People of mixed heritage have become more visible in recent years, and with them, their struggles in terms of racial identity. If you find yourself engaged in these discussions, it can be easy to slip into problematic behaviors without ever noticing. While this list pertains mainly to mixed people with Black heritage, it can be tweaked to include any mixed race person. Hopefully you can avoid engaging in these behaviors and make your discussions about mixed identity more positive and productive.
1. You talk about having mixed babies for any reason other than your significant other is a different race.
We've all seen the tweets: "I'm gonna find me a Spanish girl and have light-skinned babies with good hair." Get out of here with that. Mixed babies are not arm candy; they are people. By talking about how you're going to have mixed children for their aesthetic, you are objectifying and fetishizing them. This becomes even more unpleasant when your mixed baby is a mixed teenager who allows people to objectify and fetishize them because it's what they learned at home. This attitude strips your mixed baby of its human dignity and turns it into a fashion accessory.
2. You talk about mixed people having "good" hair.
The next person I hear talking about this "good hair/bad hair" nonsense is gonna catch these hands. If you see a mixed person with loose curls or wavy hair and refer to them having "good hair," you are not only further objectifying mixed people, you have now crossed into anti-black territory. There is no such thing as "good hair;" it's all just hair. There is coily hair and curly hair and wavy hair and straight hair, but the idea of good hair is a construct. This idea comes from Eurocentric standards of beauty which insist that the smoother (read: whiter) the hair, the more attractive the hair. This goes beyond being insensitive, it perpetuates beauty standards which demonize African features, and it's not OK.
3. You just straight up talk about or treat mixed people as though they're objects.
No, you don't need to "get you a mixed girl/boy." What you need to do is stop thinking about mixed people as something to "get you one of." By entertaining that school of thinking, you are objectifying mixed people. If you touch mixed people's hair without being prompted or comment on people's complexion or apparent mixed heritage, you are objectifying mixed people. If you can replace the mixed person in your speech or interactions with a lamp, you're objectifying mixed people. You've turned them into an accessory. Check that.
4. You use your mixed child as a prop to further your problematic views.
I can't believe I'm having to say this, but your mixed race child is not a prop for you to further silence black people. This new trend which involves parents taking pictures of their mixed children with signs explaining their mixed heritage and saying "All Lives Matter" is a method of silencing black people. It uses your child as a prop to silence discussion of systemic murder of other black people. Your child is not just your child; they are part of a community of people much larger than you, and not only do you owe it to your child not to objectify and weaponize them, you also owe it to them not to deny them that part of their identity.
5. You deny or erase your mixed child's identity.
This ties into the last point, but you are not doing your mixed child any favors by telling them they're not black. The police will not ask if your child is mixed before killing them. The KKK will not ask how your child identifies before terrorizing them. Employers will not check the smoothness of your child's hair before denying them a job. If your child goes into the world blithely unaware of the dangers facing them, they're going to get hurt.
6. You make statements minimizing mixed people's identity.
While it is fair to say that mixed heritage is becoming more and more unavoidable, having more mixed babies is not gonna end racism. Mixed people have existed for centuries and it's done nothing to end racism. If you make statements treating mixed heritage like an inevitability, things like, "One day we'll all be mixed and race won't matter," you're minimizing the racial identity of mixed people. This suggests being mixed disqualifies you from being a certain race and that this lack of racial identity will make the world a better place, like the more we dilute black heritage the better off we'll all be. This simply isn't true. Blackness is not something from which to be graduated, it is not holding us back as a species, so eliminating it will not magically move us forward.
