People are like cake.

While the discussions on diversity, inclusion and belonging are exploding, there are still far too few discussions on the multiracial/multiethnic experience. We need to include the experiences of multiracial people. Multiracial people must claim our voices, our power, and achieve a sense of belonging. These experiences include filling out race and ethnicity questions on forms, managing code switching among identities, responding to racism by relatives, having physical features that are “ethnically ambiguous” and dealing with other people’s discomfort when physical features, names, accents, languages spoken do not match up in expected ways. Multiracial people should not be forced to hide a part of ourselves because systems don’t see us and people are uncomfortable with us. We have the right, even the responsibility, to love, honor and celebrate all our identities.

What does this have to do with cake? Think about your favorite cake. What’s in it? I love a pistachio cake made with cardamom, rose water and of course pistachios. Yet those ingredients do not describe the full experience of the taste, smells, and textures of this cake. Like cake, our ingredients mix together to result in something unique. What happens when we leave out an ingredient? My pistachio cake would not work without pistachios obviously, but what about cardamom or rose water? Am I still me without that one “exotic” ingredient? Am I still me without the hint of this or a note of that? Each of us will answer these questions differently. No one else has the right to answer these questions for us. We are our own unique blends of biology and experience. We are cake.