1990, to 9 million in 2010 (Jones & Bullock, 2012).

In 2000, the U.S. Census amended the method of race recordkeeping. Instead of limiting the selection to a single racial category, the Census now allows the selection of multiple categories, resulting in a change from six to 63 possible combinations that can be recorded (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2001). This historic change officially permitted the recognition of multiracial individuals as a distinct population, and calls attention to the conceptualization of "race" as a contrived social construct.

FACTORS THAT IMPACT RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

Several factors have been found to influence the racial identity development of individuals with multiracial heritage, including phenotype, surname, geographic location, community demographics, generational status, and family and peer supports (Herman, 2004; Lee & Bean, 2004)

FAMILY INFLUENCE

Family has the largest fundamental impact on the individual and their identity, and it is viewed as the primary institution responsible for answering questions about racial identity. Research conducted by LaBarrie (2007) explored family factors that influence racial self-identification. Two family factors were found to be significant in multiracial identity development: a caregiver's use of racial labels with youth, and the observed racial predominance within the family (LaBarrie, 2007). When participants were asked to identify the one racial group they most identified with and why they selected that particular race, 33 percent reported family racial predominance as a key reason, followed by phenotype, social labeling, and caregiver labeling (LaBarrie, 2007). An analysis of caregiver racial characteristics revealed a shared race pattern, such that if both caregivers had a shared race, the child identified with that shared race (LaBarrie, 2007).

Strong, supportive relationships between caregivers and multiracial children can foster a healthy identity development process (Radina & Cooney, 2000). Some caregivers take it upon themselves to help their child self-identify with a racial category. Caregivers may label their children's identity to protect them from confusion, racial discrimination, or social stigma. Black and other minority caregivers are more likely to be color conscious and to discuss social ignorance (Cooney & Radina, 2000).

Other caregivers avoid the topic of race. If colorblind attitudes, pollyanna avoidance of racialized experiences, or racial discrimination and slights are perpetuated within the family, they have a negative impact on multiracial youth's feelings of acceptance, belonging, and emotional well-being (Nadal et al., 2013; Nishimura, 1998; Root, 1996).

Some families do not discuss being a multiracial family or the possible challenges multiracial youth may face. In this case, the multiracial child often seeks a role model. If they cannot acquire one, they may feel misunderstood (Gillem, 2001; Radina & Cooney, 2000). This is more often the case in biracial households in which each caregiver identifies monoracially. In this instance, children may believe that their caregivers do not understand what it is like to be biracial (Nishimura, 1998).

Multiracial families have higher divorce rates than monoracial families (Cooney & Radina, 2000), often due to differences in traditions and values between caregivers, and the internal/external discriminatory pressures that influence the relationship. During marital conflicts and divorce, children sometimes feel forced to choose sides, and vouch their loyalty by identifying with the race of the caregiver with greater custody rights (LaBarrie, 2007; Radina & Cooney, 2000). Multiracial children may also feel they are betraying a caregiver by choosing a race.

COMMUNITY INFLUENCE

Community has a highly influential impact on racial identity. Multiple aspects of community have been found to be related to racial identity development, including community diversity and contingent socialization.

LaBarrie (2007) explored the influence of community diversity on multiracial self-identification. A majority of participants reported that their communities directly influenced their self-identification, and participants raised in diverse communities reported fewer negative experiences and more acceptance of their multiracial identity (LaBarrie, 2007). However, participants living in less diverse locations reported experiencing more discrimination, questioning, and/or challenges regarding their racial identity (LaBarrie, 2007).

Most multiracial individuals tend to live in diverse areas with high amounts of immigration and interracial marriage. As of 2010, 38% of the multiracial population resided in the Western region of the U.S. (nearly two million or 20.2% lived in California), while the multiracial population in Illinois was 3.2%. Chicago compromises over 36% of the Illinois multiracial population, making it the U.S. city with the third largest population of multiracial individuals after New York City and Los Angeles (Jones & Bullock, 2012). Alternately, a portion of the American landscape remains characterized by its strong racial divide. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina are areas in which individuals are less likely to label themselves as multiracial and more likely to perpetuate hypodescent rules (Lee & Bean, 2004).

The racial identity and socialization process of multiracial individuals can be contingent on the presence or lack of community diversity. When communities lack diversity or are segregated, multiracial individuals are more likely to experience marginalization. This is due in part because the concept of race is hinged on monoracial standards, such that members of society are often compelled to classify others as monoracial and feel unease if unable to do so. As a result, members in the community may exacerbate the experience of inconsistencies between internal versus external perceptions of racial identity among multiracial individuals. This experience contributes to feelings of confusion, frustration, and marginalization (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002).

In more diverse communities, an individual may experience their racial identity as being denied by various racial groups. If the acceptance of one or all races does not occur within the community, multiracial individuals may suffer from not being able to choose the race(s) with which they wish to represent themselves. This indecisiveness may cause feelings of emptiness, alienation, and abandonment (Radina & Cooney, 2000). Stonequist (1937) described this sense of being connected and/or disconnected from racial groups as a kind of "identity purgatory" in which the individual experiences feelings of being in limbo.

MODELS OF RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

Root (1996) challenged previous racial linear identity models, arguing that racial identity is fluid, not fixed. The Multidimensional Model of Biracial Identity (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002) is a similar ecological model that views identity development as complex and fluid. The model provides four identification options for biracial individuals. The first option is a Singular Identity, in which only one race is acknowledged. The second is the Boarder Identity, which acknowledges both races. The third is the Protean Identity, which utilizes racial identifications jointly or separately to create three possible identities. This allows the opportunity to switch and adapt within various contexts (McClain, 2004). The fourth option is the Transcendent Identity, in which individuals choose not to ascribe to racial classifications, and do not consider race to be a part of their status (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2002).

In research by LaBarrie (2007), 60 percent of participants demonstrated fluidity in their racial identity during a six-month period. Twenty-five percent of individuals switched their primary racial identity, and 35 percent subtracted one to two races from their racial composition. Of those who subtracted one to two races, the race consistently dropped was White and/ or Native American. All individuals who initially reported a primary Black racial identity maintained this primary identity at follow-up (LaBarrie, 2007). A study by Hitlin, Brown, and Elder (2006) similarly found that youth who initially report being multiracial were four times as likely to switch racial self-identification as to report a consistent multiracial identity. Across time, more multiracial adolescents added a racial category (diversification) or subtracted one (consolidation), compared to those that maintained a consistent multiracial self-identity (Hitlin et al., 2006).

IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Caregivers play a key role in identity formation. They can influence the racial identity development of their children through thoughtful discussions, as well as by choosing (as much as is possible) a supportive place to live, school, and culture within which to raise them (Gillem, 2001; LaBarrie, 2007; Qian, 2004). Developing awareness, knowledge, and skills among caregivers and families are key supports for multiracial youth (Kenney, 2002). Family members benefit from building awareness and challenging their internal attitudes, values, and beliefs about multiracial individuals. It is encouraged that caregivers acquire knowledge about the worldviews and experiences of multiracial individuals. Such knowledge development should include an understanding of several different domains, including historical context,types of racism experienced, environmental factors, acceptance across racial contexts, and available support networks in the local community and at school (Kenney, 2002).

Caregivers of multiracial youth can utilize skills and strategies that support positive identity development. Key strategies include providing a safe and open atmosphere that permits the expression of thoughts and feelings, along with the utilization of active listening to foster trust and understanding. Caregivers should acknowledge their child's racial/ethnic heritage, and acknowledge the differences in heritage between caregiver and child as positive and welcome (Kenney, 2002). Caregivers can also help youth develop positive views of their racial/ethnic heritage, and empower them as they navigate their multiple heritages.

Positive racial identity development tends to reduce either/or thinking and promote both/and thinking (Kenney, 2002). Early appreciation of multiracial heritage can be fostered with books and toys marketed toward multiracial and diverse youth (see text box for recommended books). Youth will also benefit from the promotion of their strengths and abilities, learning effective coping skills for dealing with conflict, opportunities to develop relationships with peers from diverse backgrounds (e.g., integrated schools, neighborhoods), and meeting multiracial role models through participation in social activities or community support groups.

CONCLUSION

In America, the number of interracial couples, multiracial individuals, and multiracial families is expected to grow 180% by 2050 (Bernstein & Edwards, 2008). Correspondingly, the research on this population has grown, along with the visibility of multiracial children, individuals, celebrities, media representation, and the prominence of President Barack Obama.

To adapt to this changing landscape, it is important to be knowledgeable about the history of race, as well as current trends and factors influencing the racial identity development of multiracial individuals. Research clearly shows that individuals who are raised in supportive families, neighborhoods, and social networks, and who attend schools with diverse populations, tend to develop a healthy self-confidence and racial identity (Gillem, 2001; Barrie, 2007). Caregivers, both directly and indirectly, play an essential role in shaping the racial identity of their children. Caregivers often oversee choices regarding which community to live in, the schools their children attend, and provide (or limit) opportunities to discuss and explore racial/ ethnic heritage. Families are encouraged to increase their own awareness, knowledge, and skills, and to support open communication about racial/ethnic heritage. Resources are to help families support multiracial youth in their unique identity development. If problems develop, caregivers might consider counseling for their children, to support positive racial identity development, as well as to help them cope with distress in a supportive environment.

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family institute at northwestern university

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Newswise - The multiracial population is an ever-growing segment of America. In the U.S. Census conducted in 2010, over nine million individuals reported belonging to two or more races. Expansions in civil rights and changes in social conventions over time have played a vital role in the reduction of social distance between people of various racial backgrounds, significantly contributing to the rising multiracial population.

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The Racial Identities Multiracial People Adopt May Depend on How Others Treat Them

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The Racial Identities Multiracial People Adopt May Depend on How Others Treat Them

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Biracial Britain: why mixed-race people must be able to decide their own identity

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Biracial Britain: why mixed-race people must be able to decide their own identity

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"Mixed race? What's all this mixed-race nonsense? If you're not white, you're black." So said a legendary black British broadcaster to Sunder Katwala, a mixed-race Briton I interviewed for my new book Biracial Britain, during a conversation they had on identity.

Katwala has an Indian father and Irish mother with no black roots of which he is aware. When he pointed this out, he was asked why in that case he didn't simply call himself Indian. Was he ashamed of his Indian roots?

The exchange typifies the kind of social reality mixed-race people know all too well: one that combines a binary way of thinking about identity, and the right monoracial society confers on itself to tell mixed-race people how they should identify.

A unique identity

The notion of a standalone mixed-race identity that is not an offshoot of one of the more familiar identities such as black, white or Asian is not something monoracial Britain and the wider world takes seriously yet. If Barack Obama had asked to be called the first biracial president of America, many would have frowned in confusion. First black president we get, but first biracial president? What's that all about?

In Britain, Meghan Markle's racial identity sparked a national debate even though she herself explicitly stated back in 2015 that she identifies as biracial. America's new vice president Kamala Harris has presented a unique challenge to identity pronouncers in that she is an even less understood kind of mixed race - one with no white parent in the background. The default has been to mostly label her a black woman.

A common theme in all these cases is that monoracial commentators have dominated the public debate about what these individuals' identities are or should be. As the son of a Nigerian father and Polish mother, I found it somewhat odd watching debates about Markle's identity on British TV in which everyone was monoracial - either black or white, with no mixed-race voices.

That is like an all-white panel discussing what blackness means or vice versa. Historically conditioned by the need to survive in societies dominated by single racial groups, mixed-race people have rarely contested this imposition. Instead, we have simply adapted to whatever identity labels those around us have decided to assign us or which have emerged as a result of historical interracial conflicts.

A classic case being the " one-drop rule", dreamed up by white American segregationists, which pronounced a person with any black ancestry "black" in a bid to harden racial boundaries and foster an air of exclusivity around whiteness. Though no longer law in any American state, this idea continues to shape perceptions of people with black ancestry in the US and other white majority societies. It is the key reason Obama was effectively left with no realistic choice but to identify as black, a fact he acknowledged in a 2007 interview.

Time to listen

During my research, a process which involved conducting interviews with mixed-race Britons of various ages and racial backgrounds, I got a sense that attitudes are shifting. That mixed-race people are tired of playing constant defence on identity and are feeling more confident to assert the identity they feel rather than simply accept whatever society assigns them. The game-changer has been our growth in numbers.

The last census conducted in 2011, a full decade ago, recorded over 1.2 million mixed-race Britons, almost double the number it listed in the 2001 census. This itself was likely an undercount as not all children of mixed marriages would have been ticked in one of the mixed categories. An analysis by Alita Nandi of Essex University and Lucinda Platt of the London School of Economics suggests the true figure today could be three times as high.

According to projections commissioned by political scientist Eric Kaufmann for his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities, Britain could be 30% mixed-race by the end of this century.

All over Britain, mixed-race people now constantly see many others like them around them. The sense of vulnerability that comes with feeling people like you are a tiny minority in society is disappearing. While many I spoke to still struggle with the contradictions and uncertainties of navigating multiple racial identities, there is also a growing realisation that it is time monoracial society started adapting to us as well, not solely the other way round.

"It is less we who are confused about being mixed-race than it is society being confused about how to deal with us," the 38-year-old daughter of a Zimbabwean father and English-German mother said to me. Or as Danyal, the 23-year-old son of an English father and Pakistani mother observed:

The days of racial purity, be it black, white or Asian, are over and are a pretty old-school idea. My generation won't accept the idea of fixed racial and identity boundaries or people imposing on them who they are allowed to feel like, they just won't.

Few reasonable people today would dispute the fact that race is a social construct, something we humans imagined into existence. Which by no means detracts from its powerful impact on people's everyday lives. What ultimately matters is what people believe matters.

The good news is that that which has been imagined can be reimagined. The key is to recreate social constructs of race and identity in a way that offers the greatest opportunity possible for people to thrive. When it comes to mixed-race people, the way to start is by society asking us who we are, not telling us.

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Biracial Britain: why mixed-race people must be able to decide their own identity

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"Mixed race? What's all this mixed-race nonsense? If you're not white, you're black." So said a legendary black British broadcaster to Sunder Katwala, a mixed-race Briton I interviewed for my new book Biracial Britain, during a conversation they had on identity. Katwala has an Indian father and Irish mother with no black roots of which he is aware.

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Whites Distrust Biracial People When Their Racial Presentation Varies

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Whites Distrust Biracial People When Their Racial Presentation Varies

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"Contextual racial presentation" has implications for an increasingly multiracial society

In a multiracial society, people of biracial background sometimes find it necessary or advantageous to present themselves as members of one ethnic group or the other. A Rutgers study says white people react negatively to such "contextual racial presentation."

Whites consider biracial people to be less trustworthy if they change their racial presentation depending on circumstances, Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers find.

The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Rutgers social psychologists Analia Albuja and Diana Sanchez studied how white people perceive biracial people who identify as biracial but who sometimes "present" themselves as one race or the other in different situations.

In the 2010 U.S. Census, nine million people identified themselves as "multiracial" (chose more than one race), and 30 percent said they had, at some point, presented themselves as members of one race or another.

In a series of five studies, the researchers asked hundreds of white people to review blog posts purportedly written by people who identified as black and white or Asian and white. Some of the "bloggers" indicated that when applying for jobs or college admission or when filling out government forms, they sometimes presented themselves as biracial and sometimes as one race or the other.

The researchers coined a term for presenting oneself as a member of one race in some contexts and of another race in another context: contextual racial presentation, or CRP.

Sanchez and Albuja, the lead author and a psychology graduate student in the School of Graduate Studies, recruited several hundred white subjects to take part in the studies online. The researchers asked their subjects to fill out online questionnaires designed to elicit their impressions of the bloggers. How trustworthy were they? How likeable were they? Was their behavior - whether or not they presented themselves contextually - right or wrong?

Diana Sanchez

The results showed that across the board - regardless of whether the "bloggers" presented themselves as white or members of a minority or whether they could benefit from their choice - white people perceived them as less trustworthy and likeable than biracial people who didn't present contextually. The white people were more likely than not to object to such presentation on moral grounds. However, when the bloggers didn't have a choice in the matter (some forms didn't have a category for bi-racial people), white people were more lenient.

Sanchez, associate professor of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, said she and Albuja chose white participants exclusively for the studies because they have a position of privilege in U.S. society and have more ability to set rules and norms for how people of different races are perceived.

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Whites Distrust Biracial People When Their Racial Presentation Varies, Rutgers Study Finds

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Whites consider biracial people to be less trustworthy if they change their racial presentation depending on circumstances, Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers find. The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology . Rutgers social psychologists Analia Albuja and Diana Sanchez studied how white people perceive biracial people who identify as biracial but who sometimes "present" themselves as one race or the other in different situations.

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Multiracial American Voices: The Future - Pew Research Center

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We Talk to Interracial Couples 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia (HBO)

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What is the definition of passing, or passing for White? Simply put, passing occurs when members of a racial, ethnic, or religious group present themselves as belonging to another such group. Historically, people have passed for a variety of reasons, from gaining more social clout than the group into which they were born to escaping oppression and even death.

Passing and oppression go hand-in-hand. People would have no need to pass if institutional racism and other forms of discrimination did not exist.

Who Can Pass?

Passing necessitates that one lacks the characteristic traits most associated with a particular racial or ethnic group. Accordingly, Black people and others who pass tend to be biracial or have mixed racial ancestry.

While many Black people of mixed racial origin are incapable of passing for White- President Barack Obama is a case in point-others may easily be able to do so. Like Obama, actress Rashida Jones was born to a White mother and a Black father, but she looks much more phenotypically White than the 44th president does. The same goes for singer Mariah Carey, born to a White mother and a father of Black and Hispanic origin.

Why Black People Passed

In the United States, racial minority groups such as African Americans historically passed to escape the virulent oppression that led to their enslavement, segregation, and brutalization. Being able to pass for White sometimes meant the difference between a life in captivity and a life of freedom. In fact, the enslaved couple William and Ellen Craft escaped from bondage in 1848 after Ellen passed as a young White planter and William as her servant.

The Crafts documented their escape in the enslaved narrative "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom," in which William describes his wife's appearance as follows:

"Notwithstanding my wife being of African extraction on her mother's side, she is almost white-in fact, she is so nearly so that the tyrannical old lady to whom she first belonged became so annoyed, at finding her frequently mistaken for a child of the family, that she gave her when eleven years of age to a daughter, as a wedding present."

Oftentimes, enslaved children light enough to pass for White people were the products of miscegenation between enslavers and enslaved women. Ellen Craft may very well have been a relative of her enslaver. However, the one-drop rule dictated that any individual with the slightest amount of African blood be deemed a Black person. This law benefited enslavers by giving them more labor. Deeming biracial people White would have increased the number of free men and women but done little to give the nation the economic boost that free labor did.

After the end of the system of enslavement, Black people continued to pass, as they faced stringent laws that limited their ability to reach their potential in society. Passing for White allowed African Americans entry into the upper echelons of society. But passing also meant that such Black people left their hometowns and family members behind to ensure that they could never come across anyone who knew their true racial origins.

Passing in Popular Culture

Passing has been the subject of memoirs, novels, essays, and films. Nella Larsen's 1929 novel "Passing" is arguably the most famous work of fiction on the subject. In the novel, a fair-skinned Black woman, Irene Redfield, discovers that her racially ambiguous childhood friend, Clare Kendry, has crossed the color line-leaving Chicago for New York and marrying a White bigot to advance in life socially and economically. But Clare does the unthinkable by entering Black society once again and putting her new identity at risk.

James Weldon Johnson's 1912 novel "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (a novel disguised as a memoir) is another well-known work of fiction about passing. The subject also emerges in Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894) and Kate Chopin's 1893 short story "Désirée's Baby."

Arguably the most famous film about passing is "Imitation of Life," which debuted in 1934 and was remade in 1959. The film is based on the 1933 Fannie Hurst novel of the same name. Philip Roth's 2000 novel "The Human Stain" also addresses passing. A film adaptation of the book debuted in 2003. The novel has been linked to the real-life story of late New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard, who hid his Black ancestry for years, although Roth denies any connection between "The Human Stain" and Broyard.

Broyard's daughter, Bliss Broyard, however, did write a memoir about her father's decision to pass for White, "One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life-A Story of Race and Family Secrets" (2007). Anatole Broyard's life bears some resemblance to the Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer, who reportedly passed for White after penning the popular novel "Cane" (1923).

The artist Adrian Piper's essay "Passing for White, Passing for Black" (1992) is another real-life account of passing. In this case, Piper embraces her blackness but describes what it's like for White people to inadvertently mistake her for White and for some Black people to question her racial identity because she's fair-skinned.

Do Black People Need to Pass Today?

Given that racial segregation is no longer the law of the land in the United States, Black people don't face the same barriers that historically led them to pass in search of better opportunities. That said, blackness and "otherness" continue to be devalued in the U.S.

As a result, some people may think it beneficial to downplay or hide aspects of their racial makeup. They may not do so to land employment or live where they choose but simply to avoid the discomforts and hardships that accompany life as a Black person in America.

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What is the definition of passing, or passing for White? Simply put, passing occurs when members of a racial, ethnic, or religious group present themselves as belonging to another such group. Historically, people have passed for a variety of reasons, from gaining more social clout than the group into which they were born to escaping oppression and even death.

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Seven years ago, I interviewed for a faculty position at a small Northeastern school. After a long day of one-on-one meetings, I endured the final dreaded ritual: a dinner with half a dozen faculty members. Towards the end, the conversation drifted from real estate and property taxes to stories of white faculty members' various encounters with nonwhite folks, specifically with Black women and Latino men. These stories conveyed the fears that nonwhite people inspired in these white individuals, and they followed a pattern: when their cars had broken down unexpectedly or when they found themselves in some unfamiliar town or another, crisis was averted when, in fact, threatening nonwhite Others declined to take advantage of white innocents. Indeed, in story after story, nonwhite folks helped our white protagonists, much to the latter's surprise and relief.

It was a jarring experience. Why did they think they could share racist tales so freely in front of me - a dark-skinned South Asian American woman? Was I not a person of color in their eyes? What about my self-performance, self-presentation, self-hood had given them license to speak this way in front of me? Would they have shared these stories if I were Black or Latina? It was the first time I realized that, as a woman of South Asian descent who completed my graduate studies at an elite institution, people would make assumptions about me that allowed me to occasionally experience proximity to whiteness. Here, I define proximity to whiteness as access to certain forms of power, resources, as well as social, economic, and cultural capital that have been historically constructed to advantage white people in this country at the expense of people of color , generally, and Black and Indigenous Americans, in particular. The experience also helped me see how much elite educational institutions are invested in a particular version of whiteness that can be fundamentally classist, racist, and sexist.

In her best-selling book, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (2020), anti-racist writer and educator Layla Saad defines a person of color like myself as "white passing" or "white adjacent," meaning "a person who holds white privilege" but is not white. According to Saad, this designation "includes persons who may be biracial, multiracial, or white-passing people of colour who benefit under systems of white supremacy from having lighter skin colour than visibly Brown, Black or Indigenous people" (15). Given the deep history of anti-Blackness embedded in this country's DNA as well as the historic uprisings against anti-Black racial injustice that unfolded throughout the US in summer 2020, Saad's point about the role of anti-Blackness in cementing white supremacist solidarities cannot and should not be glossed over. Anti-Blackness is at the heart of our white supremacist culture. It infiltrates our schools . Though less often discussed, it plays a key role for both white-passing and white adjacent people of color, too.

In this piece, I offer a framework for understanding the lived experience of non-Black people of color by further refining Saad's distinction between white passing and white adjacent POC. To do so, I draw on my own personal experiences as a dark-skinned South Asian woman who rather bewilderingly experiences occasional access to whiteness in spite of being quite visibly nonwhite. I also draw on nearly a decade of experience as an equity practitioner and scholar-activist in predominantly white higher education and secondary education settings. The distinction I draw between white-passing and white-adjacent people of color as well as their investments in whiteness and anti-Blackness furthers our collective understanding of how proximity to whiteness surfaces for some people of color in varied and nuanced ways. It allows us to consider how we might inadvertently uphold white supremacy in our schools as a result. Once aware of these dynamics, we can better equip ourselves with the tools necessary to disrupt these moments, strengthening solidarities among the full coalition of people of color and anti-racist white colleagues struggling for social justice in our schools.
Passing White
Certainly, as Saad writes, white-passing people of color may visibly "pass" as white. They thus experience entry into the white world on account of certain phenotypical characteristics, and skin color above all. But white-adjacent people of color like myself, though quite visibly nonwhite, may nevertheless occasionally become insiders in the white world as a result of two separate but related factors: first, our real or assumed proximity to markers of whiteness such as wealth, education, and professional status; and second, given that this country was socially constructed along a racial spectrum wherein whiteness and Blackness stand at polar opposites, our real or assumed anti-Black beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

As Brit Bennett's fiction bestseller The Vanishing Half reminded so many of us last year, there is a long history of people of color, including light-skinned Black folks,passing in this country . Some, like Bennet's protagonist Stella Vignes, may do so willingly in order to access forms of white privilege and live in the white world. As diversity specialist Dr. Asare writes in a recent Forbes article, these individuals "actively seek these benefits through changing their appearance, their mannerisms, their behaviors and even the way that they speak." I would simply add that this can be considered a perfectly rational choice in the interest of self-preservation and survival in our white supremacist society.

Others, however, will have certain assumptions made about their racial belonging based on phenotypical expression and skin color. The phenomenon of being white passing, therefore, can have little to do with whether a person of color themselves identifies as such or not, as white-passing Latinx and mixed-race Indigenous folks have often pointed out. Nevertheless, depending on the specific context, colorism - or discrimination against darker-skinned peoples -- will occasionally bestow access to white privilege upon white-passing POCs, whether they want it or not.
White Adjacency
While a broad swath of light-skinned people of color may fall straightforwardly into the white-passing people of color category, Asian Americans - even dark-skinned South- and Southeast Asian Americans like myself - most clearly fall into the category of white-adjacent people of color. Often, we frame the unique racial experience of Asian Americans through the prism of the model minority myth. In a nutshell, the model minority myth claims that, though many Asian Americans have suffered a unique history of violence, exclusion, and disenfranchisement in this country, we have also benefitted from positive stereotypes about our minority group - namely, that we are intelligent, hard-working, well-behaved, and successfu l.

As many have pointed out, stereotypes about Asian Americans were often constructed in our white supremacist society in direct and knowing contrast to the very negative stereotypes which attached to other minority groups, and Black, Indigenous, and Latinx folks, in particular. According to this line of thinking, the model minority myth was designed to drive a wedge between Asian Americans, on the one hand, and other marginalized people of color, on the other . Consider it a sort of white supremacist divide-and-conquer strategy. And, while even positive stereotypes can still hurt Asian Americans in myriad ways, ultimately, the model minority myth furnished us with a fragile adjacency to whiteness, conditional upon, as Saad puts it, "the extent that you are able to present or pass as white, and be anti-Black," as well as the degree to which we are able to "conform to the rules of whiteness" (16). For my own part, I've seen, time and again how white-adjacent people of color conform to whiteness in education settings primarily by engaging in and legitimating anti-Blackness, both implicitly and explicitly, among white administrative leaders. Often, they do so because they imagine themselves incapable of holding racist beliefs by virtue of the fact that they are technically people of color.

On other occasions, the anti-Blackness of some white adjacent POCs may even remain unchecked because, like many white folks, they do not consider themselves as raced and racialized beings. Given that we often operate in predominantly white schools and universities, white adjacent POCs may thus unconsciously lend credence to anti-Black policies, procedures, and messaging of predominantly white educational institutions whenever white administrative leaders defer to them as the "resident POC." Importantly, white folks who have not begun their anti-racist work will, as do we all, seek out those who think like them, hence ensuring that the vicious cycle repeats itself. Like all tokenization, POC white adjacency ultimately operates in the service of legitimizing white supremacy, hurting our students, colleagues of color, and ourselves in the process.
Anti-Blackness Among People of Color
While this country has a long and painful history of anti-Blackness stretching over four centuries, as white-passing and white-adjacent people of color, we must reckon with the specific strains of anti-Blackness in our own cultures that have taken root over the years, often as a result of Euro-American imperialism and colonial domination. Since many of us are diasporic peoples, part of our communities' assimilation into this country came at the cost of Black and Indigenous Americans. Upon arrival, many of our ancestors learned to consciously align themselves with white folks by distancing themselves from Black folks in order to access the privileges of whiteness, including citizenship and other rights. In other words, anti-Blackness has long functioned as an effective means of entry for white-passing and white-adjacent POCs seeking to assimilate and succeed in predominantly white settings. It continues to work that way today. And it is high time that we acknowledge and reconsider how we as white-passing and white adjacent people of color participate in the project of white supremacy in our workplaces.

To be clear, all this is not to suggest that white-passing and white-adjacent people of color do not experience our own distressing varieties of discrimination in the workplace. We absolutely do, which makes it even harder to imagine that in some cases we also benefit from white privilege. But as the above has described, white-passing and white-adjacent POCs regularly receive invitations into whiteness that shape how we move in the world and how the world lets us move through it. And though perhaps painful to hear -- especially if being a person of color is central to our identity - we need to have this conversation if we hope to build a more honest, robust, and focused coalition of POCs and anti-racist white folks working towards social justice in our educational institutions.

1) Acknowledge that you are a raced being.

I often hear white-passing and white-adjacent people of color say that their racial identity simply hasn't shaped their lives or worldview. If that sounds like you, the first step is to recognize that never or even just rarely being made aware of your racial identity is, in and of itself, a sign of just how white passing and/or white adjacent you are. Indeed, based on what I've written above, your experience strongly suggests the likelihood of your white proximity and the privilege that comes along with it. The longer you go without understanding yourself as a raced and racialized being, the more likely you are to do harm to the people of color around you, especially Black folks given the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in our society.

2) Develop a nuanced awareness of your racialized identity.

Seek out media - books, articles, podcasts, lectures, workshops, and documentaries - that document the history of your ethnic or racial group in this country. Inevitably, you will learn that, while your group faced different forms of discrimination from the start, over time, they also benefitted from certain advantages traditionally accorded only to white Americans, moving them along the American racial spectrum defined above from Blackness (fewer rights and privileges) to whiteness (more rights and privileges).

Please note that it is critical to find educational materials that attend to how your ethnic or racial group was instrumentalized in the service of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. But it is equally important that you do not neglect the parts of your group's history that furnishes models of folks within your communities who always resisted the siren song of white supremacy. This latter injunction is important because it reminds us that we all have access to a progressive anti-racist history and legacy that is ours to carry forward if we so choose.

3) Learn the unique history of anti-Blackness in this country, and the history of anti-Blackness specific to your community.

While steps 1 and 2 will help you unearth your past, we must also surface the ways that anti-Blackness functions in our day-to-day lives in the present. In summer 2020, most folks opted to educate themselves in this subject by reading Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race, and Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi's Stamped .

Given the unique history of anti-Blackness in our respective communities of color, however, many scholars and activists also produced helpful guides to anti-Blackness over the summer in the hopes of spurring frank conversations within our communities. Here is one anti-racism guide for Asian-Americans and a guide to anti-Blackness for Latinx folks, in English and in Spanish.

Additionally, I strongly encourage all to purchase Layla Saad's Me and White Supremacy workbook. Read it, respond to her journaling prompts, and discuss your responses within facilitated racial affinity groups where you can be supported and held compassionately accountable.

4) Attend to the ways in which your white privilege surfaces day-to-day.

Once you have begun the above process, consider the ways that you, as a white-passing or white-adjacent person of color, may hold white privilege in your life and consider the consequences. Given my experience in education settings as a white-adjacent woman of color and diversity practitioner, I can say that one thing I've had to learn is that trust-building vis-à-vis my students and colleagues of color may not come immediately because I may not look like someone who has traditionally been worthy of trust, given their experiences with folks who present the way I do.

I've come to recognize that this is a savvy survival tool that many of our students and colleagues of color might have developed to help them move through the world. I have learned to be respectful of their boundaries; to proceed with warmth, compassion, and empathy; to let my actions speak louder than my words; and to be mindful about how much emotional space I take up, especially in big-tent racial affinity spaces bringing folks together under the umbrella of "people of color." As this article has hopefully suggested, this may be a too-big-tent for all of us given that the liberation of some of us has thus far come at the expense of others of us .

Seven years ago, I interviewed for a faculty position at a small Northeastern school. After a long day of one-on-one meetings, I endured the final dreaded ritual: a dinner with half a dozen faculty members. Towards the end, the conversation drifted from real estate and property taxes to stories of white faculty members' various encounters with nonwhite folks, specifically with Black women and Latino men. These stories conveyed the fears that nonwhite people inspired in these white individuals, and they followed a pattern: when their cars had broken down unexpectedly or when they found themselves in some unfamiliar town or another, crisis was averted when, in fact, threatening nonwhite Others declined to take advantage of white innocents. Indeed, in story after story, nonwhite folks helped our white protagonists, much to the latter's surprise and relief.

It was a jarring experience. Why did they think they could share racist tales so freely in front of me - a dark-skinned South Asian American woman? Was I not a person of color in their eyes? What about my self-performance, self-presentation, self-hood had given them license to speak this way in front of me? Would they have shared these stories if I were Black or Latina? It was the first time I realized that, as a woman of South Asian descent who completed my graduate studies at an elite institution, people would make assumptions about me that allowed me to occasionally experience proximity to whiteness. Here, I define proximity to whiteness as access to certain forms of power, resources, as well as social, economic, and cultural capital that have been historically constructed to advantage white people in this country at the expense of people of color , generally, and Black and Indigenous Americans, in particular. The experience also helped me see how much elite educational institutions are invested in a particular version of whiteness that can be fundamentally classist, racist, and sexist.

In her best-selling book, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (2020), anti-racist writer and educator Layla Saad defines a person of color like myself as "white passing" or "white adjacent," meaning "a person who holds white privilege" but is not white. According to Saad, this designation "includes persons who may be biracial, multiracial, or white-passing people of colour who benefit under systems of white supremacy from having lighter skin colour than visibly Brown, Black or Indigenous people" (15). Given the deep history of anti-Blackness embedded in this country's DNA as well as the historic uprisings against anti-Black racial injustice that unfolded throughout the US in summer 2020, Saad's point about the role of anti-Blackness in cementing white supremacist solidarities cannot and should not be glossed over. Anti-Blackness is at the heart of our white supremacist culture. It infiltrates our schools . Though less often discussed, it plays a key role for both white-passing and white adjacent people of color, too.

In this piece, I offer a framework for understanding the lived experience of non-Black people of color by further refining Saad's distinction between white passing and white adjacent POC. To do so, I draw on my own personal experiences as a dark-skinned South Asian woman who rather bewilderingly experiences occasional access to whiteness in spite of being quite visibly nonwhite. I also draw on nearly a decade of experience as an equity practitioner and scholar-activist in predominantly white higher education and secondary education settings. The distinction I draw between white-passing and white-adjacent people of color as well as their investments in whiteness and anti-Blackness furthers our collective understanding of how proximity to whiteness surfaces for some people of color in varied and nuanced ways. It allows us to consider how we might inadvertently uphold white supremacy in our schools as a result. Once aware of these dynamics, we can better equip ourselves with the tools necessary to disrupt these moments, strengthening solidarities among the full coalition of people of color and anti-racist white colleagues struggling for social justice in our schools.
Passing White
Certainly, as Saad writes, white-passing people of color may visibly "pass" as white. They thus experience entry into the white world on account of certain phenotypical characteristics, and skin color above all. But white-adjacent people of color like myself, though quite visibly nonwhite, may nevertheless occasionally become insiders in the white world as a result of two separate but related factors: first, our real or assumed proximity to markers of whiteness such as wealth, education, and professional status; and second, given that this country was socially constructed along a racial spectrum wherein whiteness and Blackness stand at polar opposites, our real or assumed anti-Black beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

As Brit Bennett's fiction bestseller The Vanishing Half reminded so many of us last year, there is a long history of people of color, including light-skinned Black folks,passing in this country . Some, like Bennet's protagonist Stella Vignes, may do so willingly in order to access forms of white privilege and live in the white world. As diversity specialist Dr. Asare writes in a recent Forbes article, these individuals "actively seek these benefits through changing their appearance, their mannerisms, their behaviors and even the way that they speak." I would simply add that this can be considered a perfectly rational choice in the interest of self-preservation and survival in our white supremacist society.

Others, however, will have certain assumptions made about their racial belonging based on phenotypical expression and skin color. The phenomenon of being white passing, therefore, can have little to do with whether a person of color themselves identifies as such or not, as white-passing Latinx and mixed-race Indigenous folks have often pointed out. Nevertheless, depending on the specific context, colorism - or discrimination against darker-skinned peoples -- will occasionally bestow access to white privilege upon white-passing POCs, whether they want it or not.
White Adjacency
While a broad swath of light-skinned people of color may fall straightforwardly into the white-passing people of color category, Asian Americans - even dark-skinned South- and Southeast Asian Americans like myself - most clearly fall into the category of white-adjacent people of color. Often, we frame the unique racial experience of Asian Americans through the prism of the model minority myth. In a nutshell, the model minority myth claims that, though many Asian Americans have suffered a unique history of violence, exclusion, and disenfranchisement in this country, we have also benefitted from positive stereotypes about our minority group - namely, that we are intelligent, hard-working, well-behaved, and successfu l.

As many have pointed out, stereotypes about Asian Americans were often constructed in our white supremacist society in direct and knowing contrast to the very negative stereotypes which attached to other minority groups, and Black, Indigenous, and Latinx folks, in particular. According to this line of thinking, the model minority myth was designed to drive a wedge between Asian Americans, on the one hand, and other marginalized people of color, on the other . Consider it a sort of white supremacist divide-and-conquer strategy. And, while even positive stereotypes can still hurt Asian Americans in myriad ways, ultimately, the model minority myth furnished us with a fragile adjacency to whiteness, conditional upon, as Saad puts it, "the extent that you are able to present or pass as white, and be anti-Black," as well as the degree to which we are able to "conform to the rules of whiteness" (16). For my own part, I've seen, time and again how white-adjacent people of color conform to whiteness in education settings primarily by engaging in and legitimating anti-Blackness, both implicitly and explicitly, among white administrative leaders. Often, they do so because they imagine themselves incapable of holding racist beliefs by virtue of the fact that they are technically people of color.

On other occasions, the anti-Blackness of some white adjacent POCs may even remain unchecked because, like many white folks, they do not consider themselves as raced and racialized beings. Given that we often operate in predominantly white schools and universities, white adjacent POCs may thus unconsciously lend credence to anti-Black policies, procedures, and messaging of predominantly white educational institutions whenever white administrative leaders defer to them as the "resident POC." Importantly, white folks who have not begun their anti-racist work will, as do we all, seek out those who think like them, hence ensuring that the vicious cycle repeats itself. Like all tokenization, POC white adjacency ultimately operates in the service of legitimizing white supremacy, hurting our students, colleagues of color, and ourselves in the process.
Anti-Blackness Among People of Color
While this country has a long and painful history of anti-Blackness stretching over four centuries, as white-passing and white-adjacent people of color, we must reckon with the specific strains of anti-Blackness in our own cultures that have taken root over the years, often as a result of Euro-American imperialism and colonial domination. Since many of us are diasporic peoples, part of our communities' assimilation into this country came at the cost of Black and Indigenous Americans. Upon arrival, many of our ancestors learned to consciously align themselves with white folks by distancing themselves from Black folks in order to access the privileges of whiteness, including citizenship and other rights. In other words, anti-Blackness has long functioned as an effective means of entry for white-passing and white-adjacent POCs seeking to assimilate and succeed in predominantly white settings. It continues to work that way today. And it is high time that we acknowledge and reconsider how we as white-passing and white adjacent people of color participate in the project of white supremacy in our workplaces.

To be clear, all this is not to suggest that white-passing and white-adjacent people of color do not experience our own distressing varieties of discrimination in the workplace. We absolutely do, which makes it even harder to imagine that in some cases we also benefit from white privilege. But as the above has described, white-passing and white-adjacent POCs regularly receive invitations into whiteness that shape how we move in the world and how the world lets us move through it. And though perhaps painful to hear -- especially if being a person of color is central to our identity - we need to have this conversation if we hope to build a more honest, robust, and focused coalition of POCs and anti-racist white folks working towards social justice in our educational institutions.

1) Acknowledge that you are a raced being.

I often hear white-passing and white-adjacent people of color say that their racial identity simply hasn't shaped their lives or worldview. If that sounds like you, the first step is to recognize that never or even just rarely being made aware of your racial identity is, in and of itself, a sign of just how white passing and/or white adjacent you are. Indeed, based on what I've written above, your experience strongly suggests the likelihood of your white proximity and the privilege that comes along with it. The longer you go without understanding yourself as a raced and racialized being, the more likely you are to do harm to the people of color around you, especially Black folks given the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness in our society.

2) Develop a nuanced awareness of your racialized identity.

Seek out media - books, articles, podcasts, lectures, workshops, and documentaries - that document the history of your ethnic or racial group in this country. Inevitably, you will learn that, while your group faced different forms of discrimination from the start, over time, they also benefitted from certain advantages traditionally accorded only to white Americans, moving them along the American racial spectrum defined above from Blackness (fewer rights and privileges) to whiteness (more rights and privileges).

Please note that it is critical to find educational materials that attend to how your ethnic or racial group was instrumentalized in the service of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. But it is equally important that you do not neglect the parts of your group's history that furnishes models of folks within your communities who always resisted the siren song of white supremacy. This latter injunction is important because it reminds us that we all have access to a progressive anti-racist history and legacy that is ours to carry forward if we so choose.

3) Learn the unique history of anti-Blackness in this country, and the history of anti-Blackness specific to your community.

While steps 1 and 2 will help you unearth your past, we must also surface the ways that anti-Blackness functions in our day-to-day lives in the present. In summer 2020, most folks opted to educate themselves in this subject by reading Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race, and Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi's Stamped .

Given the unique history of anti-Blackness in our respective communities of color, however, many scholars and activists also produced helpful guides to anti-Blackness over the summer in the hopes of spurring frank conversations within our communities. Here is one anti-racism guide for Asian-Americans and a guide to anti-Blackness for Latinx folks, in English and in Spanish.

Additionally, I strongly encourage all to purchase Layla Saad's Me and White Supremacy workbook. Read it, respond to her journaling prompts, and discuss your responses within facilitated racial affinity groups where you can be supported and held compassionately accountable.

4) Attend to the ways in which your white privilege surfaces day-to-day.

Once you have begun the above process, consider the ways that you, as a white-passing or white-adjacent person of color, may hold white privilege in your life and consider the consequences. Given my experience in education settings as a white-adjacent woman of color and diversity practitioner, I can say that one thing I've had to learn is that trust-building vis-à-vis my students and colleagues of color may not come immediately because I may not look like someone who has traditionally been worthy of trust, given their experiences with folks who present the way I do.

I've come to recognize that this is a savvy survival tool that many of our students and colleagues of color might have developed to help them move through the world. I have learned to be respectful of their boundaries; to proceed with warmth, compassion, and empathy; to let my actions speak louder than my words; and to be mindful about how much emotional space I take up, especially in big-tent racial affinity spaces bringing folks together under the umbrella of "people of color." As this article has hopefully suggested, this may be a too-big-tent for all of us given that the liberation of some of us has thus far come at the expense of others of us .

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Proximity to Whiteness: Anti-Blackness, People of Color, and the Struggle for Solidarity - Nimisha Barton, PhD

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We talk a lot about white folks and whiteness. Less often do we discuss the more awkward question of white-passing and white-adjacent people of color who partake in anti-Black attitudes and behaviors as a means of gaining white acceptance. What is to be done?

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It's tricky to nail down exactly what makes someone feel like a "racial impostor." For one Code Switch follower, it's the feeling she gets from whipping out "broken but strangely colloquial Arabic" in front of other Middle Easterners.

For another - a white-passing, Native American woman - it's being treated like "just another tourist" when she shows up at powwows. And one woman described watching her white, black and Korean-American toddler bump along to the new Kendrick and wondering, "Is this allowed?"

In this week's podcast, we go deep into what we're calling Racial Impostor Syndrome - the feeling, the science and a giant festival this weekend in Los Angeles that's, in some ways, all about this.

Here's how we got started down this track. A couple months ago, listener Kristina Ogilvie wrote in to tell us that "living at the intersection of different identities and cultures" was like "stumbling around in a forest in the dark."

She asked, "Do you hear from other listeners who feel like fakes?"

Good question. So we took it to our audience, and what we heard back was a resounding "yes."

We got 127 emails from people who are stumbling through that dark, racially ambiguous forest. (And yes, we read every single one.)

Here are excerpts drawn from a few of the many letters that made us laugh, cry and argue - and that guided this week's episode.

Let's start with Angie Yingst of Pennsylvania:

"My mother is a Panamanian immigrant and my father is a white guy from Pennsylvania. I've always felt liminal, like I drift between race and culture. When I was young (20s) and living in the city, I would get asked multiple times a day where I was from, where my people were from, because Allentown, Pennsylvania, clearly wasn't the answer they were looking for ... It always felt like the undercurrent of that question was, 'You aren't white, but you aren't black. What are you?'

"But truthfully, I don't feel like I fit with Latinas either. My Spanish is atrocious and I grew up in rural PA. Even my cousin said a few weeks ago, 'Well, you aren't really Spanish, because your dad is white.' Which gutted me, truly. I identify as Latina. I identify with my mother's culture and country as well as American culture. In shops, I'm treated like every other Latina, followed around, then ignored at the counter. I married a white guy and had children who are blonde and blue eyed, and I'm frequently asked if I'm the nanny or babysitter. And white acquaintances often say, 'You are white. You act white.' And I saltily retort, 'Why? Because I'm not doing your lawn, or taking care of your kids? You need to broaden your idea of what Latina means.' "

Jen Boggs of Hawaii says she often feels like a racial impostor, but isn't quite sure which race she's faking:

"I was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when I was three. ... I grew up thinking that I was half-Filipina and half-white, under the impression that my mom's first husband was my biological father. I embraced this 'hapa-haole' identity (as they say in Hawaii), and loved my ethnic ambiguity. My mom wanted me to speak perfect English, so never spoke anything but to me. After she divorced her first husband and re-married my stepdad from Michigan, my whiteness became cemented.

"Except. As it turns out, my biological father was a Filipino man whom I've never met. I didn't find out until I tried to apply for a passport in my late twenties and the truth came out. So, at age 28 I learned that I was not half white but all Filipina. ...

"This new knowledge was a huge blow to my identity and, admittedly, to my self esteem. 'But I'm white,' I remember thinking. 'I'm so so white.' After much therapy, I'm happy and comfortable in my brown skin, though I'm still working out how others perceive me as this Other, Asian person."

Indigo Goodson's mom is Jamaican and her dad is African-American. She wrote about the way people's perceptions of her change based on where she lives:

"Culturally we grew up as Jamaican as two California-born black American children could have in the Bay Area. ... We ate mostly Jamaican food (prepared by both our mother and father), our Jamaican family lived with us growing up, and it was my mother that told us Anansi stories and other tales or sayings popular in Jamaica.

" ... Both my parents are black, so no one ever asked 'What are you?' ... But then when folks would meet my mum they would say things like, 'Oh I thought you were black!' or 'You do look Jamaican!' And I would tell people I'm still black and clearly Jamaicans look like black Americans because we are both the descendants of enslaved West Africans. Now that I live in New York City, where if you're black people assume you are first generation Caribbean, I often have to remind people that my dad is black American and so am I."

Helen Seely is originally from California. She told us what it's like for her to interact with different groups as a light-skinned biracial woman:

"White people like to believe I'm Caucasian like them; I think it makes their life less complicated. But I don't identify as 100% white, so there always comes a time in the conversation or relationship where I need to 'out' myself and tell them that I'm biracial.

"It's a vulnerable experience, but it becomes even harder when I'm with black Americans. It may sound strange - and there are so many layers to this that are hard to unpack - but I think what it comes down to is: they have more of a claim to 'blackness' than I ever will and therefore have the power to tell me I don't belong, I'm not enough, that I should stay on the white side of the identity line.

"You know that question we always get asked? 'What are you?' Well, I still don't know. I've never had an answer that I can say with confidence; I still don't know what I'm allowed to claim."

Natalia Romero echoes some of those feelings. Her family left Colombia for the U.S. when she was 9 years old, and she says that while she doesn't consider herself white, she gets treated like she's white all the time:

"My mother doesn't speak English and so when I am home all we speak is Spanish and act like a bunch of rowdy, tight knit Colombians ... I grew up experiencing what many poor young immigrants face - bad schools, hunger, poverty, a lack of resources - but eventually managed to pay my way through college and work now as a musician and teacher, often very white communities.

" ... When people talk about the current political climate, they speak to me as if I were white, not someone who is terrified of the hatred of Latinx and Hispanic people, someone who walks around with my green card in my wallet, knowing that until I am a citizen (which I morally have a huge problem with) I am not safe. I exist and inhabit these white spaces, but my experience is not white. My experiences comes from being the sole English speaker in my house at age 9 and having to speak for my parents at the bank, at school, in apartments. My experience is from pretending my youngest sister wasn't part of our family because the apartment complex only allowed 4 people to a 1 bedroom apartment and we couldn't afford a 2 bedroom one. I come from a place where people speak poorly of Latinx people around me not realizing I am one ... "

Everyone's story is different, and as is discussed on the podcast, we're still learning how to talk about identities that fall outside of our traditional understandings of race in the United States. Luckily, for those who are confused, you're in good company.

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'Racial Impostor Syndrome': Here Are Your Stories

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We got more than 100 letters from our listeners about how y'all feel like fakes. Here are some of our favorites.

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Rebecca Hall Credit... Carly Zavala for The New York Times

Rebecca Hall's new film adaptation of the 1929 novel "Passing" has cracked open a public conversation about colorism and privilege.

Rebecca Hall Credit... Carly Zavala for The New York Times

When Rebecca Hall read Nella Larsen's groundbreaking 1929 novel, "Passing," over a decade ago, she felt an intense, immediate attachment to it. The story seemed to clarify so much that was mysterious about her own identity - the unnameable gaps in her family history that shaped her life in their very absence, the way a sinkhole in the road distorts the path of traffic blocks away.

The novel follows Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two light-skinned Black women who grew up in the same Chicago neighborhood and shared a friendship complicated by differences in class and social status. When Clare's father died, she was sent off to live with white relatives, while Irene went on to become firmly ensconced in the vibrant Black artistic and cultural community of 1920s Harlem, wife to a Black doctor and mother to two dark-skinned young boys. One day, while passing for convenience on the rooftop restaurant of a whites-only hotel, Irene is recognized by a beautiful blond woman, who turns out to be Clare - who now not only lives her life as a white woman but is also mother to a white-passing daughter and married to a bigoted man who has no clue about her mixed-race heritage. The friends' reunion crackles with tension, charged with curiosity, envy and longing.

When Clare asks Irene if she has ever thought about passing in a more permanent way herself, Irene responds disdainfully: "No. Why should I?" She adds, "You see, Clare, I've everything I want." And maybe it's true that the respectable, high-status life Irene has built in Harlem encompasses everything a serious woman, committed to lifting up her race, should want. But Clare's sudden presence begins to raise a sense of dangerous possibility within Irene - one of unacknowledged desires and dissatisfactions. When she sees the ease with which Clare re-enters and ingratiates herself within Black society, it threatens Irene's feeling of real, authentic belonging.

Raised in England within the elite circles of classical theater, Hall, who is 39, had her first introduction to the concept of racial "passing" in the pages of Larsen's novel. "I was spending time in America, and I knew that there had been vague, but I mean really vague, talk about my mother's ethnicity," Hall explained over the phone this spring. Her voice is calm and poised, with a warm polish to it, and she tends to speak in composed paragraphs. Over the year that we had corresponded, Hall hadn't been acting much and had instead spent time writing screenplays from the Hudson Valley home that she shares with her daughter and her husband, the actor Morgan Spector. "Sometimes she would intimate that maybe there was African American ancestry, or sometimes she would intimate that there was Indigenous ancestry. But she didn't really know; it wasn't available to her."

Hall grew up steeped in performance: Her father, Sir Peter Hall, was known for founding the Royal Shakespeare Company and serving as the director of the Royal National Theater for many years, and possessed what she describes as a preternatural ability to know when and how an actor could be gently pushed into an even better performance. Her mother, Maria Ewing, an American raised in Detroit, is one of opera's most celebrated sopranos, famous for her daring portrayal of Salome in Richard Strauss's production, in which she followed the Oscar Wilde-penned stage directions to the letter and went nude onstage.

After her parents divorced in 1990, Hall lived for many years with her mother in a manor in the English countryside, where she remembers rooms filled with the sound of jazz on vinyl, her mother making herself at home in the relative isolation and remoteness of an adopted country. "I was sort of brought up to believe that I was this - all of which is true, by the way - privileged, upper-middle-class, sort of bohemian well-educated white girl from a very prestigious family background," Hall said. "And that was sort of where it stopped. And when I asked questions to my mother about her background in Detroit and her family," Hall said, her voice low and firm, "she left it with an 'I don't want to dwell on the past.'"

Until a friend pointed her to Nella Larsen's "Passing," Hall had no way of naming her intuition that these gaps in her family history were narratively charged - but reading it was a "gut punch." "I felt deeply challenged and confused," Hall recalled. "And the only way I could actually process it, for me, was to sit down and adapt it. I didn't, at the time, think, I'm going to adapt it, because I know it's going to make a killer film and I'm going to direct it. I really didn't. It was sort of personal and quiet, and I did it in 10 days." Then she stowed it away in a drawer for the better part of a decade.

Margot Hand, a friend and a producer of "Passing," the film that was eventually made from that screenplay and that opens theatrically in the United States on Oct. 27 and streams on Netflix beginning on Nov. 10, remembers watching Hall on the set of "Permission," a film they were both involved in, and noticing how knowledgeable she was about the setup and composition of the shots. When she asked Hall whether she had ever considered directing, she replied that there was only one movie she could imagine herself making as her first film: an adaptation of a novel from the 1920s, based on a screenplay she wrote years earlier. Hand told me that the version of the screenplay that was used in filming is essentially identical to the one Hall showed her years ago - one of those rare artistic impulses that emerges whole and intact, like an egg.

As Hall began to consider turning the script into her first directed feature, she knew that much of her vision for the film was nonnegotiable: It had to be shot in black and white, an unpopular choice from the perspective of studios, because black and white can be a harder sell in foreign markets. It had to be shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio that was the default for celluloid film in the 1920s and '30s but that has since been replaced by wider proportions. And it had to have Black women cast in the lead roles of Irene and Clare - another sticking point in a moment when white actors still command the most star power and box-office revenue. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga signed on early and stayed attached through the years it took to gather the financing for the film, an unusual vote of confidence that Hall credits with the film's eventually being made.

"It's a big undertaking to have this be your debut, and it's still so hard as a female filmmaker to get something made," Thompson explained to me over the phone. "To know that she would trust me with that, because so much would hinge on my performance, really was such a gift to me."

Hall was insistent: To film in black and white was a way of honoring the films that she was raised on, which starred strong female leads like Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Myrna Loy. And casting Black actors allowed her to conjure the fantasy of a "lost noir film" that might have had a Black actress in a leading role, while nodding to a lineage of films like "Imitation of Life" (1934). Starring the Black actress Fredi Washington, the film is the story of a daughter who breaks her mother's heart by deciding to pass as white. Some Southern audiences were scandalized by it because Washington's light skin, combined with the ambiguity of the black-and-white cinematography, made it impossible for them to discern whether the actress was truly Black or truly white.

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Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson in ''Passing.'' Credit... Netflix

But each of these compositional choices also functions to amplify the internal tension of the narrative, to pressurize the pull of Irene and Clare's relationship. In black and white, the viewer becomes hyperattuned to the shades of gray that form the bulk of the visual image, an anxious gatekeeper perceiving similarity and difference at the same time. In the unconventionally narrowed screen, the two women's bodies are continually in relation, one occluding, the other hidden, the distance between them always palpable. As Hall says, the framing "forces the face literally into the center of the frame, constantly. And so it constantly says, loud and clear, that this is a movie about faces and how we see them and watch them being seen." In this aspect ratio, she adds, "there's no room for escape." For her, the project has been one of self-discovery and self-reckoning: "I'd say that the whole journey from that day when I sat down to write this to now has been a way of me processing and understanding my family better," Hall says. "It was a bit of an exploration and also something I felt compelled to do for reasons I had no language for."

For the first half of my own life, I had no language for the sensation of precarious contingency that went along with my multiracial face, a product of a Taiwanese mother who immigrated in the 1980s and an American father with German ancestry. My childhood spanned the 1990s, when multicultural was an aesthetic, a party free of bad vibes. On TV, in the video for Michael Jackson's "Black or White," faces of different races morphed into one another, smiling hugely as they lip-synced the words. In elementary school in central New Jersey, I was asked once a year to bring in a "favorite recipe that shows your heritage" to add to a gradewide cookbook - I turned in the same recipe every time, for pork-and-cabbage dumplings - and on Veterans Day to wear some traditional Taiwanese apparel while sitting on a float that rolled through the park behind my house. Culture was to be celebrated, and as with a good buffet, you could have as much as you wanted, all piled together.

If culture was additive, race was a place for optimism, insofar as its projected irrelevance would free the nation of the problems it had caused. Multiracial people were one mechanism through which that liberation would be accomplished: Their existence, and their acceptance and success in America, would be evidence that the country had left behind the violence and inequity of its past. If the nation couldn't achieve racial equality through the political process, then citizens could do it themselves by creating a new kind of person.

Being a symbol of racial and cultural optimism is a strange sign to live under. Your beauty signifies the rightness of the coming transition, its aesthetic balance; your flexibility, empathy and intermingled whiteness comfort those who fear the loss of place or privilege in the coming demographic shift. You are a bridge between the genes of your mother and the genes of your father, a bridge between their cultures - a bridge being a structure that others can use to cross something hazardous. You are a link between past and present that somehow carries forward none of the old grudges.

But in the classroom and on the playground, my racial ambiguity didn't feel like something to celebrate. At some times, I felt illegible and unseen; at others, I felt that my inharmonious features - the unusual shape of my eyes, my odd accent and the gaps in my knowledge of either culture - were bizarrely visible. Other children and some adults asked about me, speculated about me, tried to puzzle through my racial and cultural identity. And in the estrangement I felt in the towns we moved to, surrounded mostly by white people and sensing my mother's own melancholia at being stranded far from her home country and the languages she was most comfortable living in, I found little in my racial identity that I could use as an anchor.

One day when I was 16, alone in the school library during lunch hour, I came upon "Passing" and, like Hall, found it strangely, alarmingly moving. It gave shape and language to the racial ambivalence I experienced that was difficult to place within the optimistic rhetoric that surrounded me. The precarity that Clare and Irene live with, one walking a tightrope between two worlds designated as incommensurable and the other clutching at the apparent safety of a singular, grounded identity, spoke to my own fear of a catastrophic mobility, the feeling that if I didn't find some way to root myself firmly to one world or the other, I might never find a way to belong anywhere. Texts are always haunted by the unseen - in basic terms, they work to conjure in the mind what they can only point at in words - but this entire book was fueled by invisible, scarcely apprehended drives that seemed to come from society, that spectral presence that moves us all in difficult-to-identify ways.

As I read George Hutchinson's "In Search of Nella Larsen," the most comprehensive biography of the writer, I found a life that encompassed, at different times, the public-facing dutifulness of Irene Redfield and the lonesome, destructive freedom of Clare Kendry. A mysterious and remote figure who left inconsistent traces in the public record, Larsen struggled all her life to find her place among the categories available to her. The daughter of a white Danish seamstress and a Black cook from the Danish West Indies, Larsen spent her early years in an interracial sliver of Chicago where all kinds of people commingled in saloons and brothels, far from the buttoned-up neighborhoods of elite white and elite Black society. When her mother married another white immigrant from Denmark and gave birth to her second daughter, Larsen's skin tone prevented the family from establishing themselves in one of the newer, less precarious neighborhoods dominated by working-class white immigrants. After years of tension navigating an increasingly segregated city, her mother sent her to study at an elite, all-Black teacher-training program in Tennessee, where she was expelled after a year, probably for violating the dress code. She returned to Denmark, where she lived for a time as a child.

With her Scandinavian roots and little direct connection to the legacy of slavery that defined much of the African American experience, and because she came from a poor background, Larsen never felt fully at home in elite all-Black social circles. After she went to nursing school and became the first Black librarian to attend the New York Public Library's prestigious library school, her first publications were selections of Danish children's games and songs. The novelist Walter White, part of the literary community she had begun to associate with, encouraged her to write a novel, and eventually, she wrote two: the quasi-autobiographical "Quicksand" and her second and last published novel, "Passing." She became one of the most celebrated - and maligned - writers of the Harlem Renaissance, insisting on a social circle that included the controversial white author Carl Van Vechten, whose writings had been deemed exploitative by many Black critics.

In her work, Larsen complicated traditional notions of morality or race loyalty. She sometimes wrote about white people, as in the unpublished domestic thriller set in Boston that she wrote and rewrote in her last years as a working writer, as if trying to prove that colored people could enter the minds and lives of white people. After years of disappointments - her physicist husband was having an affair with a white co-worker, and one after another the manuscripts she submitted were rejected by publishers - Larsen retreated. Without telling the remnants of her literary circle, she moved to a different apartment down the block and became unreachable to her friends and colleagues. She quietly returned to nursing and died in the company of colleagues who had little idea that she had been a writer at all.

The unusual shape of Larsen's story, riddled with holes and obscurities, has led many to misread her. When her work was rediscovered in the 1980s and 1990s and began to appear on syllabuses, biographers claimed she had embellished her Danish heritage in order to distance herself from African American culture and present herself as European, and therefore more sophisticated. Other critics suggested that she left her literary life in order to begin passing as white. In reality, the proof of her connection to Denmark only required more care and effort to unearth, and though she once boasted in a letter to friends of having managed to have lunch in an upscale whites-only Southern restaurant, Hutchinson argues that she never tried to pass in any deeper, more deliberate way. But the misinterpretations of Larsen and her work point to her predicament: Even as she attained significant success as a writer, she left too few traces on paper to ensure that she would be read accurately. She remained enigmatic, illegible to most.

In early August, I took a ride share, a ferry and a public bus to a quiet corner of Martha's Vineyard to meet Hall at the first in-person festival event she had attended in over a year and a half. Though "Passing" had found distribution and been featured at the Sundance Film Festival, the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival would be the first place where an audience gathered to watch and discuss it together. It was the weekend of Barack Obama's much-publicized 60th-birthday party, a celebration that would have brought hundreds of guests to the Vineyard, before it was scaled down amid right-wing criticism and Covid concerns. I walked past rows of newly painted and neatly hedged houses that looked out onto a still, grassy bay where over 400 years earlier an English explorer from Bristol anchored, traded with the native Wampanoag people and "enjoyed terrifying them with the sound of his cannon," according to a 1923 book on the history of the island.

Hall appeared on the wraparound porch of her bayside hotel in a dark button-up shirt and slim pants - casual, but in a different way from the bright whites and pale colors that covered much of the island. Hall had recently taken part in Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s PBS series, "Finding Your Roots" (the episode will air next year), and filled in some of the lacunas in her family history that had made elements of her own life feel incomplete or difficult to comprehend. She had shown a version of her film to her mother, sparking conversations that they weren't able to have in the decades preceding. And "Passing" had been sold to Netflix for almost $17 million, a deal that would guarantee the film the sort of broad audience and promotional support rarely given to intricate, demanding art foregrounding Black women.

The process of funding the film had been long and difficult - multiple studios offered Hall funding if she agreed to film in color, but she turned those offers down. Many months ago, Hall felt resigned to the idea that the film would always be a niche artifact, telling herself: "If I have to make it for nothing and it sells for nothing and nobody ever sees it, then so be it. This is the film that I want to make." She now felt "a bit smug," and a bit shocked, at the idea that art had won out.

Hall's adaptation cuts to the quick of the novel and transfers the shifting, unsettling quality of Larsen's text back onto the viewer's shoulders. The film delves into the gray zone of seeing, priming the viewer to become aware of the way his or her own perception is positioned and constructed. Under the intensive, focused gaze of the film's long shots, Thompson and Negga deliver performances dense with desire and repulsion. Thompson plays Irene with turbulent restraint, her silences heavy and her speech shaped and structured by unseen constraints, while Negga's Clare is dazzling and appetitive - her mobility, and the zest with which she transgresses boundaries of race and class, expose the falseness of the racial categories upheld by white and Black alike.

The film feels timeless, closer kin to the moody, claustrophobic psychological landscape of Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" or the taut, covert romance of Todd Haynes's "Carol" than to other films that depict the same period. In this way, though set with care and historical fidelity in the 1920s, it's not a film about the past or even about the social conditions of Larsen's America, but about the way choices made during Larsen's time reverberate through succeeding generations. It highlights the psychic afterlife of racial trauma - the quiet holes pressed into the psyche by self-denial.

Like some long-limbed people, Hall has a tendency to fold herself up on the furniture in a disarming way, tucking her feet beneath her on the wicker sofa as she held a cup of green tea that I never saw her drink from. The researchers on "Finding Your Roots," she told me, traced her mother's side of the family tree as far back as her great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. She learned that her great-grandfather, whose name was John William Ewing, was born into slavery but found government work post-abolition in Washington, and even gave the toast for Frederick Douglass at a banquet in his honor. Her great-grandmother was a free woman of color, descended from one of only 5,000 Black men who fought on the side of the rebels during the Revolutionary War. But against the background of so much lineage lost and recovered was the discovery of the exact point at which the narrative had broken. "The revelation," she said, "was that it was just my grandfather who passed - just that one act that erased a huge amount of history, including some stuff that's really extraordinary." She spoke carefully, pausing often. "The irony is his father was a race man. His father was someone who wanted to uplift."

I pointed out how rare it was for a person to have the chance to make a decision that so rapidly shifts the path of his descendants, a complex, psychological decision that erased anyone's ability to find out why he made it. Hall nodded. "And if you know that it happened, it passes on a legacy that's" - she trailed off, searching for the right term - "so confused, you know? Because if you're the child of the parent, and you believe them to be doing the right thing, or hiding something by living in secret, then your obligation to the parent is to do what they do." When I asked if her mother ever told stories about her own father that might shed light on why he chose to pass, or what his experience was like afterward, she told me that her grandfather was an artist and a musician, and this is part of what made them close - her mother learned to sing from imitating records in the basement of the family house. She left home soon after he died when she was 16, Hall said, gaining admission to the Cleveland Institute of Music against the odds and later moving to the Barbizon Hotel in New York, and eventually to Europe, where she sang in Salzburg, in Milan, in London.

Hall didn't know if her grandfather was a sort of anchor for her mother, whether his death caused her to leave home. But her mother did talk, Hall said, about an event that was very disturbing for her. "Her father was driving her home from somewhere. And they got out of the car, and there was a neighbor who my mom described as having a long yellow braid on one side. She was a white lady who had always been very nice to them. But as they were getting out of the car, this woman just turned around and said, 'Why don't you die?'" The woman added a toxic racial epithet. "And worse, that was not long before he died." Her mother was very confused. She would tell this story, Hall said, but mostly avoided speaking about that time. I find myself haunted by it. I include it here even though I'm not sure what exactly the story signifies. What had happened to transform the neighbor's view of her grandfather? Had her grandfather's history of passing come to the surface, however carefully he hid it? In the end, it's a narrative with a deep hole at its center, one that mirrors others in Hall's family, a break in the telling that can't be filled in through any amount of genealogical research or archival work.

At the start of the golden hour, I made my way across the island to a reception on the deck of a waterfront restaurant, a celebration of the screening that would happen in a couple of short hours. Guests were already there, piling plates with beet salad and seafood. The atmosphere was warm and easy. When Hall and Spector appeared, a line formed in front of them, and I listened from nearby as they traded thanks with producers and attendees. A woman with straightened black hair, who appeared to be in her 50s or 60s, approached. She thanked them for coming and then added that the film was meaningful to her because her aunts lived their lives passing as white. "Because they passed and we didn't, they didn't want to be seen with us," she explained.

Hall's film has cracked open a public conversation about colorism, privilege and secrets. On Twitter, people are sharing stories and black-and-white photographs of a grandmother's cousins who moved out of state, great-aunts who sneaked back to see their family in secret, relatives who lost their jobs when co-workers informed management about their identities: a public airing of what in Hall's family was once closely held. Recently one of her mother's sisters reached out: She said that they never really had language to understand the hidden context that shaped their family, and she thanked her for giving it to them.

Other responses pointed to the ways that racial categories continue to shape our collective thinking. When the trailer for the film debuted on social media, it prompted a deluge of tweets. Some shared memes featuring the movie title alongside photos of multiracial celebrities like Rashida Jones, Maya Rudolph and Thandiwe Newton - the implication being that these lighter-skinned actresses would be a better fit for the roles or that they were continuing to benefit from the ability to pass as white in Hollywood and beyond. That so much of the discussion circulated around Thompson's and Negga's ability to successfully pass as white felt surreal, a return to a type of racial scrutiny that seems antithetical to the project of both the book and its adaptation. One Twitter user explained that in Larsen's day, passing did not necessarily mean persuading others that you were white, only persuading them that you were "not-Black." Another suggested that the director was trying to heighten tensions with the casting, reminding the viewers at all times of the possibility that the characters would be found out.

From right: Rebecca Hall, Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson on the set of "Passing." Credit... Emily V. Aragones/Netflix

"There's a real irony in this, in that the people who can really pass like me are challenged sometimes about whether they're really, truly Black," Mat Johnson, an African American novelist of mixed descent, told me over the phone. "So we have this paradox where some of the same people who would be like 'Well, he's not really Black,' or 'She's not really Black,' also feel real ownership about the idea of passing being a part of the African American experience. It's interesting because even that discussion is about who owns the story of passing."

"Passing" is re-entering the culture at a moment when being multiracial is viewed in a more sober, realistic light than it was when I was growing up. In recent works like Johnson's graphic novel "Incognegro," Danzy Senna's "New People" and Brit Bennett's best-selling "The Vanishing Half," authors have rewritten the literary tropes of Black passing to probe its blind spots and challenge the notion that the color line has been erased within American society. If earlier notions of a cohesive "mixed race" identity failed to materialize, who could be surprised? No grand unifying theory of multiraciality can account for the multiple, highly specific ways in which individuals reconcile their own hybrid backgrounds, or for the particular way in which Blackness resists assimilation into both whiteness and the middle ground of the mixed.

"I've seen Black people around me getting interested in their family history start to do their research and realize that to be Black in America necessarily means having some non-Black ancestry," Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of the novel "Libertie," told me in a recent conversation. "Genetically, many of us have about 25 percent white DNA within us. To be Black, this thing that we say is readable and defined as necessarily separate from whiteness, literally usually means for most of us that we are, in fact, intertwined with it," she said. "Hopefully what that will do is force people to have more complicated discussions about what it means to share all of this DNA when we still have this system set up to reward those who are closest or closer to whiteness."

Over the past 10 years or so, I've noticed more people bypassing the conundrum of what it means to be racially mixed in order to define themselves in terms of who they feel themselves to be, how they lay claim to their cultures, how they themselves conceptualize racial boundaries. Many choose to identify as wholly Asian, or wholly Black, or to identify as multiple full identities rather than fractions of a diminishing whole. You could say that there are potentially as many racial identities as there are racial stories, and the more fulfilling work is to dwell in these stories rather than in their categorization. In the end, narrative may the best tool we have for binding together the disparate elements that make up the self.

Alexandra Kleeman is a professor at the New School and the author of two novels, "You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine" and "Something New Under the Sun." Carly Zavala is a photographer who was born in Venezuela and is based in Brooklyn. She was a nurse for 15 years and is known for her play with light and shadow to create emotive and moody images.

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Rebecca Hall's new film adaptation of the 1929 novel "Passing" has cracked open a public conversation about colorism and privilege. Rebecca Hall Credit... Carly Zavala for The New York Times When Rebecca Hall read Nella Larsen's groundbreaking 1929 novel, "Passing," over a decade ago, she felt an intense, immediate attachment to it.

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My skin is white. My ethnicity is mixed. I "pass." I benefit from white privilege. I am an ally.But don't call me white.Because I'm not. Not really.

It's something I've dealt with all my life: people assuming, quite understandably, given my appearance and that I grew up in a white-dominated society, that I'm as white as the majority. Even though half of my family is brown.

I don't blame people for looking at me and making assumptions - we all do it - and how is anyone to know my specific heritage unless I tell them?

But I have to wonder, what do we really mean by "white people"? Having pale skin? Simply not being Black? Or specifically being (at least predominantly) European-descended?

And what does "person of color" mean, then, if it includes more than just "Black" people alone? Anyone with a certain level of melanin in their skin? (Who decides how much is enough?) Or anyone who is not completely the product of these Eurocentric/ colonizer cultures?

Basically, what I'm trying to say is - are there only two options? And perhaps more importantly, who proposed these options?

What about those who don't necessarily ethnically identify as "white" but their skin tells another story?

What about Turks? Bosnians? Bulgarians? Ashkenazi jews?

What about the Lur people of northern Iran or the Kalash people of northern Pakistan?

Or simply "white-passing" mixed-race people?

Are these people white..? Ethnically, racially, culturally? Because of their skin tone and hair color? Because an American said so?

Are westerners the guilty ones for attempting to put all those who aren't the archetypical Karen or Kevin into a box? In a misguided attempt to be more "woke," and yet only separating "white people" out from the crowd - as though this one ethnic group deserves a whole distinct category - while lumping together every other ethnicity (and combination of ethnicities) on this earth? (And then freaking out upon encountering an "Ibrahim" or "Khadijah" with auburn hair, green eyes, and a complexion as white as their own?)

As though "white" is the default, and everything else has been marked as different somehow. "Colored." Stained. Tainted? Grouping together native Pacific Islanders with Hispanic people with Ethiopians with Indians with the Chinese, with someone with one Black grandparent meaning they look "mixed".

Does this make any sort of sense to anyone?

What if that alleged stamp of color doesn't show up so clearly on your own skin? Does it erase the rich culture - so far away from " white culture " - that you are so proud is a part of you? Are you still "white" simply because of how you appear to others? Did you decide that, or did they?

So when I uncharacteristically flipped out at someone shutting down my opinion on a race-related issue at work (an issue affecting my own ethnic group, I might add) with the phrase "you're not a person of color so you can't have an opinion on that," my unexpected rage, looking back, had several layers to it:

1. Anyone can have an opinion of anything (hear me out...)- so even if someone is as white as they come, they should be "allowed" - and even encouraged - to discuss racism. Of course, ensuring that they are accepting of their privilege, and open to learning from others' experiences.

2. You can't just assume someone is ethnically "white" or immune to ethnicity or migration-related issues just because they have a pale complexion. There are countless ethnicities that these same people would be quick to throw into the "of color" box on paper - but then they see your face and acknowledge the privilege which you - admittedly - may well have as a nonsensical result of this lack of melanin, and completely ignore the actual racial background or heritage that you may have. "Okay white girl." Urgh.

3. We have essentially gone full circle - from the ignorant "race" categories of the colonial era, to finally acknowledging the nuance and overlap when it comes to ethnicity - to now reverting back to those superficial and culturally-ignorant categories, regardless of the individual's actual ethnic identity that often goes far beyond "Black" or "White." (Although I completely understand the importance of the "Black" label in order to build a very necessary movement in a society that continues to ignore these nuances.)

I have never really thought of myself as "white" - but then, I don't feel I truly have the right to claim that I am not, looking the way I do, and since others see me as such.

Wouldn't denying my "whiteness" be like denying I have privilege? Or would not correcting them be denying my true heritage? Because I've been accused of both of these.

Of course, I have never experienced racism as a result of the way I look. This privilege, I wholeheartedly recognize and acknowledge. And I don't wish to appear I am complaining about my lot, or turning the conversation away from the very real racism that more obvious "people of color" experience on a daily basis.

And so, caught up in this moral conundrum, like a true millennial trooper I took to the internet to see if others had expressed similar experiences - and to see what they thought was the acceptable way to handle these interactions.

I found this article, which, in recounting the experiences of a few similarly "white-passing" and yet mixed ethnicity or at least not as European as their features suggest.

Their hesitancy to speak up about the awkward assumptions, confusion, and even misplaced admiration they received really resonated with me - because, in many ways, it really is a privilege within a privilege to be between two worlds in this way.

To have at least somewhat of a "POC perspective" and yet be able to blend into any white-dominated crowd. To be a welcome contribution to a diversity quota, and yet feeling like this shouldn't be allowed. To be assimilated into a "non-white" culture, and yet be problematically idolized for your white features...

Yeah, it can feel uncomfortable.

Am I white? What does that even mean anymore?

It seems that just a result of the genetic lottery, making my features seem that bit more European than my siblings, I am "white" - even though they are not, apparently. Even though they have the same two parents, heritage, and cultural upbringing.

How does that work? Have we really ended up back where we started when it comes to making all these assumptions about someone based on their physical features alone? Who "passes" and who doesn't?

If being "white" is no more than a social construct, then I guess I am white. Due to my looks and the Western society I live in. But we are all much more than these labels society tells us we must live by. And one day, I truly hope we no-longer even feel a need to use them.

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My skin is white. My ethnicity is mixed. I "pass." I benefit from white privilege. I am an ally.But don't call me white. Because I'm not. Not really. It's something I've dealt with all my life: people assuming, quite understandably, given my appearance and that I grew up in a white-dominated society, that I'm as white as the majority.

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H A L U H A L O Mixtapes - Being White Passing/Presenting Mixed Race

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My name is Alyson Sebright. I was born in Boise and grew up in Nampa, where I still reside. I'm currently a Junior majoring in English with an emphasis in Literature here at Boise State, with plans to study abroad in Stirling, Scotland this coming Fall of 2019. I chose to study literature because of my deep passion for storytelling, not only in telling my own stories but better understanding those of others. I believe wholeheartedly that sharing stories can change the world and for that reason I study literature with the intention of one day working in the publishing field as a developmental fiction editor. After graduation I am planning to pursue a graduate degree, either through a Fulbright program or a graduate school here in the States. When I'm not studying, I can usually be found loitering around the Writing Center with my coworkers, doing photography around town, or working on my latest creative writing project.

Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Nella Larsen's Passing: An Exploration of Performed Identity

Nella Larsen's novel, Passing, centers around the experience of two biracial women whose identities are primarily performative as they navigate life with the privilege of "passing" as White. Through this narrative, Larsen suggests that both racial and gender/sexual identities are as largely performative as they are inherent. Passing explores the ideas of both these identities as they exist in a world where passing is possible. Larsen calls into question the very nature of such concepts and their intersections: how identity shapes the experiences of individuals, and how those individuals shape those identities in turn.

The novel evaluates racial identity in several ways, but centers upon the socially-enforced performative nature of biracialism. In one of the opening scenes, Irene is waited upon in a rooftop cafe where she is passing as White in order to exist within the space and receive the service she desires. Larsen explains of Irene: "Never, when she was alone, had they [White people] even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro" (Larsen 8). This is one of the first moments in which the reader sees Irene engage in the activity of "passing", and it emphasizes the nature of race as a performative identity in the case of "mulatto" or lighter skinned Black individuals, whose biracial identity is largely ignored, forcing such individuals to "choose" to perform one race or another. As one scholar explains: "the act of passing both subverts racial categories and reinforces them, employing the logic that people of mixed ancestry are 'really' black but pretend to be white" (Nisetich 350). In this moment, Irene's choice to pass, while it does afford her the desired effect of being treated as a White citizen, necessitates her to temporarily deny her racial identity. This choice is inherently ironic, as Irene becomes obsessed with the idea of racial "loyalty" as the novel continues, in relation to her perceptions of Clare's decision to pass as White.

Irene focuses heavily on the idea of "uplifting the race", referencing and engaging with her identity as a Black woman, but in doing so is also ignoring the fact that her identity is inherently Black and White, due to the fact that society forces her to choose between one of these labels in her performance of identity. In contrast, Irene criticizes Clare's decision to pass and lead the privileged life of a White person in America, while also sporadically engaging with her Black identity when it suited her. Larsen explains, "the trouble with Clare was not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well" (38). Irene's frustration with Clare comes from her understanding of Clare's positioning within the social hierarchy, and the way in which Clare manipulates her performed identity to best suit her interests. Clare chooses the privileges of a White lifestyle rather than making an earnest attempt to be a good representative of the Black race and attempting to uplift it in the "talented tenth" sense as established by W.E.B. Du Bois. Here, Irene is struggling with the core issue of the biracial identity: how one occupies two identities that are widely considered to be contradictory or opposing. Both Clare and Irene represent opposing ends of of this ideological spectrum in their performances of their racial identities, and in doing so further perpetuate the socially enforced idea that biracial individuals must "choose a side" to perform, rather than embracing and performing their biracial identity.

However, the idea that biracial individuals embody two contradicting identities is inherently problematic. There is no logical reasoning for such identities to entail an inherently antagonistic relationship. In asking biracial individuals to choose a race to perform, society additionally asks them to ignore an aspect of their identity while also being excluded from both communities as they occupy their biracial identity, which is widely perceived by American culture to be nonexistent. Due to the historical establishment of ideas such as the "one drop rule", wherein a White individual with even "one drop of black blood" could and should be racially categorized as Black, American society has embraced the idea that an identity that is both Black and White is impossible.

Applying this to Larsen's novel, critic George Hutchinson explains: "the difference between Irene and Clare is not that Clare escapes from the [one drop] rule, which she does not recognize, but that her attempt to live free of its sway is in the end defeated by the way in which others, including Irene, view her" (345). In this way Hutchinson suggests that, despite her performance of racial identity, Clare cannot escape her Blackness due to the perceptions of others within her community. Hutchinson suggests that what Clare did not consider in her performance of identity is audience, and that ultimately her identity has to be externally recognized in order for it to be real, due to the nature of a performed identity.

Additionally, Larsen emphasizes the hypocrisy of Irene's criticism of Clare through her actions as a Black woman in the domestic setting. Whereas many Black upper-middle class citizens of this era employed White servants (due to the fact that many Black individuals would refuse to work for Black families), Irene's servant is Black and incapable of passing. When this character, Zulena, is introduced, she is immediately objectified and dehumanized in her description as a "small, mahogany-coloured creature"(Larsen 40). Despite a third person limited perspective in the novel's narration, the reader is aware that these descriptors are at the very least informed by Irene's own opinions, and therefore reflect her own perceptions of Zulena. As one scholar explains,"introducing Zulena into a reading of Passing reveals the domestic sphere as a fraught arena for the development of African-American female selfhood, in which ideologies of middle-class domesticity intersect uncomfortably with service and servitude" (Wilson 980). This suggests the conflict between Irene's ideology and her actions, as she firmly commits herself to be an "uplifter of the race" while she simultaneously perpetuates stereotypical career roles for Black women.

One of the most important aspects of Passing in terms of its role in the American canon is it's expression of intersectionality in the American experience, particularly in terms of gender/sexuality and race. As Irene and Clare's narratives develop, the moments in which issues of race and gender intersect are critical to understanding Larsen's depiction of how one's expression of their identity shapes their experience. In many ways, Clare serves as the uncanny doppelganger to Irene in the Freudian psychoanalytic sense. As Freud describes, "the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar" (515), and the double, which instills a sense of the uncanny as it is "marked by the fact that the subject identifies himself with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is, or substitutes the extraneous self for his own" (522).

Freud theorizes that what makes the double uncanny is its role in confusing the idea of the "self", that providing a duplicate of the self that draws into question who or what can be identified as the "real" or "true" self. Thus, Clare occupies the narrative space as the uncanny double figure of Irene, embodying the familiar in the sense that she seems to share the same racial, sexual, and gender identities as Clare while also being a representative of the unknown, as she chooses to live her life as a White woman. This explains some of Irene's frustrations with Clare, as Irene can recognize the strong connections between her and Clare's identities, and this forces her to consider the morality of how she chooses to pass permanently as Black, only engaging with her own White identity when it suits her interests.

The theory of the uncanny double helps explain Irene's hatred of and obsession with Clare, as she simultaneously represents everything Irene is as well as everything Irene chooses not to be. The best external example of this narrative device comes in the form of Irene's husband, Brian, and his implied attraction to Clare. Irene describes: "that old, queer, unhappy restlessness had begun again within him; that craving for some place strange and different, which at the beginning of her marriage she had had to make such strenuous efforts to repress" (Larsen 36). While this quote is directly addressing Brian's desire to move to Brazil in order to escape some of the discrimination him and his children experience as Black Americans who are incapable of passing, it also foreshadows Brian's interest in something "strange and different" that puts stress upon his marriage- an interest in the uncanny. By expressing a preexisting and persisting tension caused by Brian's desire for something "different", Larsen suggests that perhaps this issue is not necessarily limited to racism in America, but a deeper issue within Brian and Irene's marriage. This issue will then be further explored with the introduction of Clare, the double, as it presents the opportunity for Brian to explore everything Irene might be lacking.

Once she has convinced herself that Brian is having an affair with Clare, Irene surmises: "She [Irene] was, to him, only the mother of his sons. That was all. Alone she was nothing. Worse. An obstacle" (Larsen 74). Here, Irene seems to be suggesting that Brian's interest in Clare stems from the fact that he cannot remove Irene's identity marker as the mother of his children enough to be sexually interested in her, and she now only serves as an "obstacle" over which he must hurdle to attain the object of his desire. She has become, as Freud would describe, the "heimlich" or familiar, of which there is a sense of safety and consistency, but also homeliness, in the sense of both the literal definition of "domestic" as well as the connotative definition of "unattractive". Clare, in contrast, supplies an alternative version of Irene: a shifted version of the same biracial straight woman that at one time Brian loved, but now with the new context of choosing to pass as White. This also seems to imply a certain level of internalized racism in Brian, as he seems to desire the "White option" of Irene in the form of Clare the double, thus perpetuating certain stereotypes of American beauty standards that profess Whiteness is inherently more beautiful or attractive.

Once Irene assumes that Brian holds these ideas (as it is never actually confirmed or denied by him), she seems to lose all sense of her own sexual identity. In a Freudian sense, Irene has submitted her sexual identity to her double, as Clare is the presumed sexual partner of Brian. Additionally, this could account for Irene's own implied sexual interest in Clare as a projection of her own sexuality. In this way Larsen seems to be implying that Irene's sexual identity centers around her marital relationship with her husband, and that whoever is engaging with him sexually is the "true" version of Irene. In this way, Brian represents the crux of the intersectional issue of both Irene's racial and gender/sexual identities. His desire for the "other" version of Irene represented by Clare implies a preference for a White Irene, which is in turn related to beauty standards that are inextricably connected to Irene's identity as a woman.

Once Brian favors that which Irene is not, Irene must reconcile with what that means for her as a wife, and by extension, a woman. In the attainment of the defining female role of mother, Irene seems to have lost her sexual appeal to her husband and now faces the crisis of such a paradox. In her decision to pass as Black she feels she made an unintentional decision to give up her chance at the traditional American standard for beauty and desirability: Whiteness. It is in this way that Larsen draws a direct connection between race, gender, and sexuality as they inform one another due to socially accepted perceptions of beauty standards that inform gender expectations which in turn affect the sexual relationships of those raised in that society.

In turn, the understanding of Irene and Clare as doubles also makes interesting suggestions about their social experience of race. In choosing which identities they perform, each character formed for themselves a unique lifestyle and experience of American culture. While both of these doubles engages occasionally with their "other" racial identities when it is advantageous to them, the vast majority of their adult lives are experienced in a performance of one side of their biracial identity. However, both women seem to have ended up in relatively similar socioeconomic statuses, calling into question the "correctness" of either perspective. Both women reap the benefits of passing as Black or White-the feeling of community supplied by Harlem as well as the privilege of being allowed to exist in White spaces-while also feeling the costs of the race they chose to "give up" for the majority of their day-to-day lives. Irene must reconcile with the "cost" of having children that cannot pass and the risks this poses to them in a pre-Civil Rights era, and Clare longs for the community and connections with her own Black identity.

In this way, both women reflect different aspects of the African-American experience, as they experience their racial identities in inverse manners. Part of the crisis that Clare forces Irene to face is the hypocrisy of passing, as she reflects the subverted versions of the same beliefs Irene holds. In this way Larsen identifies the ways in which "identical" experiences of race can also be inverse of one another. Scholar Patricia Hill Collins evaluates this idea in her book "Black Feminist Thought", and suggests: "these ties between what one does and what one thinks illustrated by individual Black women can also characterize Black women's experiences and ideas as a group" (24). Considering this, Larsen seems suggest through her narrative that the inverted experiences of these doubles represent how performed identities inform the experience of those community members, but also contribute back into how these identities are shaped for other similarly-identifying individuals going forward.

Passing is a novel highly concerned with the reality of uncertainty, specifically in terms of identity. With the understanding that identity shapes experience, Nella Larsen creates a narrative in which characters are forced by society to choose their experience. By identifying those aspects of identity that are performative, Larsen asks her readers to consider the ways in which they also perform their own identities. Through the inverted images of Clare and Irene, Larsen explores performances of identity and their effects on the individual experiences of race, gender, and sexuality. However, Larsen also seems deeply interested in how these performances and engagements with externalized identity will inform experiences of the generations to come. While the novel does not spend much time considering the upcoming generations, it is clear Larsen is attempting to question the performances of identity reflected in her characters and suggesting that perhaps there is a different approach that has been left unconsidered as of yet: the idea of embracing the duality, rather than choosing to fight it.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." The Critical Tradition, 3rd ed, edited by David H. Richter, Bedford/St. Martins, 2007, pp. 514-532.

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Vol. Rev. 10th anniversary ed, Routledge, 2000. EBSCOhost, libproxy.boisestate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=70795&site=ehost-live.

Hutchinson, George. "Nella Larsen and the Veil of Race." American Literary History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1997, pp. 329-349. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/490290.

Larsen, Nella. Passing. Knopf, 1929.

Nisetich, Rebecca. "Reading Race in Nella Larsen's 'Passing' and the Rhinelander Case." African American Review, vol. 46, no. 2/3, 2013, pp. 345-361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23784063.

Wilson, Mary. "'Working Like a Colored Person': Race, Service, and Identity in Nella Larsen's Passing." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 42, no. 8, Dec. 2013, pp. 979-1009. EBSCOhost, libproxy.boisestate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2014393372&site=ehost-live.

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Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Nella Larsen's Passing: An Exploration of Performed Identity

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My name is Alyson Sebright. I was born in Boise and grew up in Nampa,...

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Multiracial identities and well-being: Challenges and ways forward

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Multiracial identities and well-being: Challenges and ways forward

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In this opinion feature, Dr. Annabelle Atkin - an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN - explores the unique challenges that Multiracial people face in attaining and maintaining well-being, and offers suggestions on how to mitigate those challenges.

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What challenges do Multiracial people face-and how do these challenges affect their well-being? Dr. Annabelle Atkin explains in this feature. Liliya Rodnikova/Stocksy

This article capitalizes the names of all racial groups. Although Medical News Today does not usually capitalize the term "white" when referring to racial identities, we acknowledge that it does not encompass a shared lived experience, so we have left it capitalized in order to reflect the author's professional preference.

"I thought you were full Asian," a professor of color once told me. "I didn't know you were Asian!" a native Korean friend told me a couple of years ago.

Being Multiracial is often complicated for people to understand. This is especially true in the United States, where the dominant White group has fought to establish and maintain a clear color line throughout history to justify the oppression of People of Color.

The racial groups we know today are not biological. They were created, or socially constructed. And they are always changing. Just take a look at how the U.S. Census categories have shifted across the decades.

Multiracial children from the union of people of two or more different racial backgrounds do not fit neatly into people's understanding of race as consisting of mutually exclusive categories. The mere existence of Multiracial people challenges the idea that racial groups are distinct, presenting a challenge to White supremacy, which is rooted in the belief in White racial purity.

To protect the racial power structure in the U.S., Multiracial people have been erased throughout history. One of the best-known examples of this is the one-drop rule, which was created to ensure that anyone with a single drop of "Black blood" be considered Black to justify enslavement and, later, segregation under Jim Crow laws.

As a result, Multiraciality is often overlooked. Many people still struggle with accepting and acknowledging Multiracial individuals because it challenges their Monoracial understanding of the world.

In an important 2012 study, people who examined photos of Multiracial individuals tended to identify them as belonging to only one racial group. (This was less likely to happen if subjects spent more time looking at them.)

Ten years later, a similar study found that when people were told they could categorize individuals in photos as "Biracial," they were more likely to question their belief that those in the pictures might be Monoracial.

Even in that study, however, subjects struggled to recognize Multiracial individuals when they did not conform to the Monoracial groups that they knew.

Many people have real difficulty with the cognitive process of categorizing Multiracial faces. But failing to recognize and acknowledge someone's Multiraciality or imposing a Monoracial identity can mean that we only see part of who a person is. That's unfortunate, especially when their Multiracial identity is important to them.

Given the widespread erasure and invisibility of Multiracial individuals and their experiences, what consequences does living in a Monoracial society pose for Multiracial youths?

Society is changing rapidly, and there are more Multiracial-identifying people today than ever before.

There are more celebrities identifying as Multiracial and playing Multiracial rather than Monoracial characters on TV. There are now more children's books focused on proud Multiracial youth stories. Social media is also helping Multiracial youths across the globe to connect with and support one another.

However, the discrimination that Multiracial youths face is ongoing. Not only do people have a hard time categorizing Multiracial individuals, but they also try to force categorizations on Multiracial people or deny their belonging to certain groups.

Multiracial people may choose to identify in many different ways, but it is ultimately their choice to decide how they racially identify themselves. It is not something for others to impose on them.

Having encounters with others who challenge their identity and inclusion in a group can be harmful for Multiracial youths. Research involving Multiracial individuals shows that when others invalidate or deny their racial identity, it can negatively affect their mental health.

Do Multiracial individuals share experiences with Monoracial individuals? Yes. Do some Multiracial individuals prefer to identify as Monoracial? Yes.

There is extreme diversity in Multiracial experiences, but even though these things are true, it does not justify uniquely Multiracial experiences and identities being systematically erased from the national discourse on race.

This discrimination against Multiracial people for having multiple group memberships is referred to as "monoracism. "

Although Monoracial individuals might talk with their family or friends of the same race to help them cope with experiences of discrimination, Multiracial youths might not have other Multiracial people to talk with.

In fact, there is also research-based evidence to suggest that Multiracial youths' family members can be the perpetrators of monoracism, which has negative implications for their mental health.

A 2019 study in the journal Addictive Behaviors indicated that discrimination from family members may even be linked to substance use among Multiracial adults.

In my own interviews, young Multiracial adults shared that their parents sometimes made prejudiced comments about a racial group that they were part of or denied that they experienced discrimination as a member of a particular racial group.

These experiences can affect youths' mental health because they are not getting the support they need. Their own parents are making them feel negatively about their racial group membership.

Building on this, my new study with Multiracial adolescents indicates that receiving such negative socialization messages is associated with lower self-esteem.

It is important to emphasize here that despite data showing that Multiracial youths report struggles with substance use or mental health, being Multiracial is not the problem.

The problem lies with our oppressive society. Multiracial people have been pathologized throughout history by society, labeled as confused, and likened to unnaturally bred animals. Despite dehumanization and erasure, however, Multiracial individuals have shown resilience in navigating monoracism.

Research has also contributed to perpetuating the idea that Multiracial people are more prone to mental health problems and substance use by failing to frame Multiracial experiences within the context of race and racism in the U.S.

Everett Verner Stonequist's " marginal man theory " from 1937 suggested that Black-White Multiracial individuals were doomed to a permanent mental state of crisis.

To avoid perpetuating this idea, we need to be clear that the risks that Multiracial people face are the result of a racial system working to maintain racial boundaries to justify the so-called inferiority of People of Color.

We need to move toward critical approaches in thinking about the risks that a Monoracial system and ignorant viewpoints pose to the healthy development of Multiracial youth.

Again, the problem lies within society and in how people - including family members - treat Multiracial individuals.

Experiencing discrimination from one's own family is a painful experience, but by developing racial awareness and racial socialization skills, family members can play a key role in facilitating the positive development of Multiracial youths.

Developing a strong racial-ethnic identity can be an important protective factor for Multiracial individuals' mental health.

There is an abundance of evidence surrounding the benefits of having a strong racial-ethnic identity in research with Monoracial individuals.

Similarly, studies suggest that for Multiracial individuals, reporting a strong racial-ethnic identity is related to higher levels of self-esteem, lower levels of depression, and less substance use.

What complicates the identity development process is that Multiracial youths have multiple identities to choose from.

In an important paper in the Journal of Social Issues, Kerry Ann Rockquemore and colleagues outlined the different identity options of Multiracial youths.

Multiracial individuals might choose to identify as a member of one of their Monoracial groups - for example, a Mexican and Thai person may identify as Mexican. Alternatively, they might identify as Multiracial, Biracial, Mixed Race, or a specialized term (such as Blackapino) to encompass all of their groups.

Other options include changing their identity across different contexts and situations or choosing not to identify with a racial group at all - for example, by identifying simply as human.

There is no one right way for Multiracial individuals to identify racially.

What is important is understanding whether or not one's choice is influenced by internalized racism, such as believing negative racial stereotypes about their group - for example, choosing not to identify as Black because they are ashamed to be Black.

In fact, research suggests that internalized racism is related to lower levels of connection to one's racial-ethnic identity as well as lower levels of self-esteem and psychological well-being.

Feeling proud and confident in one's racial-ethnic identity can potentially protect Multiracial individuals from discrimination and the negative mental health consequences associated with rejection or attacks on their identity.

To foster a healthy, positive racial-ethnic identity and prepare children for the discrimination that they might experience as Multiracial People of Color, it is essential that parents and caregivers engage in the process of racial-ethnic socialization.

Racial-ethnic socialization involves transmitting messages to children about what it means to be a member of their racial-ethnic groups. For Multiracial children, this means not only teaching them what it means to be members of their Monoracial groups but also what it means to be Multiracial.

Family members are an important source of social support and socialization messages for youths. However, Multiracial families with members from different racial groups may not as easily understand one another's experiences with race and discrimination.

For example, a White mother will never fully understand what it means to be viewed as a Black man in the U.S. Yet due to the persistence of the one-drop rule today, many Black-White Biracial men are perceived as Black, which has consequences for their safety - especially during police encounters.

Although Black families are familiar with having " the talk " every generation to prepare their children for the reality of living with racism, White parents have likely never been recipients of such a talk, let alone experienced any kind of racial discrimination.

In addition to teaching her Black-White Biracial son about being a Black man, the White mom also needs to address her son being Biracial, as there are unique experiences associated with each identity.

For example, her son might be discriminated against by other Black peers for having a White mom. Again, this is not an experience that the White mom would understand as a Monoracial person, though Multiracial parents may be able to relate to this a little better.

Furthermore, some parents of Multiracial youths endorse a colorblind racial ideology, in which they choose to believe and teach their children that race doesn't matter and that they "don't see color."

This can be a dangerous ideology, as Multiracial children are People of Color, and their race does affect how people treat them. Again, the invalidation of a Multiracial person's identity - including their identity as a Person of Color - is associated with negative mental health.

When parents and caregivers are dismissive of their children's racial reality, they are not only saying that race doesn't matter. They are also saying that racial discrimination isn't real and that their racial identity isn't important.

My qualitative research finds that receiving support from parents and caregivers that validates their discrimination experiences and encourages them to learn about and express their racial identity is important to youths. A follow-up survey study suggests that receiving such support was associated with higher self-esteem for young Multiracial adults.

Based on my interviews with young Multiracial adults and a review of the existing literature, I identified eight types of socialization messages and created a questionnaire to promote further research in this area.

As previously discussed, colorblind socialization involves telling children that race is not important, while silent socialization involves ignoring discussions about race altogether.

Negative socialization includes prejudicial and invalidating messages, such as talking negatively about a racial group that the child is a member of or denying their experiences with racism and discrimination.

However, there are also five positive types of socialization that parents and caregivers are encouraged to share.

1. The first is navigating multiple heritages. This teaches children about their multiple cultural backgrounds and exposes them to people from all of their racial-ethnic groups.

2. The second is Multiracial identity socialization. This means talking openly with children about their multiple identities and Multiraciality while instilling pride but not necessarily suggesting that they have to identify as Multiracial or identify with all of their groups.

3. The third is preparation for bias messages, such as "the talk." This makes children aware of racism, including monoracism, that they might experience due to their Monoracial and Multiracial group memberships.

4. The fourth is race-conscious messaging. This teaches children about racism in society against all oppressed groups, not only their own. Understanding that racism is part of a system and not just an individual experience could help children contextualize their own experiences instead of blaming themselves for being the victims of discrimination.

5. The fifth is diversity appreciation messaging. This instills acceptance of other cultures and racial-ethnic groups. This means appreciating differences in an informed, non-colorblind way.

Of course, knowing the right thing to say isn't easy, as most of us have been conditioned not to talk about race.

Fortunately, there are some great resources out there, including the EmbraceRace organization and multiple books about racial-ethnic socialization, such as Farzana Nayani's Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World, Sharon Chang's Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World, and Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy's Raising Biracial Children.

I also organize the Multiracial Families Project Facebook page, where diverse families can find resources for talking about race with their children.

There is still much research to be done in this area, but with this new questionnaire, we are eager to learn more.

I am currently collecting data from Multiracial adolescents ages 14 to 18 and their parents to examine whether parents and caregivers promoting racial and cultural awareness is more beneficial for well-being than avoiding the topic of race or promoting colorblindness. Interested families can learn more about the study and sign up here.

Although I believe that it's better for one's mental health in the long run to be racially aware rather than ignorant, I also know from personal experience that knowing that racism is real can be stressful, anxiety provoking, and saddening. I hope to research these nuances and see what supports and socialization messages can promote positive mental health in combination with racial awareness.

We all can work toward becoming more educated about the experiences of Multiracial people and aware of how the Monoracial paradigm of U.S. society erroneously forces people into one racial category.

We also need to actively challenge the stereotypes we hold and assumptions we make about how a member of a certain racial group looks, acts, or identifies.

For those of us who are Multiracial, I hope it's not only our faces that become more visible, but our narratives too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Multiracial identities and well-being: Challenges and ways forward

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In this opinion feature, Dr. Annabelle Atkin - an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN - explores the unique challenges that Multiracial people face in attaining and maintaining well-being, and offers suggestions on how to mitigate those challenges.

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The loneliness of being mixed race in America

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“I had to figure out the language to describe myself”: 6 mixed-race people on shifting how they identify.

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How Loving v. Virginia Led to Legalized Interracial Marriage | History