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We Live Here rerun: Being biracial in America

Emanuele Berry
Provided by Emanuele Berry

We originally aired this podcast on what its like to be multi-racial about six months ago. The project was the brainchild of Emanuele Berry, one of the founding producers of We Live Here, and it's still one of our favorite episodes — not just because we miss Emanuele (who is on a Fulbright in Macau, China), but also because the stories and interactions in this podcast are poignant and thought provoking.

Since this originally aired, the question of what it means to be called biracial, or multi-racial came up in the news. Actor Taye Diggs released a book late in 2015 called Mixed Me. It's a children's book (his second) that was apparently inspired by his 6-year-old son.

In the book, and in several articles about the book, Diggs lays out his argument for referring to his son's ethnicity as "mixed" and not "biracial." The reason: he doesn't like the idea of forcing people to choose if they are black or white. The book, and Digg's many interviews caused a bit of a fuss as people debated the subtleties of the distinction between saying biracial versus mixed. 

That's a theme that comes up in this week's rerun of We Live Here. 

We hope you'll find it informative.

Shula is the executive editor at St. Louis Public Radio.