‘If you look white, then you are white’- what is this now?!

[OwlBeThere]

I’ll start this by saying this is a conversation I had on tiktok. Yes,it’s mostly younger people on that app, but there is also some fantastic political discourse and discussion around linguistics which is my field so that’s what I use it for.

I am mixed race. My mother is Asian (Japanese), my dad is Welsh. I have the kind of skin that is very pale until I see the sun then I tan quickly. I don’t ‘look’ very obviously Asian, I suppose. I do have very straight, very dark hair from my mother, and I do have a relatively flat bridge to my nose. In my welsh village where I was raised from age 4 (born in Japan, moved to Denmark when I was 2, then to wales) I was ‘that Chinese kid’ a lot in the 80s, I had my share of casual racism thrown my way. I speak Japanese, welsh and English.
All that backstory is just to explain why I was completely baffled when in a discussion around racism I was told that because my ‘phenotype’ is white and I’m ‘white passing’ then I am white and have no business taking part in a discussion on racism as I’ve ‘probably never experienced it’.
Many people ask me my heritage, so I think it’s pretty clear to most people that I’m mixed in some way because otherwise they wouldn’t ask, right?
Have any other people mixed race people come across this as a thing? This phenotype argument that appears to negate half of my family?!

That's utter bollocks. You've experienced life as someone who was not and is not white. How dare that person undermine and dismiss you!

I’ve heard this sort of comment about Meghan - she’s so pale/hardly black at all, how can she can have experienced racism etc etc

Ignorant in both senses - uninformed and rude.

Yep! I’m mixed race black and white but because I look white black people don’t accept me and see me as white. Told I can’t understand what it’s like to experience racism because I look white. The only negative comments I’ve had about race has been from black people. I had a lot of comments in school , told I was “begging” black, called “the Turkish girl” despite them knowing I was mixed black and white.

It just confuses me that these kids seem to have picked this up somewhere and they parrot it back like it’s fact. Where does it come from? I’ve done some googling but I can’t find anything to trace this back to. I really want to be able to educate and counteract this, as I feel it’s pretty important. I do understand that I’m less obviously Asian so my experience might be different. But to deny that side of me altogether just blows my mind.

I'm sorry you're experiencing this op. I don't have mixed heritage but I am from Wales and have lived in England since I was eight. I've had years of people giving me shit about being Welsh but also I have had people say to me "well you're English really aren't you". Some people have even argued with me, as though it were a matter of opinion. I don't know what's behind it but it's very unpleasant when you encounter it.

@Happycat1212 that’s really really sad and disheartening. I can’t say I’ve had any issues in Japan, though they laugh at my terrible accent but I accept that I sound weird in whatever language I speak 😂, I was the only Asian kid in my school so never had the experience of other Asian people being shitty to me.
So, is an Albino Asian or Albino black person who is 100% of that race also just white now??

@DogsAreShit well interesting you should say that because when I went to university in England with my welsh accent I had far more grief for being a ‘taff’ than I ever did for being Asian. Apparently that kind of xenophobia is totally fine. I married an Englishman and my children call themselves Wenglasian 😂 and are proud of their mixed heritage.

This is such nonsense, of course your skin colour should not prevent you from talking about racism - even if both your parents were Welsh and white. I'm fed up with ignorant, unimaginative and self-righteous people assuming they know your entire life history based on almost no knowledge of you. Sadly this has been exacerbated by the prevalence of social media. Just ignore them.

OwlBeThere it’s weird really as I went to a school in south east London so it was very multicultural but due to that they made out like I was pretending to be half black to “fit in” I suppose! Ive struggled with my identify my whole life as I don’t feel I fit in anywhere, too white for black people, too black for white people, even my kids tell me I’m white 🙄

My grandchildren (boy and girl) are 1/2 white from their father and 1/2 Columbian from their mother. Girl is olive-skinned, straight black hair, black eyes, and short - 5'1". Boy is fair-skinned (will sunburn) blue eyes, dark brown hair that grows out bushy and thick, 6'1".

No one accepts the boy as mixed. Teacher even "corrected" his paper when he marked "mixed". She told him he was white?Caucasian.

What they look like is what they are - to society.

How many generations have to pass before you stop being defined by your descendants skin colour and you start being defined by your actual skin colour?

How can you be discriminated against because of the colour of your skin if everyone perceives your skin to be white a particular 'colour'?

Yes, I am half Indian and was told that I couldn't join a particular work-related 'thing' to do with race until I called him out because I am actually mixed race. My Dd is even more of a mix (half Jamaican father) but is very white, and she is constantly told she's lying about being mixed.

Had the same with forms, was having help filling in a form and when it came to ethnicity the woman said “white British?”

Being mixed race is so complex. There are a lot of issues that are complex to try and explain . I feel
You completely poster :(

I was once asked why my daughter "looks quite tanned" when my other 3 kids that were with me, didnt. I said that she was mixed race. The asker said "Oh, but she looks white...." in a "So thats ok isnt it?!" kind of way.

The asker? A black social worker. Still blows my mind to this day. Yes, I did complain.

I've never heard the phrase "white passing" but that's what I am I suppose.

My dad is of African/Indian descent and my mother is Anglo-Indian with Thai/Malay descent. Both moved to UK in their late teens.

I'm fairly light skinned but have my dads curly hair and mum's family's almond shaped eyes. My sister looks exactly like me but is darker skinned. I'm olive and tan easily but generally assumed to be Mediterranean until I tan and then I look more "ethnic". However, I've never experienced racism personally but watched my dad experience it when I was growing up. We grew up in middle class Surrey, my dad was a bank manager, my mum a SAHP.

I consider myself mixed race because that's exactly what I am and would have serious words with someone refusing to acknowledge my ethnic background.

@newstart1337
How many generations have to pass before you stop being defined by your descendants skin colour and you start being defined by your actual skin colour?

Well, I don’t know really, but when my mother is Japanese woman, I was born in Japan, I hold a Japanese passport and I speak Japanese. I think I’m as Japanese as I am Welsh.

How can you be discriminated against because of the colour of your skin if everyone perceives your skin to be white a particular 'colour'?

Not everyone does perceive me to be white. Many people ask if I’m Native American, or Chinese or Asian of some kind so to many people I clearly look something other than white. Also in my local area everyone knows my mother is Japanese, so even if they don’t see it in my skin, they know from my family. My children actually look more typically Asian than I do in particular my daughters. So even though technically they are ‘whiter’ than me, that’s not how genetics works.

I’m not sure if you’re trying to say if someone looks a specific way that their heritage doesn’t matter? Because I don’t believe that to be true.

I can only say that given my colouring, I'm far less likely to have particular words yelled at me in the street than my father.

I don't want to tempt fate but..yeah....that must be horrendous. Other forms of racism are more common for me. Being interrogated about my name is a particular bugbear.

@GeorgiaGirl52 I was reading an article about mixed race twins where one had black curly hair and dark skin and eyes, the other was ginger with pale skin and lighter eyes and they spoke of similar where the paper twin was not believed to be mixed. Crazy

But you don't become something else because a person believes you to be so. You are who you are.

@Strokethefurrywall well it wasn’t something I’d heard either. It appears to originate in America.

@LunaHeather yes, I’m not daft, I’m aware that I could walk down a street in a place no one knew me and it’s far less likely I’d get abused than my mother because I’m less obviously Asian than her, and I fully accept that my experience of racism is different to hers, or to a dark skinned person. But that’s not to say (as this person said) that I’ve never experienced it, or that I’m not just as Japanese as I am white and to have a stranger decide that based on one photograph was shocking to me.

Ach, I'm probably too out of touch to be commenting on conversations via Tik Tok.

I miss the 90s and 00s especially on race.

Good night.

It's a ridiculous thing for that person to say but given that it was on social media I'd take it with a pinch of salt. Sounds like they just wanted to put you back in your box and white passing/check your privilege was the best thing they could think of.

As you can TikTok can be great, certainly wouldn't see MN etc as necessarily better but there's plenty of muppets and wind up merchandise on it too. Just like any social media.