Featured Features

So lots of bi-racial people have a mixture of facial (and body) features that are typically associated with one race or another. For me, I have my father's German nose, my mother's African-American lips and my grandmother's Native American cheekbones. So how is it that we are so quickly identified as "Black?" Also, how is it that we are able to identify other mixed people so easily? Perhaps we see the combination of features as an immediate clue that something is different...

So how does it affect our lives when we have more "white" or "black" features? Do mixed people with "blacker"features get accepted more easily with black people? Are they discriminated against more by non-blacks? Who knows, but I do think that it's much more confusing for people to assume someone is white and then find out that they are bi-racial than the reverse.

How many times have we heard bi-racial people tell stories of being in mixed crowds, only to hear someone tell an anti-black joke? The offender usually has no idea that the person has black heritage--or they simply figure that they're so light they won't care! That has definitely happened to me. White people feel that they can "confide" their racist remarks in me because I'm not "so" black. "You know what I mean..." they say. "You're not THAT black..." they say.

How utterly offensive and sadly ignorant. We've come so far but we have a long way to go.