Last semester, I had the ability to pick a research topic on an issue that was extremely important to me. The topic that I chose was being biracial. Tiger Woods, Alicia Keys, Bruno Mars, Olivia Munn, and Aubrey Plaza are just a few of the ever-growing list of celebrities in the public eye that identifies as multiracial. This ever-growing list draws up a conversation on the rapid increase in multiracial individuals in the world today.

In fact, as of 2013, there were 5.2 million people in the United States that identified as multiracial.

At that time, there were many news articles about the multiracial identity of Prince Harry’s new girlfriend, Meghan Markle, who is a half-black, half-white actress and model. She openly speaks to news outlets about her personal struggle with her racial identity from magazines wanting to make her look whiter by lightening her complexion to photoshopping her freckles to make her look blacker to people asking every day what she is because they are not able to tell just from looking at her.

“'What are you?' A question I get asked every week of my life, often every day.” (Meghan Markle, Elle UK) This is the same incident that is experienced by many biracial individuals including myself, my sister, my cousin, and biracial peers that I have interviewed. It is difficult for a multiracial individual to come to terms with their racial identity when they may look a certain way to a curious and questioning society when on the inside, they know what their racial identity truly is. However, sexual relations between two races is not a new concept. During the era of slavery, there were sexual relations between African-American slaves and white slave owners leading to some of the first mixed-race children in the United States.

Since those dark times, there have been many milestones for biracial people including individuals being able to identify on the United States census as multiracial since the year 2000. Unfortunately, there are still many struggles that are faced by a multiracial individual in terms of their identity that researchers are still trying to figure out including racial boundaries and identity development problems that come with being biracial.

Rhea Perkins discusses the identity development of a biracial individual as an identity see-saw. According to Rhea Perkins, the identity see-saw is where they must balance between the perceptions of those around them with how they want to identify themselves. She goes deeper into this theory by saying, “For example, a biracial student may choose to only identify with their White identity because that is how they were raised, however, because of their lightly tanned skin and textured hair, they may be treated as a minority and expected to identify with being Black.” (Perkins) This is like the experience described by Prince Harry’s girlfriend where she feels societal pressure to only identify with the race that they attribute to her physical characteristics versus how she feels about her identity.

Another theory about biracial identity discussed by Rhea Perkins is a theory by psychologist Maria Root’s idea of multiracial people called “border crossing.” Maria Root argues that biracial individuals develop how they deal with their racial identity through how they choose to answer to their racial borders. According to Maria Root, they have five possibilities as to how they deal with their borders. Multiracial people may either be on both sides of border at a time where they can fluidly balance both of their races always, switch between their races depending on who they are with or what event they are at, decide to be in the middle of the border and simply choose both of their races always, mainly choosing the same identity at all times while occasionally choosing to come to terms with their other race, or they may just not choose any racial identity. In a more modern modification of this theory, society chooses their racial identity for them, they identify with their racial minority, identify as white because of their physical attributes, identify as just multiracial without identifying what those races are, or identify with both of their races.

Since there are so many different routes for multiracial people to go through when developing their racial identity this leads to confusion and frustration with identity development especially because society is not educated on the identity issues that come with being biracial. biracial individuals feel like they are forced into certain racial boxes by society’s perceptions and are forced to choose between how they want to identify their racial identity at some point in their life. Many research studies have been on how monoracial individuals perceive multiracial individuals especially focusing on half-black, half-white mixed individuals. Overall, biracial people are driven in their life by many factors on how they want to come to terms with their mixed race whether it is socioeconomic status, societal pressure, family’s view on race and their ability to talk about it, or gender.

As a biracial female, I am proud of the representation that we are about to get not only in the media but in the palace. I feel like Meghan Markle is my biracial icon due to the fact that she speaks so freely on behalf of her biracial identity. It gives hope to biracial girls like me that we can be anything even if people ask us what we are on a daily basis and even girls with an identity crisis can one day become a princess even though they don't just fit into one box.