I'm going to speak from another angle on the subject of being multiracial. What is being multiracial about? What is being multiracial "not" about?

I think it encompasses everything that makes us unique individuals in identity and in being different in every single way in features and cultures.

American society (and I don't know what to say about multicultural societies in the rest of the Americas -- i.e. the Caribbean islands, Brazil, and Latin America -- whose populations also consist largely of people of mixed heritages) has created a cut-cold definition of what being a mixed person really is. This society in which we live has also defined for too long what being a mixed, multicultural person is not. From my vantage point, this society has defined a "mixed" person as being the product of one monoracial "white" parent and one monoracial "black" parent. It left out all the in-betweens who are simultaneously "black"/"white" yet not first generation mixies, as well as people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds who are just as capable of contributing to a diversely mixed gene pool as can one "white" person and one "black" person.

I'm looking at the subject matter from this standpoint because this is how I see my own "mixed/multiracial" experience. I don't have the strongest arguments to fire off at everyone, because, from a multigenerational mixed person's standpoint, I haven't been affected as deeply with this issue as surely, many, if not all of you have been all of your lives. The reason why I, as well as many multigenerational mixies, haven't been affected with the issue of being accepted/rejected and defined by others is because of the curse of the one-drop rule. The one-drop rule in all of its power has defined me and other multigenerational mixies as a sum of one -- and not all the rest. It has ruled out our being recognized and respected for everything that we are, just because many of us have inherited African features/genes/heritages that appear to be what some in this society imply is "undesirable." This is why I replied in one Point-Counterpoint question -- Does the One-Drop Rule Go Both Ways? -- "Why would it/can it not go both ways?"

For a multigenerational mixie, I say that the way to fight and destroy the one-drop of 'black' blood rule that has fought all persons of partial African ancestry is to accept everything you are as a whole, even if you cannot see the other parts of your ancestry when you look at yourself in the mirror. Also, make everyone else around you know that hypodescent or the one-drop rule does not apply to you. Who are they to decide what you are and aren't? My features sure won't answer this question for them or justify their "powers that be" and "racism-given right" to identify me!

In the past, I labeled myself a "black-identified mulatta," not because I chose to ignore the "white" side of me that has always been there, but because I just wasn't so sure then about what I am and who all made me what I am. At some point, though, I sought to know all of who I am. I went through the trouble to do extensive research on both sides of my family backgrounds. I was lucky to discover some rare sources of information that shed brilliant light on everything I am.

I have been blessed in a way few can ever know to have learned in depth about all those ancestors who contributed to the face I see in the mirror everyday. And even though it may not "seem" this way to those who see me out in the world everyday, approximately half of me is European, approximately half of me is African, and there is even some of me that is Native American. And so were my parents and their parents before them, who had parents before them that, once upon a time, fit this narrow-minded society's current definition of what being "multiracial," "bi-racial," "mulatto" or whatever you want to call it, is and isn't. In conclusion, I'm now just one "all-identified mulatta."

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