it reminds me of tiger woods' dilema. the media wants him to be black, as does the rest of the black community. he's not allowed to half thai because that's just weird now isn't it. i mean he looks black so he MUST BE BLACK!

sigh people just look atcha and think they have you all figured out.

My slant on this one is a bit different, as I am the white-girl mother of a beautiful Hapa child. My son is now 16--an age of questioning identity, anyway. And everything you have said here, I have heard him say. Unfortunately, (in some ways) we live in a small, rural very white area. We actually are between 2 towns. The one where my son goes to high school is a community of affluent, educated WHITE people. There are maybe a handful of blacks, and a handful of half-Asian kids (like my son) and a fairly large number of hispanics--mostly from illegal migrant parents. My son does NOT fit with the half-Asian crowd, who are all about getting straight A's and remembering filial respect. He identifies far more with the Blacks and Hispanics, but they don't identify with him. So, wherever he goes, he's something different from everyone else.

My son doesn't necessarily look Asian, but he is clearly of mixed race. The one thing he's sure of is that he's NOT white. And, even in this affluent, liberal community, he gets racial jokes nearly everyday. They are meant to be friendly for the most part, but that doesn't keep them from constantly rubbing my son's face in the fact that he doesn't belong.

It's not really about politics, Daryl. And, no, most people who are just white, with no particular connection to a community that isn't, are CLUELESS about the fact that others FEEL like people of color. I used to be one of those ignorant souls. Well-meaning, non-prejudicial--I believed that "persons of color" were making a big deal out of very little. You should see "The Color Of Fear." It expresses that white ignorance well. When my then-boyfriend (later husband) would tell me about the slights he got for being Japanese, I thought that they didn't really matter, because they were just from idiots who didn't know any better.

It wasn't till after we were married, and I had the experience of being the only one of color (white, in this case) that I began to understand. At family gatherings, or in Japantown, or Little Tokyo, I finally understood how my husband felt everyday of his life. And now my son feels that in any group, because he's neither one thing nor the other. He is NEVER in a group of his peers, truly. I'm sure many of you here know what I'm talking about.

On the up-side, though, it has caused my son to develop a really healthy will and world view. He will never "just go along with the crowd" because it isn't HIS crowd. He is all but immune to peer pressure, and is admired for it. He can hang out with people who smoke, drink, do drugs, and not do those things himself, and it's fine with everyone. It's kind of understood that he makes his own rules, has his own code to follow. (He's also an outstanding athlete, which helps with the reasons for turning down the stuff his friends do which could affect his performance.)

I completely agree with Ryan. Did you guys know that anyone from North Africa or Middle East by US standards are “white” regardless of their skin color. A while back I read an article about a black man who moved from North Africa to the USA and they put him down as White, despite that he consider himself black, he was fighting to be black in USA.

Everyone is colored; white after all is a color in the crayon box too. When you look at it no one is truly white except maybe albinos. When I think of white I think a piece of paper or the crayon. When we have middle easterns who are often brown/tannish in color being considered white, Olive skinned people being called white, or even very dark skinned people from NAfrica being called white. I think we can see that being white is no more then a social issue.