The good news: for the first time in USA history Mixed-race people are being recognized as an entity. With that comes the first ongoing public conversations about how we look, live, and identify.Mixed Auntie Confidential is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I have spent an entire lifetime - including now - not knowing how to identify myself on forms and whatnot. I think, after reading your piece. I can, with some assurance, now embrace the identifier "mixed race". I keep hoping I'm correct in doing that as my skin color has been an issue all my life for one reason or another.
My maternal grandparents are classified as "Northern European / Wales / German" while my paternal grandparents are classified as "Spanish / Native Cuban" (although the DNA testing I had done referred to "Native Cuban" as "Native American").
As a child I was shunned by the white kids because of my "olive" (mom's word) wintertime skin that turned brown-as-could-be come sunshine but I equally shunned by the girls from "the islands" because I did not speak Spanish (a language my parents kept to themselves for the ability to communicate secretly).
I have spent an entire lifetime - including now - not knowing how to identify myself on forms and whatnot. I think, after reading your piece. I can, with some assurance, now embrace the identifier "mixed race". I keep hoping I'm correct in doing that as my skin color has been an issue all my life for one reason or another.
My maternal grandparents are classified as "Northern European / Wales / German" while my paternal grandparents are classified as "Spanish / Native Cuban" (although the DNA testing I had done referred to "Native Cuban" as "Native American").
As a child I was shunned by the white kids because of my "olive" (mom's word) wintertime skin that turned brown-as-could-be come sunshine but I equally shunned by the girls from "the islands" because I did not speak Spanish (a language my parents kept to themselves for the ability to communicate secretly).
So... technically? I'm hazarding that I'm mixed race.... (fingers kinda crossed)