Sounds great -- but what do you do when your racial identity is forced on you, such as, when filling out forms or interacting in public?

I would dearly love to shed my white identity! It never really felt right. But it is forced on me every day. Filling out forms, walking around in public, in activist circles, etc -- I am seen as white and treated as such, whether I like it or not.

When I fill out forms here in the USA, there's often a race question, and I leave it blank, or put in "human." But later I see my records and see that someone filled in "white" for me. This goes for medical records, applications for state ID, jobs, apartments, assistance in connection with my disability (autism), etc. This galls me and I used to make a fuss over it. I don't bother any more, because all it gets me is a dismissive eye-roll, and the records stay the same.

I hear what you say, that we're really all mixed. I'm actually white-passing Creole, descended from the earliest settlers who came to the Louisiana territory prior to the Louisiana purchase. These settlers came as single young men, and reproduced with anyone they could get hold of once they were here. A DNA test confirmed what I've long suspected: There is a touch of Native and African ancestry, and even a bit of remote Asian ancestry -- probably from the 1241 Mongol conquest of my grandfather's German ancestors. No wonder it never really felt right to call myself white!

But it doesn't matter what I call myself. Only thing that matters is how others see me. All I can do educate myself and my people, and -- like a Jedi youngling -- learn to use the power of my whiteness for good.

Thanks for listening and for any comments you may have.

Regards -- Just An Old Hippie