ABSTRACT
The next stages of building our understanding are to recognize that, while multiracial Asian children do share the same white foundation, white racial framework and systemic overinsulation, they importantly do not share matching interiors. In a construct that discourages solidarity amongst people of divergent phenotypes, multiraciality (which encompass a wide range of physical appearances) is forced to be more nuanced than “everyone all together.” We must acknowledge that drywall is differently hung and textured within multiracial Asian self-understandings. Mixed race identity is implicitly but dissimilarly shaped by the system of race within which it is embedded. The five-race construct and racial hierarchy, fastened by a light-on-dark spectrum, dictate that there is a difference between having a white parent versus two parents of color. There is a difference between being light-skinned multiracial versus medium- or dark-skinned. There is a difference between whether your heritage(s) of color are “visible” or “invisible”; whether you are allowed to “pass” as white, racially ambiguous, or are relegated to being a “colored” monorace. The white racist system does not become obsolete when we look at mixed race as so many seem to believe. In actuality the dominant construct continues to underwrite the multiracial experience remaining the core reference point and fundamental measuring stick for everything race related—as it always has.
