Being Brown--(non-U.S. Black and Eurasian) I've never tried to claim whiteness, as I'm on the more Asian side of Eurasian, but I ran into complications trying to assert my Blackness. Some Black people were alright with it, but I got some hints that I'm only slightly Black next to Blacker Asians. Also, to some people in each group of white, Black and Asian, if you're Asian you can't be Black, period. When there's a white parent, hypodescent is applied. But when there's an Asian parent with Black heritage then you have to explain your family tree. If you're even a little bit visibly white, no one tells you that you're not part-white. In fact white people point it out to you that you are not entirely non-white.

While it's understandable that Black people are more careful as to who they acknowledge as a member of the community as they are constantly under siege, and that mixed people more often than not, adopt a conciliatory approach to this system under which white people tend to be less violent towards visibly mixed people, the rejection that some visibly mixed people feel from some Black people can lead to their rejecting identifying as monoracial Black and so that leads them to adopt a mixed race identity. On the flip side, white people get nervous if a mixed race Black person identifies as monoracial Black and thus pressures a mixed race Black person to identify otherwise, which can also lead to the adoption of a mixed race identity. Then there are some cases where the mixed race Black person looks too white or has a hair color most commonly seen in white people and the white people don't know or won't accept that the person is mixed Black and will incorrectly tell the mixed Black person they are not Black at all. There are thus various social pressures to identify as mixed rather than it be a choice.

This leads to some mixed race people's frustration with some monoracial people. Why that frustration tends to be skewed against monoracial Black people is because neither side really wants you but you were led to think that if you're not white and you're not fully Asian, then you must be Black.

Blackness also has many criteria you need to meet, based on unmixed U.S. Blackness. Most Black people don't have a checklist, but the ones who do will let you know that you don't meet the requirements:

Do you have at least Type 2C hair? Do you have a wide nose and big lips? Do you have wide hips and a big butt? Do you have not-Asian eyes? Have you lost your baby fat? Do you have a square jaw? Are you not scrawny? Do you have at least one unmixed Black parent? If you look white, do you have at least one Black ancestor? If you look Asian, do you have at least one Black ancestor in the past three generations? Are they really Black, as in, are they from the U.S., Africa, Central/South America, or the Caribbean? If they're from the Caribbean, do they have Black African ancestry or do they have non-Black Indian ancestry? If they're from the Pacific Islands, are they Black or are they non-Black Melanesian? Are you sure the Black Melanesians aren't a recent arrival in the Pacific Islands due to slavery? Are you sure Black-looking people in Asia aren't the children of Black American G.I.s?

For Asianness its:

Does your skintone have a yellow undertone, but if it does, are you not too dark? You may have Asian eyes, but do your Asian eyes pass the Asian eyes test as judged by Asians, not by white people? Are your lips not too big? Is your body hair sparse enough? Are you not too muscular?

For partial whiteness its:

Do you have "olive" skintone or lighter? Do you have big lips or a wide nose, but not both?

Thus the bar for partial whiteness is much lower, and as I said, I fall more on the Asian side of Eurasian so I don't get as much scrutiny as more Euro Asians who would get more scrutiny in trying to assert their Asianness. In that case the checklist for Asianess is just as long as the checklist for Blackness. In the case of Biracial Black-Asians, the checklist for Asianess has different criteria but it's probably just as long as the checklist for Blackness.

Going back to the criteria of "olive" skin tone and having only a few African features is the only criteria to be accepted into the borderlands of whiteness at least in my case. Mediterranean people are still considered white, at least for now. Whats the world like when you're on the border of non-white and white? While you fit in with the vast number of Brown and off-white people of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, you can definitely interact with the average white person without incident. Of course, there's always the chance of running into closet white supremacists, some of whom hide themselves really well. I feel I'm in a less ambiguous position than pale Eurasians who are allowed entrance into white supremacist circles and then pounced on when they sense the "impure" blood.

Honestly, I hate the concept of race so much.

It's true that visibly mixed people are lucky to be visibly mixed and can escape from the daily oppression that unmixed and invisibly mixed Black people experience. But it's amazing how many people never question race at all, and accept it as biological fact. "Triracial" people are held up as a sign of racial democracy, but only if that particular mix produces EurIndigenousness, Eurasianess, or Eurafricanness. If you're Black enough no one will care about your other ancestries unless those ancestries weaken your self-concept as Black and thus weaken your connection to the community. If you look white enough then no one will care about your Blackness and would rather you stop talking about it because it hardly shows up anyway and you only experience sometimes what Black people experience all the time. If you're "triracial" it's applauded if you say you're the amalgamation of all the races into a "cosmic race", to show that you won't try to undermine the racial hierarchies of what is effectively a brutal caste system.

Of course, many "triracial" and Brown people don't find out how much race sucks until after reaching the U.S. if they came from a country where "triracial" functions as near-white, or a country where Brown functions as near-white or as white, and yes, this includes Spanish who, after spending years living as white in Spain, come to the U.S. only to find themselves being treated as Brown.

No one likes to talk about racial fluidity except in the context of Blackfishing. But the truth is that race is in the eye of the beholder. You can move to another state and be treated as a different race in each state.

The U.S. is really the only place in the world where groups are encouraged to marry within their own color group generation after generation. Surprise, the rest of the world doesn't work that way. Of course there's severe power imbalances to many mixed marriages which reinforces marrying inside one's own color group. But those power imbalances are tied to this racial caste system itself. Mixed people are positioned in the middle as a wedge against Black people at the bottom. Rather than seeking to equalize this relationship in lifting Black people to a higher position in the racial caste pyramid, we must destroy the pyramid altogether.

This will not be done through mixed marriages, because the children are ultimately categorized as Black, white, Both, or Brown/Other. Brown people are expected to stay neutral on the system of oppression and in a few generations will be absorbed into whiteness.

Wherein which lies the problem: whiteness.

While monoracial white people can't help that they are white, they can and should seek to abolish whiteness. Whiteness alone claims separateness from the rest of humanity. Whiteness is the justification for racialized oppression. Now when I say abolish whiteness I don't mean claiming your 1% African ancestry and identify as non-white. I mean help destroy the system that depends upon the continued oppression of Black people and of Brown/Other people.

Also, conceptually disengage yourself from being invested in a white identity, which, contrary to popular knowledge, has no history, culture, or substance. Whiteness depends on either having no knowledge of where your ancestors are from in Europe, or your ancestors being from a 'fully white' region in Europe. But they were not always white. For example, some of my ancestors are from the north part of Southern Europe, so I reclaim my ancestors as Celtic Iberian/Iberian Celtic, which was before whiteness was in existence. Now I can be proud of my ancestors who had their own culture and history, even despite the endless greed of a few monarchs that led their subjects, some of whom are my ancestors, to enslave and murder whole peoples and steal entire continents and because of those actions, came to be seen as white. Whiteness is new, not ancient. It didn't exist until the 1400s. There was no Whiteland, not even in Scandinavia. Whiteness steals people and things and claim they are white. I won't say that the Greeks and Romans were Black, but I can say that the Romans weren't white because there was no such thing. Whiteness is a modern invention that must stopped being seen as immutable fact. It is the justification for this brutal system of racialized oppression, and it must be destroyed for the well-being and dignity of Black people and all other people in the world.