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As a biracial person, you get some bizarre reactions when you tell people your ethnicity, “Can you say [insert any racial slur]?”, “Oreo, coconut, banana”, and “That’s so trendy, I wish I was you.” Yet the most uncomfortable reaction is when the person pulls out their device and proceeds to show you pictures of multiracial babies. They say something along the lines of “Biracial babies are adorable, I want to have a baby with a [insert any ethnicity] person so that I can have cute kids.” Treating having a child as if it is a trip to the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

I came to realize that these are not a few select individuals with bizarre eugenic hopes, but there are vast online communities dedicated to wanting biracial children solely based on their looks. What people fail to realize is biracial babies grow into biracial adults, they aren’t cute forever but they will forever be people who have to negotiate their intersectional social identity. This website was created to educate people on this issue, make space for biracial voices, and provide a safe space for biracial voices. Below is more information along with quotes from individuals from the gallery to illustrate that these online ideologies have real-life effects.

Online Communities & Fetishization

This TikTok went viral in 2020 of a European woman seeing a picture of a biracial child of European and Asian descent on Pinterest, booking a flight to China, and marrying a man just to have a baby like the one in the picture. Though some were appalled by the blatant fetishization of both the husband and now child, others encouraged it as the TikTok page has over 26.7 million likes.

Instagram page Beautiful Mixed Kids has posted over 13,500 pictures of young multiracial children. Though the page first appears like harmless pictures of babies the more you look into the content the more concerning it gets. The post states the child's name, age, and multiple ethnicities with alarming hashtags #TrendyKids, #PerfectlyBlended, and #BabyCrush. The Instagram has even more problematic comments such as “Love the mix” referring to the child as if they were bred specifically to have those specific ethnicities.

Continuously, these eugenic-like beliefs about wanting to reproduce to make children with certain ethnic traits are popping up on the internet.Milla called out this behavior saying “I see people who want to just pick and choose their baby’s race like it’s a game, and not a real person who’s going to have to grapple with their racial identity and the intricacies that come with it.” The ramifications of these online communities go offline as Victoria explains, “ I’ve had someone tell me I need to marry a Latinx/Black individual so my children would be ‘real fucked up’ so that was a puzzling interaction.”

Proximity to Whiteness & Colorism

The overwhelming amount of biracial babies that show up on Google Images, Pinterest, and these online communities have light eyes, loose curls, and light tan skin. First, there is no one ‘look’ to being biracial, there are a lot of multiracial people who do not have these traits. Second, the desire for these traits is deeply rooted in unconscious racial bias and American slavery.

Light eyes, loose curls, and light tan skin are traits that are commonly seen in biracial individuals of European and African Descent. During slavery in America, these traits were seen in slaves who were products of rape from slave owners and their slaves. These lighter-skinned slaves were given preferential treatments because of their skin tone, European descent, and connection to the slave master. This treatment continued to affect the Black community after slavery with things such as the Brown Paper Bag Test. This treatment is still seen today as many biracial actors will be cast in fully Black roles. Take Zendaya in Disney Channel's K.C. Undercover as an example.

Both Soul and Veronica talk about how this praise of more eurocentric features in the Black community has affected their lives:

“For myself, being mixed white and black, when I get approached they justify their attraction to me by saying ‘but you’re not like other Black girls,’ which immediately reveals to me self-hatred from a Black man or racism from a non-Black individual, both being an immediate red flag. ”

“The privilege that people with looser curls have in the world compared to those of us with curlier kinky hair is huge. It doesn’t take away from anyone’s Blackness to have looser hair, but I definitely feel that having very curly/kinky hair in my life has added to my Black experience.”

Due to lack of education on biracial history many multiracial people whether or not they are of African descent are treated with these colorist ideologies. Sunya explains, “The colorism definitely took place in my 'desexualization' and being equated with masculinity which definitely affected who I am today.”

Media Representation & Growing Into Adults

A majority of mainstream media makers are not multiracial or educated on the multiracial experience, with this comes unrealistic, oversimplified, or offensive depictions of the multiracial experience. The video above from Netflix Original Ginny & Georgia shows two biracial problematically depicted as they attack each other's ethnicities. This episode had no biracial writers and it shows.Briana said she realized that “Hollywood assumes they are doing a great job representing mixed people because outsiders do not see the niches that us biracial people see.”

Biracial identity is scarcely depicted in media as it is.Soul talks about how most multiracial actors are cast as single race actors:

“I hope that in the future, mixed people can be hired to represent mixed experiences to fully depict our unique nuanced life, rather than unjustly trying to represent the life of a fully non-white person, in which a fully non-white person should have been hired in the first place.”

Unrealistic representation can cause multiracial individuals to even dislocate from their identity as Victoriasays,“Strangely enough I identify and relate to Chinese representation… I don’t know, I guess sometimes I forget that I am White.”

The rare realistic depictions of biracial identity I have seen have personally made me feel more whole in my identity. The band MICHELLE, composed of four multiracial vocalists released a song FYO talking about the biracial experience. FYO addresses issues like the ‘What are you?’ question and lack of representation with lyrics . “With a glare, you ask where my eyes are really from” and “I’m not in the books or the school lunch that they brought.”

If I had heard FYO growing up, I probably wouldn’t have been so insecure about my race or allowed people to tokenize me because of my race. This song also demonstrates that though the biracial experience is so diverse there are some issues we all face.

To reiterate, biracial babies grow into biracial adults. Biracial people are not just cute children that you can pick out of pictures on the internet. There is no one way to look or be biracial. Biracial people have an intersectional identity that they will have to navigate their entire lives.

“I think that being biracial is such a strange, and sometimes a really alienating experience. Like sometimes I feel like I don’t really belong or fit in with either of the races that make me me.” - Milla

“Being biracial and multicultural is honestly work, because you have to be constantly putting in an effort to learn about both sides of yourself. I used to feel very secure in my Mexican culture, but had not a clue about my black one. I now feel that I am learning about both cultures equally and I have a lot of room to grow. I am now confident enough in myself as a person to know that although there is a lot to learn about both cultures, at the end of the day they are both mine. I am undeniably Mexican and undeniably black inside and out, I’ve gotten to a point where nobody can tell me otherwise. Which makes me feel truly accomplished” - Veronica

Here is a video of biracial adults addressing many of the topics mentioned and how they affected them in their adulthood: