As a biracial POC I have always battled with the idea of not being “enough” of my ethnicities. Because I am of colour and don’t look like my mother, I could never be considered white; and because I was largely raised in the west and do not speak the main language, and necessarily follow the same ideals and beliefs of my father’s side, I could never fully fit in there either; inevitably leaving me (often alone) in the middle, this not being helped by constantly moving from place to place. This notion of being only “half” of each ethnicities has always been enforced, contributing to me feeling as though I am and always will be in the middle, all because the world seems to have cut me (and a lot of other biracial POC) in half. And so after being told your whole life by each side that you’re “only half”, it can feel like thats who you are as a person. Half. But its time we as a collective community start to realise that just because we’re mixed, does not mean we are watered down versions of our ethnicities. We are still WHOLE. And this is why its so so important for biracial POC to be told they are WHOLE. That we are not cut down the middle, but are complete, unabridged and with equal amounts of our ethnicity’s in every aspect that we exist. We need to stop spreading this toxic and othering idea that biracial people are less just because they are also part of other cultures and instead start seeing and accepting people in whatever form they come in. Mixed or not.