My story
Hi. I am "mixed". What does that mean? I'm not sure.
I am the son of immigrants -- my mother from the Philippines and my father from France. I've got brown-ish skin and a last name that most people, especially after looking at me, pronounce "CHA-vez" (it's "shuh-VAHS"). When I get pulled over, the "Hispanic" box is checked. I have hair that I've often been told is "what makes me something other than white".
My hair comes from my mom, who has always said that she's the only Asian in the world with curly hair. It's dark and straight and non-descript when short and then gets wavy and textured as it grows until it eventually becomes a curly afro -- which means that people often think I'm part Black. In high school friends would drip water on my head because it was so odd that my hair wouldn't absorb it. The beads of water felt funny as they rolled down my head.
The slight squint in my eyes actually comes from my French side (I'm not sure I've ever seen my uncle's eyeballs). Filipinos generally have rounder eyes anyways. Even within the group "Asian", Filipinos themselves don't really fit in. We're jungle Asian, not fancy Asian.
None of me makes any sense. At least for the purpose of defining one's race visually.
I've settled on embracing the term "ethnically ambiguous". I'm some sort of "mixed" (not a word I really use in practice), except that the mix I am is almost always different from the mix that other people think I am. I'm still not sure which one matters most.
It's meant that my race has often been a curiosity to other people. But I didn't become truly aware of it from strangers until my hair accidentally grew long enough to become a small afro in my senior year of high school and my friends told me to keep it, and I did off and on for a few years. During a college course on Race and Ethnicity in America, half a class period was spent in open discussion about what everyone thought I am and why.
Quickly race became a curiosity to me too. When people would ask me "so, what... are you?", I started asking them what they thought first. I found out I could be almost anything -- Black, Hispanic, Asian, South America, Middle Eastern (purposefully mixing race/ethnicity/geography here since the boundaries of race, like nations, are totally arbitrary). It was funny and strange and eye-opening all at once.
It was also, in retrospect, a constant conversation starter about race.
I have not knowingly been the subject of any egregious acts of racism in my life (not that I haven't gotten hundreds of comments/jokes about my race or skin color). This is very different from what most people of color go through. I wonder if, because I do not look like any one specific race, I actually avoid getting stereotyped -- because you need to identify someone's race first to pretend you know something about them. I also grew up in a mostly-white community and attended mostly-white schools. I wonder then if it's really that I grew up thinking I was white (one of my best friends was fully-Asian, so I avoided all the Asian jokes), and it was only when people started telling me otherwise that I became distinctly aware of my race at all.
As a result, my personal experience with race has been odd -- as a curiosity. A bonus. I don't mind being asked about it (many "mixed" people hate it). It's my choice whether "half-white" gets rounded up to "white" (the opposite is true for many people of color). I've had the luxury to not take it seriously and to let it enrich my life. I've experienced race while largely avoiding racism. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to have feelings about race the way others do. (Here is an NPR segment about "growing up mixed"; I talk at the 8:20 mark)
This all has meant that I've gotten to think and talk about race a lot, though while protected as a sort of experiential observer. I lie somewhere in between white people who largely do not experience it at all and people of color who have to live with its consequences every day. This is a privilege.
In the end, what's clear is how stupid it is to judge anyone based on race. In my case, judging me based on race is ridiculous since I'm probably getting judged on a race that I am not. If race is something that someone else decides, then I don't really know what race I am... but fortunately for me, nobody else seems to either. This renders race mostly impotent; its consequences are benign. For many people of color, though, this judgment is real and totally unavoidable. This makes it very, very powerful; its consequences can grow with time, like a cancer.
We need to increase participation from underrepresented groups in our field at every level. Representation matters. Individuals from any such group interested in grad school in weather/climate science are encouraged to send me an email to connect.