I used to be the only biracial kid in the room. Now, my exponentially expanding cohort promises a future where everyone is mixed.
Click on the image for 10 interviews with mixed-race Toronto children
Last fall, I was in Amsterdam with my parents and sister on a family trip, our first in more than a decade. Because travelling with your family as an adult can be taxing on everyone involved, we had agreed we would split up in galleries, culturally enrich ourselves independently, and then reconvene later to resume fighting about how to read the map. I was in a dimly lit hall looking at a painting of yet another apple-cheeked peasant when my younger sister, Julia, tugged at my sleeve. “Mixie,” she whispered, gesturing down the hall.
“Mixie” is a sibling word, a term my sister and I adopted to describe people like ourselves—those indeterminately ethnic people whom, if you have an expert eye and a particular interest in these things, you can spot from across a crowded room. We used the word because as kids we didn’t know another one. By high school, it was a badge of honour, a term we would insist on when asked the unavoidable “Where are you from?” question that every mixed-race person is subjected to the moment a conversation with a new acquaintance reaches the very minimum level of familiarity. For the record, my current answer, at 30 years old, is: “My mom’s Chinese, but born in Canada, and my dad’s a white guy from England.” If I’m peeved for some reason—if the question comes too early or with too much “I have to ask” eagerness—the answer is “Toronto” followed by a dull stare.
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The U.S. presidential race has been depressing to watch. The portrait of America that has emerged from the conventions and the debates and the attack ads is grim: a country plagued by vast unemployment and a shrinking middle class, where many average citizens can’t pay the bills. For the first time in generations, Americans anticipate their kids will never make as much money as they do. Even the flow of illegal immigrants to the U.S. is slowing; since the economy crashed in 2008, the number of Mexicans sneaking across the border has declined.
