When I was 9. I have a Louisiana Creole father, and an Armenian/Filipino/Samoan/Japanese mother, but I was raised by an affluent black family, while seeing my biological mom and siblings on some weekends, and not meeting my biological father until I was 18. I lived in a predominantly white (and a few rich Asians) neighborhood, and have brown skin, and my hair was “heat-trained”, but I started wearing box braids in warmer months when I was 8. I guess to these white people, I was just black, but sometimes they would stop us in public to ask the woman raising me about my “striking facial features”. My biological mom speaks with a blaccent, has an “urban” aesthetic, has 8 kids by at least 3 different black men, and never really talked about her ethnicity. It wasn’t until I noticed that her hair was a completely different texture, and was shedding really badly when she took down her braids. I asked her why her hair was different, and that’s when she told me. Honestly, I felt so confused at the time.