What does it mean to be bi-racial for me is...

-Not having the pleasure of having a family tree you can look back upon and be proud of because your family does not know its past;

-Not feeling welcome in the community that you wish to be part of because they do not approve the color of a parent;

-To be constantly referred to as the race of a father who was never there, and a grandfather who probably raped your grandmother;

-To constantly have to explain your heritage because your name does not match the what the person expected to see;

-To not have any heroes to look up to because almost every bi-racial figure underplay their heritage and even hide their ethnic features to be more presentable (IE Amerie; Tasha Reid early in her career);

-To have to constantly be bombarded by a society that only presents bi-racial females as sex objects (if their heritage is mentioned) and not as human beings;

-To have people constantly pegging you as a race you have no connection to;

-Not knowing what ethnicity to mark when filling out applications or surveys;

-Not having any student or ethnic group to represent the problems you face as a bi-racial;

-Being forced to be either "white" or a "model minority" who should not care about the suffering of other human beings caused by bigotry;

-Never feeling comfortable for who you are because in the end, you have no culture or community to go too;

-Being mocked because you call yourself an "Asian American," the heritage of your mother;

-Being the descendent of a man who probably had "yellow fever" and was hoping for an obediant Asian wife to serve him;

-Feeling like you can never be comfortable with yourself because your own self image does not match society.