GUEST,Sistah SoulJah,

Thanks for visiting Mudcat.

I happen to think that a person's racial group identity is only one facet of who she or he is. But, in my opinion, I strongly believe that a person's racial/ethnic group identity is an important part of there identity-especially in societies which have a history and present day occurances of discrimination and personal fear, distrust, dislike, and/or hatred toward a group of people and groups of people. I believe that such feelings and the actions that result from those feelings are destructive both to the victim group/s and to the group of people doing the victimizing.

In your post, you wrote that you are mixed racial. I believe that in an ideal world, a person's racial and ethnic background would be a value neutral fact. I also think that a person who is mixed race should be able to choose one or the other or both of her or his racial backgrounds. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world.

I'm not sure if you live in the USA or not. It's been my experience that people in the USA rely on visual clues such skin color, hair texture, and facial features including the shape of a person's nose or the slant of a person's eyes, to determine which racial or ethnic group that person belongs to. Given that the American society has a long history of and present day evidences of racism, it is likely that people who look a certain way will be "judged" by others to belong to a certain group.

It's my view that American society does not give people of color the object to be color blind.

In order for people to "be all that we can be" I very much believe that it is important for us to develop & reinforce a positive group identity or identities as well as positive personal identities {for instance being considered a good athlete, or a good singer, and/or a person who is a good student}. It's also important to feel good about other races/ethnicities.

Sister SoulJah, I hope that you join consider joining Mudcat. If you joined this online community, it would be your choice whether you made references to your racial/ethnic background or not.

I hope to "hear" from you again or this Mudcat thread and/or on other threads.

Best wishes,

Ms. Azizi