Several years ago, when I was a graduate student and staff member at the University of Washington, I attended a Black Lives Matter rally and march on campus.
When it was time for the march to begin, the organizers asked the crowd to split into two groups. The Black students were called to the front to lead the march, while the remaining students were asked to fall to the back of the procession in a display of support and solidarity. As the crowd began to split, I felt a sense of panic at having to choose where to go and immediately moved toward the back of the crowd.
The feeling of having to publicly commit to a racial identity was familiar. As a biracial student with one Black and one White parent, my experience with what it means to be Black in America is markedly different from my monoracial peers. Moving to the back of the march helped me reconcile with this and give space to those who needed it the most.
I’ve spent my life navigating the nuances that come with being mixed-race. On one hand, I am aware of the privilege that comes with having one White parent and European features, making it easier for me to navigate academic and social spaces. Colorism is real. On the other hand, I learned early on that I am not White-passing, given the number of people who mistake me for other races or ethnicities. This means I’ve spent my life feeling stuck somewhere in the middle; a common experience among biracial and multiracial students.
I learned about racism and discrimination at an early age. My parents were married in the late 1970s, without the support or blessing of my paternal grandparents, who told my father that he could marry anyone he wanted except a Black woman. Unsurprisingly, no one from my dad’s side of the family attended their wedding and my grandparents had no interest in having a relationship with my sister and me. I identify as mixed-race to honor their resilience and the sacrifices they made just to be a couple. I know that what my parents endured was shared by many other interracial couples.
In a recent New York Times article, Anna Holmes wrote about the increase in interracial marriages following the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which made laws that banned interracial marriages unconstitutional. While Holmes dives into the nuances of growing up mixed-race, she also discusses the way Americans position notable mixed-race Black people and the way they relate to whiteness differently given their racial identities. These issues are complex but shed light on how some mixed-race people move through the world differently.
Following the Loving case, interracial marriages increased from 3 percent in 1967 to 17 percent in 2015, reflecting a shift in the way Americans view interracial unions. With these marriages have come an increase in the births of mixed-race and multiracial children.
