{"id":55739,"date":"2018-02-15T01:37:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T01:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55739"},"modified":"2018-02-15T01:37:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T01:37:12","slug":"what-youll-never-understand-about-being-biracial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55739","title":{"rendered":"What You’ll Never Understand About Being Biracial"},"content":{"rendered":"

What You’ll Never Understand About Being Biracial<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Marie Claire<\/a>
\n2018-02-05<\/p>\n

Brianna Mon\u00e9<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nCourtesy from left: Samantha Ferguson, Sarah Heikkinen, Kayla Boyd<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Black people don\u2019t have freckles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those were the words that reverberated through Samantha Ferguson\u2019s middle school\u2013aged head after telling a boy at school that she was half-black and half-white. Classmates, confused by her appearance, had been hounding her with questions like, \u201cWhat are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before middle school, Ferguson didn\u2019t think she was different from other children. But, she says, the students at her predominately-white school, \u201cdressed a certain way, looked a certain way, their hair was straight. My skin is not dark, but it\u2019s a different tone, which made me stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like all middle-schoolers Ferguson had crushes and wanted to be popular. \u201cI could never be popular, though, because I didn\u2019t look like everyone else. Boys didn\u2019t have crushes on me because my hair was frizzy and I had freckles.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the first time she realized that people are different colors\u2014and receive different treatment because of that. \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I should tell my classmates I\u2019m white, or if I should tell them that I\u2019m black.\u201d She didn\u2019t know where she fit in. She didn\u2019t know how to identify herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIdentity is understanding who we are in the world,\u201d says Kerry Ann Rockquemore<\/a>, co-author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America<\/em><\/a>. \u201cPart of that is how others understand us, and the other part is how we understand ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many biracial people, that understanding can be both elusive and arbitrary. From checking boxes on forms to fulfilling quotas, race is used to define and control so many aspects of everyday life. And biracial people are constantly faced with a choice…<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really upset me. I\u2019m a human being,\u201d recalls Ferguson, now 24, a third-grade teacher in Glen Burnie, Maryland<\/a>. \u201cI wanted to ask them, \u2018What are you?\u2019\u201d …<\/p>\n

…\u201cWe have an expectation in society of what a black person should look like, or what a white person should look like,\u201d says Sarah Gaither, Ph.D.<\/a>, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t look like that, that\u2019s disruptful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaither, who is biracial, says she\u2019s treated like a \u201cparty game:\u201d \u201c\u2018Guess what race she is. I bet you\u2019ll never guess,\u2019 they say. I don\u2019t match anyone\u2019s expectations.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mixed-race women on what it’s like to feel black but look white. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,20,25],"tags":[28037,28036,106,24462,28034,11816,28038,9692,28035],"class_list":["post-55739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-brianna-mone","tag-kayla-boyd","tag-kerry-ann-rockquemore","tag-marie-claire","tag-samantha-ferguson","tag-sarah-e-gaither","tag-sarah-elizabeth-gaither","tag-sarah-gaither","tag-sarah-heikkinen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55740,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55739\/revisions\/55740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}