Racial Impostor Syndrome

Racial Impostor Syndrome is the feeling of not belonging. It is a feeling that many interracial people are familiar with. It means enduring a constant pressure to pick one group or another, but never both.

Many people don’t seem familiar with the realities of being multiracial. They assume that it comes with fair skin, curly hair, and stereotypically attractive features. However, the fact is that mixed people don’t always look the same. They can range from a white-passing Latino who feels like a tourist in their own community to a biracial girl who struggles with relating to one part of her heritage more than the other.

“Being a mixed person that didn’t look mixed, I always had to prove myself,” says Eastside senior Jasmine Whiteside. “People didn’t treat me like a person, you could say. They treat me like one side of the spectrum. I’m not treated like I can be both. I have to be either White or Black, never both.”

This idea that an interracial person has to be one or the other can not only upset them and make it feel as though they don’t belong. It can also cause them to feel the need to act a certain way around a particular group of people simply because of the way they are perceived. Whiteside added, “When I’m with one side of the family, I have to act a certain way. It’s the same with others outside of my family too.”

People need to understand that being mixed doesn’t always mean looking the stereotypical part. Nor does it always mean being close to both cultures. Even so, this doesn’t make an interracial person’s heritage any less valid.