It’s Annoying To Be Mixed Race in America

Despite the obsession with race in the US, most people don’t know what race is and/or often confuse it with ethnicity. There are only a handful of racial groups and over 193 ethnicities so it’s impossible to guess someone’s ethnic background, and that number doesn’t even include sub-ethnic groups… But that doesn’t stop people from trying (and often failing). In my case, I was forced to understand race when at 14, my highschool had me fill out a race and ethnicity census form. There was no mixed race option (and still isn’t on many forms), and no option to choose more than one group. My mother, who is a black Guyanese woman (South American), had no option either because at the time and still today, the census assumed all black people to be “African American” despite the fact that the majority of black people in the world are not part of the black American ethnic group. The census said that if I failed to fill out the form they would “have someone identify me”. A very Nazi-like statement in hindsight. <a href="https://medium.com/@MJFenix/its-annoying-to-be-mixed-race-in-america-2a3501045701">Learn More</a>