Name: The Struggle Of Being Mixed Race
Uploaded: 2019-04-22T09:33:52.000Z
Duration: 2 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I think I'm what Hollywood would call ethnically ambiguous.

When people first glance at me, I mean the first thing they see is a white guy.

And usually I'll have to end up explaining to people that I am half Mexican and half white.

No one has ever been able to correctly identify who I am my entire life.

I've gotten Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, half black half white.

Almost everyone misreads me in some way, it's very hard to guess Danish and Indian from a first glance.

Sometimes I wish I could walk in and just be recognized as a Mexican American.

Sometimes people come up to me on the street and start speaking Spanish frantically, and I can't respond 'cause I don't speak Spanish.

I find that depending on where I am, people read me differently.

They tend to think that I'm whatever they are.

People of Hispanic background think I'm hispanic, people who are Asian think I look Asian.

An interesting part of my journey as a young multiracial person growing up was rejection from both sides of my ethnic identity.

That's something that I grew up with my whole life, like I don't fit in, I don't belong to any ethnic group 100%.

I never saw myself as different from anybody else until some else pointed it out.

The last thing you want to do is stand out.

You want to blend in as much as possible.

We talk about race like it's this built in, intrinsic thing.

But the reality is we're mostly talking about looks, right?

If i'm going to be white, well then why can't I have blonde hair and blue eyes?

If I'm gonna be Mexican, then why can't I have dark skin and speak perfect Spanish?

People think I'm Asian, why can't I be really tiny and skinny and fit into all these stereotypes, but I'm not a stereotype, I'm just me.

And for mixed people who sort of live in between the lines, we sort of just have to be more than our racial background.

You don't need to fit a mold that other people think you should fit.

It's difficult learning that you don't have to decide what race you are.

There's no textbook on how to be multiracial and be okay with it, you just kind of have to forge ahead and be your own person.

I am who I am, and no one else is like me, and that's pretty cool.