Be Honest - Do folks (white and black) see biracial people as black/white/neither (please explain)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BTW if folks think this sounds like the Jim Crow rule (one drop of Black blood), that's because it is. At the time of the Civil War, we conventionally saw people of mixed black/white race as being various levels of mixture (a time when words like "quadroon," "octoroon," and "mulatto" were used. But the perspective shifted towards the Jim Crow view that one drop of AA blood made a person black. We still tend to think that way (lots of present company on this thread excepted) because that's the tradition in this country.

In other places (like the Carribean), as OP noted, her son might be seen as white (e.g., Virgin Islands) or as a mix such as mulatto. In South Africa, her son would be "colored" (racially mixed), not "black."

The difficulty in deciding who is black, white, and bi-racial based on biological heritage is that many AAs have white ancestry (and I've heard that maybe 20% of whites have a black ancestor) so technically they are multi-racial but that certainly isn't part of their identity or the way they are seen in their communities.

so what is your point?

[Anonymous]

I haven't read the replies. I'm white - husband is black and DD is 11 mo. I see her as both and plan to raise her that way. I think it would be disrespectful to claim one or the other side. Society right now I think tends to see people how they look. Biracial doesn't automatically mean someone else thinks that person as black. I think it depends what color skin, hair, eyes the biracial person has. However, I want to raise my DD to know she's both and I think her reply should be "I'm biracial". My DD has blue eyes, brown curly hair and lighter skin (not as white as my skin - but not the color of DH's skin (he's not dark) either - right in the middle. She could probably pass as white - but why would I want her to do that? She's both and I plan to raise her that way.