Growing Up Mixed and Grappling With the Question 'What Are You?': Listeners Weigh In

This post is part of a series of stories featured on The California Report Magazine about the experience of being mixed race.

Updated July 31, 2024

Kamala Harris’ candidacy for president is putting her under a microscope — not just her political career but everything about her background, including her mixed-race heritage as a Black and South Asian woman. Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, only threw more of a spotlight on her racial identity on Wednesday, when he falsely claimed that she used to identify as an Indian woman but “happened to turn Black.”

But Harris has always embraced her multiracial heritage. “I was raised with a deep sense of pride in my cultural background,” she told the podcast Asian Enough, in 2020. “I’ve never had an identity crisis. I’m really comfortable in who I am.”

Although Harris grew up mostly with her South Asian mother, she also strongly identified with her Black roots. “There were never any false choices,” Harris told Asian Enough. “We learned…that you can cook okra with mustard seeds or with dried shrimp and and spicy sausages.”

Harris’ visibility as one of California’s most famous multiracial people inspired a series on The California Report Magazine called Mixed!, originally published in the Spring of 2023.

Identity is always complicated, and for multiracial folks who straddle many identities, it can be isolating. It can also be invigorating and rich to belong to multiple communities and celebrate that complexity.

The latest census shows we mixed-race people are a demographic to pay attention to: 2020 data reflects a 276% increase in people who identify as multiracial compared to 2010. Yet mixed-race folks are only beginning to find space for our stories.

The California Report Magazine’s host, Sasha Khokha and guest host, Marisa Lagos, delve into the mixed-race experience grounded in their own backgrounds. They talk with trailblazing artist Kip Fulbeck, whose photo projects are a platform for mixed-race folks to answer the question “What Are You?” in their own voices. We also listen in on a conversation between two listeners who share a similar background (Black/Filipina) but straddle different generations, which informs how they understand their identities.

To bring you, our audience, into this series, The California Report and KQED have been reaching out to listeners to ask, “What’s something only fellow mixed folks understand about growing up mixed?”

Here are some of those responses, with more here:

Dianna K. Bautista, Berkeley

I’m Filipino on my mom’s side, and my dad is mixed like me. He is Filipino, African American, Native American, French and Spanish. My dad would tell me what it was like for my grandmother as a Black woman of color growing up in Arkansas. We would dive back [into our family history] and see how my Native American ancestors were sold in slavery.

If I just check one box, I feel like it doesn’t fully represent who I am. But when I check multiple boxes, I’m always questioning if I have enough of that heritage, enough of that ethnicity to check that box. And you’re in the middle of having a mini-identity crisis because you’re not sure which box to check.

I was reading about this mixed Iranian journalist who is saying how her mixed experience was like floating. It’s kind of cool because, yeah, ambiguous skin means that you’re accepted in different groups and different ethnicities and you get to experience that diversity. But there are also negatives to that because you’re ambiguous. People are going to assign stereotypes based on what they think you are and you don’t have control over that.

Dylan Morimoto, San Francisco

My father is from Auburn, California, and he’s Japanese, and my mom was born in Germany. She’s Jewish. My father was incarcerated during World War II. My [dad’s whole] family was incarcerated or interned during World War II. And then my mom, you know, left Nazi Germany. You know, I don’t look Jewish. I don’t really think I look kind of Asian-ish.

Under the Trump administration, [it was] really upsetting, given my family’s history. It’s nice to see, for me personally, I was happy to see Kamala Harris get elected, and seeing her, you know an African American and Asian woman, was really, really cool. And a Jewish husband and a mixed family. I am in the same situation. I have two stepkids, so it’s nice to see that diversity.

Sharon Ng, San Francisco

Our family is kind of China-Latina mashed up. I am Chinese Malaysian and grew up in Vancouver, Canada. My American husband’s family is Argentinian but he grew up in France. We met in New York. When people ask my daughter what her heritage is, she says, “I am half Chinese and half Brooklyn!”

While I am Chinese by blood, culturally I struggled as a child to understand my “Chineseness” because I did not grow up speaking Mandarin at home, nor did I have the benefit of an extended family of aunties and grandparents to provide context about how to be Chinese. With limited Chinese affirmation and sense of place, it was quite confusing because Vancouver was really white in the ’70s.

[My husband] Ian’s story is similar. He didn’t grow up speaking Spanish because the U.S. was all about assimilation back then. We feel that learning Spanish will help anchor our kids in part of their roots, which we don’t feel we really had (we know our parents tried their very best). Together we are creating new traditions of what is beautiful and delicious: turkey stuffed with sticky rice, with empanadas and chimichurri on the side.

That said, we dream that our girls have a sense of belonging and experience affirmation of their multifaceted identities and cultural ways of being a “hyphenated” American. We feel really blessed to live in San Francisco, where we have lots of other friends who are raising mixed-race families. It really normalizes things for them.

Adrien Colón, Oakland

So my mom is white and my dad is Puerto Rican. And I think growing up as a kid, I never really questioned it. And it was not until I got a little older that I heard this story about my dad not being allowed in my great-grandparents’ home. They were very much against my mom marrying my dad, and they wouldn’t allow him in their home because of the way that he looked, because of the color of his skin, the Afro that he wore.

I continue to piece together my family tree, and seeing these people who come from all of these different places, and knowing that … if something had happened to any one of them, that I wouldn’t be here, which is a wild thought.

Stephen Zendejas, Tracy

My dad is a third-generation Mexican American and my mom is an immigrant from the Philippines who is half Chinese. I would describe growing up as mixed race [as] kind of confusing and complex.

I think the concept of racial identity is sometimes still foreign and confusing to me because it’s more social than it is scientific. But it’s also not something that we can just completely ignore either.

David Risher, San Francisco

[There are ] so many stories from my childhood in the ’70s. I can’t count the number of times someone cocked his or her head at me, paused, and asked, “I’ve got a question for you. What are you?” It was so uncomfortable. My answer at the time: “My mother is white, my father is Black. So I’m both.” Today, I just say I’m biracial.

Here’s a story that sticks with me from my time attending summer camp as a kid. One day, just before parents’ weekend, I overheard a fellow camper say, “I don’t know about you, but I’d be ashamed if I were you about having a Black dad and a white mom.” In fact, I wasn’t the least ashamed. But hearing that made me wonder, “Should I be?”

And [there’s] another story from my undergraduate years at Princeton. One evening, my well-meaning Black dorm mate brings me into her room and says, “David, at some point, you’re going to have to choose. If you don’t, others will for you, and they’ll make their decision based on who your girlfriend is.” I was shocked, but I got it. People are detectives looking for clues.

Today, after years working at Microsoft and then as an executive at Amazon, I run a Bay Area nonprofit called Worldreader. We use technology and local books from all around the world to help children discover the joy of reading. We’ve helped 19 million children so far, and we’re just getting started. One thing that sets us apart: No matter where we operate — in Africa, India, South America, or the U.S. — we lead with books from local publishers, full of stories of doctors, astronauts, scientists and writers who look like our readers. I bet you see the connection: If you can’t see it, you can’t be it!

Ruben Villareal Halprin, San Francisco

My mom, a Jewish girl from Boston, met my father, a Black Cuban, while at medical school in Cuba in the late ’80s. They got married a couple of years later and I showed up shortly after that. I was the “white boy.” I was “Ruben the Cuban.” I was “blanquito.” It just depends on where I was.

I wonder, sometimes, if I looked a little more like my mom or a little more like my dad, how different my life would be. Mind you, that’s not if my life would be different, but just how different. I love being mixed. I love dancing between the lines of the binaries that this society has built up. … In a way, I represent the breaking of cultural and institutional barriers that exist or existed. But breaking down barriers may just be a poetic way of saying you’re being slammed into a wall. And that’s certainly what it sometimes felt like growing up mixed.