Neither Box Fits

When people ask me where I’m from, they usually want a one-word answer that fits neatly in a box. My name is Indian, my accent is American, and my face often reads Latina. No matter the answer I give, many people follow up with “But where are you really from?” For most of my life, I didn’t have a simple answer; in fact, I didn’t have an answer at all. Increasingly, millions of Americans are in the same position.

In the 2020 Census, about 34 million Americans identified with more than one race, up from about 9 million in 2010. That’s a 276 percent increase! Between 2000 and 2012–2016, the share of US married-couple households that were interracial or interethnic grew from 7.4 percent to 10.2 percent, according to the US Census Bureau.

Yet our systems and our culture are not prepared for us. Most forms and racial affinity still require us to pick one race. We don’t have good language to describe the identities and skills in telling the more complex stories of our lives. And all of this has significant implications for the health and wellbeing of Multiracial people.

We Are Invisible

For most of American history, you didn’t get to decide your own race. Until 1970, census takers recorded it by looking at you. In 1850 the census added “mulatto,” and by 1890 “quadroon” and “octoroon” to label people by fractions of Black ancestry. Then the one-drop rule took over, and anyone with a known Black ancestor was counted as Black. It wasn’t until 2000, after years of lobbying led largely by parents of Multiracial children, that Americans could mark more than one race on the census.

We know very little about the experience of Multiracial people. When I went looking for research on how redlining, the GI Bill, or Jim Crow laws affected Multiracial people, I found almost nothing. The research on our racial socialization, health issues, experience with racism is very sparse.

When I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, nothing in the books I read or the shows I watched reflected a Multiracial life. I didn’t know anyone like me, so I didn’t know how to be Multiracial in America. I didn’t even know that was my job. There is no Multiracial heritage month. There are very few monuments, museum exhibits, or textbook chapters that tell our history.

The closest thing we have came from the community itself. In 2004, the Multiracial artist Ken Tanabe created Loving Day, held each June 12 to mark the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision. Celebrations now take place across the country, and several states have recognized it. It’s a small but important step toward placing Multiracial people in our nation’s public memory.

The language to describe ourselves is fraught. Even the best options assume something false: “Multiracial”, “biracial”, or “mixed” imply that races are real, separate ingredients that get combined in us. Without an accurate label, it is hard to understand ourselves and find “people like us.” It’s hard to organize, claim resources, and demand rights. The broader terms such as “people of color” and “BIPOC” are only slightly more specific than “non-White.” I worry that without words to describe us, we will stay at the margins, present but unnamed.

Unbundling Race from Nationality, Name, Appearance and more

We tend to assume that race, nationality, appearance, name, language, and ancestry will all be congruent. We tend to expect someone named Rajesh to be “Indian” which comes along with brown skin, speaking Hindi, and racially Asian. Multiracial lives show how often they don’t.

When I was in college, I interviewed for a Rotary fellowship to work in India. The interviewer, a kind older man in my hometown of Carbondale, Illinois, stumbled over my name, asked where I was born, and then said, “You’re not really from Carbondale, are you? I mean, how would you represent Carbondale?” My name and my face told him I couldn’t be from the place I grew up. Meanwhile, in Kolkata, my birth last name, Bhattacharyya, is as common as Smith. No one there stumbles over it, yet my accent marks me instantly as American.

I’m not half Indian and half American; I’m all Indian and all American and so much more. Some of that shows up in my name, some in my accent, some in my face, and some only in my family’s stories. We need to get comfortable with the idea that these can all be different, and that none of them is the “real” answer.

The Health Consequences

These mismatches have significant health consequences. Research shows that many doctors classify patients as a single race based on how they look, then use that classification to judge risk, often without asking about ancestry. For people whose appearance doesn’t reflect all of their heritage, that shortcut can mean missing a screening for a condition such as sickle cell disease or Tay-Sachs. A form that forces a patient to pick one race can lead to the same result.

The deeper risk is not belonging. Researchers have identified microaggressions specific to Multiracial people: being excluded or isolated by individuals, organizations, and even family members; having our identities questioned or denied; being treated as exotic. These may sound small, but they are chronic stressors that wear on mental and physical health. Studies have also linked discrimination from family members to substance use among Multiracial adults. And many of us lack the racial community that others turn to for comfort and solidarity when racism strikes.

Social exclusion registers in the same part of the brain as physical pain. A lack of social connection significantly increases the risk of premature death and is associated with a higher risk of stroke, depression, and anxiety. Belonging is a health issue, and Multiracial people as a population at higher risk.

Making Room for Our Multitudes

Collect data that includes us. Every form, from school enrollment to patient intake to employee surveys, should let people check all the races that apply. I happily check Asian Indian and White, but in my ideal world, I could also check “Multiracial,” so the data captures both our specific heritages and our shared experience. Researchers should then study Multiracial people as a group, so we finally learn whether we face distinct risks. In health care, clinicians should ask patients about their ancestry directly instead of guessing from appearance or a single checkbox.

Tell complex stories of identity. Schools, media, museums, and organizations shape what we imagine is normal. We need stories, curricula, and public commemorations that show identity as layered, not as one tidy label. That means more Multiracial characters and voices, public recognition of days like Loving Day, and comfort with answers to “where are you from?” that take more than one sentence.

Build schools and workplaces that don’t force a choice. Make sure affinity groups and heritage celebrations explicitly welcome Multiracial people, and create Multiracial spaces, including for parents of Multiracial kids. Learn to say people’s names. Rethink the unwritten rules about dress, hair, and “professionalism” that push people to show one heritage and hide another. The goal isn’t to add one more box. It’s to stop asking people to fit in one at all.

The 34 million Americans who identify with more than one race aren’t a future trend. We are already in every classroom, clinic, and workplace. The question is whether our forms, our stories, our language, and our institutions will catch up.

A society that can hold complexity, in its data, its public life, and its everyday interactions, is healthier for everyone. That is what I mean by a culture of absolute belonging.