Shelby Steele Quotes

I'm a white girl and not a white girl, identified by other people as black and not black for as long as I can remember - which, in mixed-people speak, means biracial.

The idea that a person can be both black and white - and at the same time neither - is novel in America.

I'm black. I'm Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian.

My father is black and my mother is white. Therefore, I could answer to either, which kind of makes me a racial Lone Ranger, caught between two communities.

My blood's not red or blue - it's brown.

My dad is Caucasian, and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white. Being biracial paints a blurred line that is equal parts staggering and illuminating.

My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African American, so I'm pretty mixed. My nickname in high school was United Nations. I was fine with it, even though I identify as a black woman. People don't realize it hurts my feelings when someone looks at my hair or my eyes, and says, "But you're not actually black. You're black, but you're not black black, because your eyes are green." I'm like, "What? No, no, I'm definitely black." Even some of my closest friends have said that. It's been a bit touchy for me.

I'm tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro - that's the Scotch-Irish part.

I have always, or for the most part, identified myself as a biracial person.

It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.

You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy.

When you're biracial, you can feel like you're fully neither, not fully both. But I won't strip away my heritage for anyone's comfort.

To describe something as being black and white means it is clearly defined. Yet when your ethnicity is black and white, the dichotomy is not that clear. In fact, it creates a grey area.

I never considered myself as part of a biracial family - we're just a family - but my parents are white, and my brother is Asian.

I always felt culturally adrift as a child because I'm mixed race. I've had to deal with that since I was little. Who am I? What makeup do I have? What are the black and the white?

My mum is black, my dad is white, and when I was a teenager, people would say, 'So what are you? Are you black? Or white? What are you more of?'

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.

I always wonder if my kids will say they're mixed or black.

My family is part Creole, and we're Indian, and we're also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.

I'm a quarter Chinese and three-quarter Filipino. I don't look Filipino; I look more Chinese or Korean. It actually works in my favor: in terms of roles, it gives me a broader canvas.

I don't consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.

My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world.

My theory is because I'm Asian and white I sort of look like the future. I'm the melting pot.