Can somewone really consider themselves multiracial if they are misked with Scottish and English. I think you are confusing nationality/ethnicity with “race.”

One day I was having lunch with a white women, a Jewish man and a Black South African. As a point of commonality I mentioned to the Jewish man that my grandfather was also Jewish. The response from those people at that table was absolutely insulting. They basically accused me of lying. I was drilled with a bunch of questions intended to out me with my lie. Finally the Black South African came right out and told me…”I don’t believe you! You look like a pure African with your features and kinky hair. I don’t see any white in you.” The Jewish man agreed. I basically found myself in an argument with these people on this subject. When I look back I realize that I was actually having lunch with a table full of racists. They were obviously uncomfortable with who I am and felt even more uncomfortable when they felt that I was trying to co-opt the white race. LOL I have so many experiences like this. It is absolutely tiring.

Why reaffirm racial stereotypes for a future generation? I’m not saying go all P.C. on our kids (that may be even worse), sure acknowledge differences, but acknowledge that there’s no one main stereotype or skin color for any one “racial” group. As I said before, look at the “original” South Africans: there are “hispanic”-colored Africans who’ve persisted in S. Africa before white people and the Zulu (”significantly” darker Africans from equitorial Africa).

As a woman of mixed race heritage (my father is Haitian with a dark brown skin tone and my mother is French Canadian with a fair white skin tone), I have pale brown skin which gets paler in the winter and darker in the summer.

My family raised me to understand how my differences should be cherished and enjoyed. Unfortunately, I have also had to deal with situations of discrimination and sexism. I understand the importance of the words and illustrations we use on our website, documents and in our books, especially when it comes to products that educate children.
This is why my team and I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking through every aspect of our products and website.

We have read articles, looked-up terms and most importantly, we have involved members of different ethnic groups in every step of our development. We have tried to find terms and to develop illustrations that are respectful. We have had to make some hard decisions and we understand that not everyone will agree with these decisions.

We are aware that the use of terms such as “Asian eyes”, “mulatto skin tone” and other terms may displease some. This is definetly not my intention.

Our first attempts at making the “almond-shaped” eyes characteristic of people of Asian decent, were described as “not Asian enough” by the members of our team from the Vietnamese community. Other members of our team (again, of Asian decent) thought that “almond-shaped” was too confusing a term to describe this facial characteristic. They selected “Asian eyes” as the clearest term.

We tried to simply describe the skin’s hue by using descriptions such as light brown, lighter brown, bronze and other colours. However, these were also unclear. People asked “How light is light brown?”

As you can see, we really struggled with this issue. I agree that we should not have to describe people based on their heritage. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a common consensus for other terms.

Some more politically correct words such as mutli-racial, mixed race or métis were too ambiguous to be used. As for the use of the term mulatto, I use it to describe myself and have been inspired to do so by the article: “The meaning of mulatto - multiracial identity - Back Talk - Editorial”, published in Esssence magazine, by Erin Bannister
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_n4_v29/ai_21003422

Ms. Bannister describes the same stuggle that have faced to describe myself.

Whether you agree with the use of the terms or not, most people asked were able to accurately predict which illustration went with each term. We tried to balance both respect and clarity in order to provide the best possible product. After all, we want to send our customers books with the personalization options they have in mind. These terms are never mentionned in the books. The children never see them. They are simply there to help an aware parent select the approrpriate physical characteristic that best represents their child.

I started my company because I wanted children to have a positive image of themselves. I would be very grateful for any suggestions or comments that might help me do this better. Please e-mail me at noemiberlus@printakid.com. I look forward to hearing from you.