I want to talk about 1st and 2nd generation biraciality; when someone has parents or grandparents that are of two different races. 

My wife and I have three, 30-ish year-old children. 

We attended a mixed-race church and our kids attended the mixed-race elementary and middle-grade school there. 

I have heard, through the grapevine (I worked as a maintenance man for that church and school) and on social media, 

that biracial kids aren’t sure where they belong, because they don’t easily fit into one racial group. 

As you can see, I like to use photos to help illustrate what I am talking about. 

The photo above is a man with ‘vitiligo’. We will use vitiligo to enhance this presentation.

Here is how I distill what I have read about vitiligo: 

Vitiligo is an autoimmune malfunction, when the body mis-reads the person’s melanin, as an attacking enemy, and works to eliminate the melanin. This mis-reading is like celiac-sprue disease, also an autoimmune malfunction, where the body mis-reads gluten as a poison. 

This misreading of melanin, as a biological enemy, produces the results you see above. 

I've read that this can be quite distressing. 

I've chosen this picture because I suspect this is how some biracial people feel on the inside. 

Especially those who go to a family event, like a graduation party, and see a color divide in the back yard. 

I suspect that many people with vitiligo feel like biracial people feel, but with the added twist of patchy-colored skin. 

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Now, I would like to talk about multi-ethnicity within the same skin color. 

My multi-ethnicity. 

My bloodlines are northwest European. I have Swede, Dane, German, Swiss and UK blood in me, according to genealogical tracings and family lore. I am told I have UK bloodlines from the English, Irish, Scot and Welsh. 

Here is the problem:

The English people, as rulers, have poorly treated the Irish, Scot and Welsh people. 

All kinds of evil have been done to the oppressed three tribes, including selling them. I am a mix of all that. 

I have one set of ancestors (English) that have historically despised and abused my other ancestors. 

How do I deal with this difficulty? Do I hate my English heritage? I have wrestled with this.

If I do, then I hate myself, for I am part English. 

Let me repeat that. If I hate everyone in a people-group that I am the tiniest part of, then I must hate myself too. 

It's better if I decide that every people-group has people that can be trusted, 

and every people-group has people that cannot be trusted, 

So, if black/white biracial folks decide to hate one color, it will likely be their black-side hating their white-side, 

so then they also hate 1/2 or 1/4 of themselves. Do you see the problem?

Consider Mestizos. Mestizos are a mix of Spanish Conquistador blood and American Indigenous blood.

They have had things to work through.

I don’t have an easy solution for 2-color, biracial folks sorting it out, but it has a solution somehow.

Eric J. Rose 

middlegrademysteries.com 

photo: https://vrfoundation.org/about_vitiligo