By Gianni Risper
Being biracial isn’t the hardest thing in the world but having to grow up with the prejudices that it brings is. I’m the proud product of a Black Caribbean American mother and a white Italian biological father. My father who raised me, takes cares of me and loves me is an African American man who was born and raised in Michigan. Thankfully, I have not experienced much prejudice but it still is hard. It takes generations for mindsets to change but even in this age of tolerance it should not even be a problem.
Being biracial puts you in a interesting slot in life. You are torn between two extremes in which you have no clue in which you want to take part in and how the other side will react to your actions. You have your friends, who have mindsets of their own which are influenced by their lives and their parents.
You have your parents trying to steer you to be like them and the community around you has their own thoughts. Biracialism has been looked down upon in the generations before. If you have ever read the classic, “To Kill A Mocking Bird”, you know that one of the book’s characters was annexed from society as well as his children for loving a black women. In the past interracial marriages have almost always been looked down upon.
As people we shouldn’t care about skin color. You have to tolerate other people’s characters and not do things to make people in precarious situations feel uncomfortable. For example, such as the "Oh you cant say the N-word, but I can". If something offends you it should do so all the time not just some of the time. I say this to adults because I want them to know that children hear them. They should also correct their children or others who use inflammatory statements. It’s not a black and white issue any more. It’s our issue.
