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When you say things like, "Why would anyone like being bi-racial?" I want to say, why are you saying this to my face? I'm mixed and last time I checked I haven't dropped dead from it. In fact, it's been eighteen years now that I've been a mixed American and I am alive and well. Of course you have the identity crises, and the feelings of not entirely belonging to a racial or ethnic group at all never really goes away. Yes, I have been told several times that I'm not one thing or another and have been placed squarely in the "you don't exist" category. So maybe it's right, you shouldn't want your kids to have to go through that. Maybe my life just really does suck.
But as far as I can tell, I've made my own race, and it's the experience of mixed kids everywhere. We are halfies and more who are proud of it, the first generation that is glad to be mixed. When you say things like "oh, those mixed kids, the things they would have to go through," it makes me think of "passing" or never telling your children they are Jewish because it would give them a better life. Yeah, it does give you a better life to be not black not Jewish not mixed. But why should we bend? Why should we conform to the idea that you need to be from a certain background to have better opportunities in life? Shouldn't we be trying to make it so that this amorphous better life is available to all of us, as we already are?
I want to say: I am the world, as you see it, diverse and sharing this same globe. I am your future descendants. Don't tell me that I shouldn't be, or that my life is not one you want your children to have. Because sooner or later, they will have it. And if you begin their lives by telling them not to be proud, then you'll make them unhappier than I ever was.
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