My half Native-American daughter has expressed many of the same views. Her POV shifts between all three of those definitions, as she continues to evolve. She attempted to be “transcendent,” during her school years, but adulthood has thrown her a few serious curves.

Now in her 30s, she chuckles as people struggle to decide if she’s Samoan, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian, Brazilian…or what she’s “mixed with.” She’ll sometimes say, “Hopi and African American,” or just the word I came up with, “Afrindian.” But mostly, she just watches and enjoys the “show,” knowing that nothing she says or that they come up with will be accurate. She is who she is. And likes it, even when it confuses her just as much…

BTW, I’m a mutt according to my DNA results, but I look Black, and I’ve been told I don’t sound Black since I was a child. So it’s not just something that happens to obviously “biracial” folk. We have soooo far to go…