Intro to Mixed Race – Start Here

Question

What’s the most poetic, succinct, and accurate way to describe mixed heritage identity?

Answer

Neither Both

This occurred to me after seeing the site and blog neitherboth.com
Thank you Lola @neitherboth

Mixed Race Identity Explained

If a dad is ice, and a mom is steam and their child is water – the child is neither steam, nor ice but has both or their identities of being forms of water.

The child may need to live a life more like ice, more like steam, remain water, or code-switch depending on the environment.

Intro to Race

“Race is not real, but race matters.” -Anthony Peterson

The important answer to “If race is not real, why talk about it.”

Some will disagree with the statement that ‘Race isn’t real’. What do you think?

For more on this topic check The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference, by Ann Morning. She explains that anthropologists and medical scientists have different views when defining race.

Racism is real and pervasive regardless if one views race as real or not. If we banished the word ‘race’, it would be replaced with the word haplogroup, haplotype, cline, and even culture. It’s okay that people are biologically different. It’s horrible that people believe one race or culture is superior to another. Racism leads to genocides of people including disrespect and destruction of cultures and languages.

The video below is the most succinct explanation of race that I have heard (thank you @fanshen).

Intro to racism

Learn about the types of racist thinking and the people who push against racist thinking in the book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Lessons of Mixed Identity, Society Judgement, and Implications in Life

Learning that people embody two conflicting identities at the same time is crucial to understanding the world and fighting for social justice, especially in regards to labeling people as criminals, and then as criminals only. When a person makes a mistake as a teenager, should they be branded for life as only a criminal with no redeeming qualities and be disrespected and disenfranchised for the reset of their life? And should that mistreatment be further hammered down in a racially biased way? To see how the twisted logic of singular criminal identity (conflated with race) is played out in the US, check Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Questions to bring you to wisdom