Today's Guestbook Callout:

9/16/99
I would like to begin by saying "DAMM BROTHER YOU MUST HAVE HAD ONE F***ED UP CHILDHOOD"... I wonder if all of this is from a little boy who couldnot handle being around people in general. I have to ask, were you a loner when you grew up?. I find you strip offensive and very out of touch with today's real African American movement

• RMe6941088

I remember that being called “mixed” back in the day, I wonder if another term is used now

In the US at least, it's usually "Black." Barack Obama's mother was white. He's known as the first Black President.

Part of our toxic history was "the one drop rule." One drop of black blood made you black (and therefore a slave by default) so that slaveholders could increase their profits/property by raping their slaves. It's not law anymore but it's still the default mindset.

A major moment in the musical "Showboat" turns on this law, and the law against "miscegenation," or interracial marriage.

In public schools, at least here in CA, race is avoided explicitly for the reasons you can see in the comic. On paperwork, you can mark "multiethnic" or other or decline to state and teachers violating that can get in trouble. And if you're Latino/Hispanic, that tends to supercede anything, which is kinda fair since you very much can be white, black, or multiethnic Latino.

So yeah, your designation would probably be "multiethnic" now. But that's just officially; as the other commenter says, it's one-drop rule if you look black (or Asian, or Latino). My daughter is half Asian but she looks extremely vague, so I've seen people guess Italian, middle eastern, white Latino, and so on.

Oh and fun fact, in Japanese they call kids like my daughter "half" or "ha-fu" which is very much derogatory in many places in Japan.

I always like that one meme

“So what are you?”

“Uh, so my dad was a boy, and my mom was a girl, so I guess I’m mixed?”