^ I don't feel that is true if growing up in an open environment; only in cultures and time periods were there is a... excess of whites are mixed race people relegated or forced to throught law or socially told to go with their non-white side.
Now I started out in a mixed race town, its on a military base where a large section of the elderly population started interracial relationships and marriages in WWII. Half of the parents of my classmates were mixed race, and it gets more complicated with now their kids are getting into mixed race relationships.
The funny part is there is still a segregation of sorts, called by racial labels but in effect a local vs outsider, middle-class vs working class, completely ethnic vs some racial ambiguity thing.
So I was called white, I don't look "white" but the fact that I did not look like most black youth being that I am mixed race, went to the same schools, raised by my father who was a resident for some 20+ years, lived in the same neighborhoods, for the most part lived the life of my peers, and lived a economically better life than most kids I was one of the ingroup.
Did that stop me from getting into fights or people pick on me no; but I was able to interact with people in was the newer mostly inner-city black kids.
I reacted by associating with other mixed race or white kids; I really did not associate with many others folks, tried to push anything associated with "black" (lower class black culture, not all black culture) from my being but then I saw that it was all illusionary. It was not real.
Its weird when the blonde haired blue eyed girl with pale skin is called black because of her friends and economic status but the dusky skinned, black haired, brown eyes girl although isn't white isn't black eithier
After moving to SF I found out that I am not even seen as an American but as an immigrant or adopted child: Ethiopian, Brazilian, Southern Egyptian, Trinidadian, Dominican, etc....
We as people in a capitalist culture divide and conquer; subjugate and oppress. It is only when we see past this game and see we share a common enemy gaining from our pointless feuds that we begin to really see ourselves as whole people made equally but not the same yet recognizing that those differences are not worth bloodshed, hate or ill will.
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