Taye Diggs Talks About His Biracial Son And Mixed Me
Actor Taye Diggs says he wants the world to embrace biracial children and stop “disrespecting” them by only labeling them as one ethnicity.
According to The Grio the actor fears that if society sees his son as Black, there will be “confusion” with his mother being white.
“When you [call biracial kids Black], you risk disrespecting that one half of who you are and that’s my fear,” he explains.
“I don’t want my son to be in a situation where he calls himself Black and everyone thinks he has a Black mom and a Black dad, and then they see a white mother, they wonder, ‘oh, what’s going on?'”
Well, okay. He goes on to use President Barack Obama as an example of misusing Black versus biracial. “As African Americans we were so quick to say okay ‘he’s Black, he’s Black,’ and then there were the white people who were afraid to say he was biracial because who knows,” says Diggs. “Everybody refers to him as the first Black president, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that it’s interesting. It would be great if it didn’t matter and that people could call him mixed. We’re still choosing to make that decision, and that’s when I think you get into some dangerous waters.”
Diggs is the author of a children’s book, Mixed Me, based on his son, Walker’s experience as a biracial child. Do you think people from a mixed heritage should be labeled as biracial?
WENN/Milk/Mixed Me
