Appearance,Parentage,and Paradox: The White Privilege of Bi/Multiracial Americans with White Ancestry

Recruitment and Reflexivity

I recruited participants through a variety of means to cultivate a diverse sample. I posted a “call for participants” at two Midwestern universities. ⁶ I also utilized snowball and convenience sampling by recruiting in my socioeconomically heterogeneous network in the Midwest, and later in the Northeast, to avoid an overrepresentation of college students, and to preclude an underwhelming number of non-Black/White participants, as most of the people who contacted me were of Black/White parentage. While these sampling methods generate some limitations (e.g., generalizability), they also yield meaningful advantages because knowing participants established a foundation of trust and connection.

During recruitment, I disclosed my Black/White biracial heritage to articulate why I am both professionally and personally invested in the bi/multiracial community. Sharing my background had the potential to generate a sense of trust based on a shared salient, nondominant identity (Johnson-Bailey 2004). This is particularly noteworthy in bi/multiracial research, as bi/multiracial individuals have historically been characterized as “marginal” and prone to inevitable identity crises (Stonequist 1935). In fact, it has largely been bi/multiracial researchers who have acknowledged and honored the complexity of bi/multiracial America by providing a more textured analysis of this population (Funderburg 1994; Jackson and Samuels 2011; Root 1992; Waring and Bordoloi 2019). Therefore, racial insider status as it relates to the bi/multiracial community is not only important in terms of establishing trust and fostering honest testimonies (Waring 2013b), but also with regard to generating knowledge that modernizes our racial understandings about this population. Nevertheless, I am aware that I occupy a paradoxical status as an insider/outsider with each participant, based on other identities, as Jillian Paragg (2014) has noted.

Sample and Data Collection

Participants ranged from 18 to 64 years old. Twenty women participated in the study along with 10 men, 1 of whom is transgender. Twenty-one participants were raised in the Midwestern United States. One participant grew up on the West Coast, one came of age in multiple military settings and seven spent their formative years on the East Coast. Please see Table 1 for demographic information about participants’ backgrounds, ages, and genders. Twenty-seven participants have one monoracial White parent, two participants have a Black/White biracial parent, and one participant has two monoracial White (adoptive) parents. Eight participants are second-generation bi/multiracial, meaning one of their parents is biracial. All of these parents are half-White. I have noted which participants fall into this category.

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Table 1.

Participants’ Demographic Information.

Participant	Age	Gender	Backgrounds
Jasmine	18	Woman	Black/White
Daisy	19	Woman	Black/White
Lola	19	Woman	Cuban/White
Louis	20	Man	Black/White
Yanitza	20	Woman	Mexican/White
Vivian	20	Woman	Black/White
Isabella	21	Woman	Japanese/White
Khadijah	21	Woman	Black/White
Riley	21	Man	Black/White
Rita	21	Woman	Black/White
Shade	21	Woman	Black/White
Casey	22	Man (trans)	Native/White
Esmerelda	22	Woman	Black/White
Alec	22	Man	Black/Japanese/White
Andre	23	Man	Black/White
Ally	23	Woman	Japanese/White
Gloria	24	Woman	Black/Native/White
Serena	26	Woman	Black/White
Bianca	28	Woman	Puerto Rican/White
Natalie	30	Woman	Black/White
Marisol	33	Woman	Puerto Rican/White
Rich	34	Man	Puerto Rican/White
Coral	35	Woman	Mexican/Native/White
Nadia	35	Woman	Thai/Chinese/White
Tatiana	35	Woman	Puerto Rican/White
Dante	35	Man	Chinese/White
Lyric	36	Woman	Filipino/White
Ezra	37	Man	Black/White
Isaac	44	Man	Black/White
Omar	64	Man	Black/White

Questions asked in a research study form the building blocks of knowledge production (Duster 2000). Therefore, my interviews followed a chronological timeline that invited respondents to share a series of stories about their lives (Weiss 1994). The two questions that inform this article are “Do you think that you experience White privilege?” and “Do you think you experience any advantages due to having a White/half-White parent?” I asked these questions irrespective of phenotype. I collected data from January 2019 to June 2021. Most interviews took place face-to-face in a location of the interviewee’s choosing, such as a coffee shop. Due to the pandemic, I interviewed eight participants via Zoom. The shortest interview was 46 minutes and the longest interview was three hours; the average interview was 1 hour and 28 minutes. Each interview was audio-recorded with the verbal and written permission of each respondent, and then transcribed, coded, and analyzed. I video-recorded Zoom interviews, which allowed me to describe my respondents’ narratives in greater detail, including gestures, such as air quotes and facial expressions, or “thick description” (Geertz 1973). Given the sensitive and emotional nature of these topics, nonverbal forms of communication were factored into my data and analysis as “[a]ll is data” (Glaser 2002:145). In the interest of confidentiality, all names, locations, and other identifying information were assigned pseudonyms.

Coding and Analysis

Drawing on the work of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967), I utilized grounded theory to systematically code and analyze my data. I read transcriptions, identified recurring themes, and organized these themes into categories (Saldana 2009). This coding method required frequent reflection and re-coding as I re-read transcriptions (Weiss 1994). I then created analytic memos about each theme; these memos morphed into new coding processes (Saldana 2009). The more participants I interviewed, the more themes emerged, so I re-read previous transcriptions to identify new themes. In re-reading transcriptions several times, I was also able to detect distinctions between themes, thereby creating subthemes (Ryan and Bernard 2003). As my study progressed, I was able to construct a typology (Lofland and Lofland 1995) of White privilege that formed the basis of this article and comprehensively captured White privilege in my participants’ lives, including clear complications and difficulties.

White Privilege by Appearance: Looking White . . . to White People

When I asked respondents if they experienced White privilege, the large majority of those who answered “yes,” were participants who were phenotypically White or White-passing. I asked each participant what most strangers thought or assumed their racial background(s) is/are. Of the 30 participants, 15 reported that most strangers, particularly White people, assumed they were White. I refer to these participants as “phenotypically white” or “white-passing.” Some participants provided caveats to their assumed monoracial White lineage. Khadijah, a 21-year-old Black/White college student, explained that she was often treated as “a questionable white” based on her “very light . . . almost white skin” and her hair that “is not like white people’s.” Her debatable White status, imposed by White individuals, aligns with the exclusionary tradition of whiteness. In fact, Michael K. Brown et al. (2003:44) argues that “[e]xclusion . . . is a cardinal principle of white identity.” Interestingly, people of color and fellow bi/multiracial people were often able to discern their bi/multiracial heritage. To explain this dynamic, Khadijah joked, “It’s like we have a scent or something!”

Bianca, a 28-year-old Puerto Rican/White woman, eagerly said, “Absolutely! Yes, definitely,” when I asked her if she experienced White privilege. When I invited her to elaborate, she explained that when she gets pulled over by law enforcement officers with her White male friends, who are “stoners,” the cops “will not even assume I know what drugs are. I look so strait-laced. They’ll just be like, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be studying, ma’am? You’re clearly a nerd, a good, well-behaved white woman. So, we don’t think you’re a threat.’” She voluntarily juxtaposed this experience with her Black male friends. “If I get pulled over with a Black [male] friend of mine, I’m like, ‘We’re fucked. We’re totally fucked. Actually, you know what? Just let me talk.’” Bianca’s explanation highlights how her White privilege affords her a level of protection, even while she is traveling with White friends who are breaking the law. Her narrative also suggests that her White privilege provides a degree of security for her Black friends when she intervenes. In her words, after she interacts with the police officers when with her Black friends, “They’re like, ‘Okay. Well, get home safe.’” Furthermore, the fact that Bianca presented a comparison between her experiences with law enforcement when she is with White and Black male friends without prompting is telling. White privilege facilitates more positive experiences with police officers who “protect and serve,” a phrase that graces many police vehicles. Scholars have documented the negative and violent encounters that African Americans have had with law enforcement, namely, racial profiling (Khoury 2009), police brutality (Cooper 2015), and “centuries of contentious Black citizen-police relationships . . .” (Boyles 2015:19).

Isabella is a 21-year-old Japanese/White college student who disclosed that being White-passing “has a lot of conveniences.” She shared examples of the White privileges that she observes:

On the one hand, I’m very happy to have the white privilege thing going for me because it’s very nice. I haven’t dealt with much in the way of racism because I’m white-passing. Some of the most eye-opening stuff is when you find out what [oppressed people] do to change their behavior. A lot of Black men try to walk in a way that’s very un-intimidating because they don’t want to get shot. I’ve never had to edit my behavior for my race. I’ve done it as a woman, but not for my race.

Isabella’s account echoes Bianca’s in that she uses the lack of White privilege among African Americans to explain how White privilege materializes in her life. In addition, she characterizes White privilege in the context of physical protection; she does not feel compelled to “edit” her actions to avoid being a victim or survivor of gun violence. She provided another example of her Southeast Asian friend who is routinely racially profiled as Middle Eastern at the airport unless he shaves. She recalled asking him, “Shave? That’s a thing that you do? You have to do that?” Again, her example emphasizes the extra steps that visible people of color feel compelled to take to potentially enjoy what she easily has access to as a White-appearing person in the United States, despite her Japanese heritage.

Daisy, 19-years-old, shares a similar perspective regarding racialized behavior. She is a second-generation biracial; her father is Black/White biracial and her mother isWhite. She contextualizes her White privilege, environment, and presentation of self:

My dad definitely grew up in the way where he hung around Black people and got into trouble. After [he joined] the military, I never grew up in that. I wasn’t exposed to how he lived. I think he tried to raise us differently in a more positive atmosphere. I definitely think my white privilege definitely plays through because I know how to . . . present myself in a way that’ll definitely benefit me more in certain situations.

Daisy is assumed to be White, “just really tan,” by White people, whereas African Americans and other bi/multiracial people detect her Black ancestry. By referencing how different her childhood was from her father’s—who also has White ancestry—Daisy’s narrative illuminates how White privilege is not merely rooted in how she “presents” herself but is also grounded in where she was raised and how she is perceived by the White community. Intriguingly, she used the word “definitely” three times in reference to benefiting from White privilege. Also, she conflates White privilege with class privilege, which is similar to other participants in this study.

Casey is a 22-year-old Indigenous/White university student. On campus, he is assumed to be White. In his words, “When I express that I’m Native, [people] are like, ‘I kind of forgot that exists.’” Casey’s White-passing status on his predominately White campus is likely tempered by the erasure of the Indigenous population in United States, which is markedly different from his non-Native counterparts in this study. In fact, scholars have coined the term “settler colonialism” to capture the unending timeline of oppression that Indigenous peoples have endured, including the erasure of Indigenous nationhood (McKay, Vinyeta, and Norgaard 2020). The erasure of Indigenous communities is paramount to White supremacy because the construction of whiteness is tied to land entitlement and imperial expansion (McKay et al. 2020).

When I asked Casey if he experiences White privilege, his response was,

Oh, I do. For sure. I know I get treated differently. I can just feel that. I can’t think of a specific scenario, but I know for sure that I’m more white-passing than other Native people or other people of color.

Casey later explained how he leverages his White privilege to educate others.

I try to use it for good. I’m a diversity advocate so I’m using it to educate people and to further my growth as a person because I’m still trying to realize what I can do with it being productive.

Casey then remembered a specific example of White privilege when he stated that he would face more backlash in diversity workshops were it not for his White and male privilege, which Casey might be more aware of due to being transgender. In essence, his ability to pass as a White, cisgender man creates twofold privileges that allow him to give lectures about privilege without being questioned. Presumed objectivity when discussing power, particularly as it relates to race, is a touchstone of White privilege. In fact, White persons habitually become defensive when their subjectivity is openly named, and their responses tend to be emotionally intense because as a group, they subscribe to ideologies drenched in individualism, meritocracy, and colorblindness (DiAngelo 2018) that obstruct their ability to understand how their subjectivity is indivisible from White privilege.

White Privilege by Proxy: The (Invisible) Benefits That Accompany a White Parent

The academic dialogue around White privilege has been centered on the cumulative unearned advantages that monoracial White Americans—and monoracial White Americans alone—enjoy throughout their life (Frankenberg 1997; McIntosh 1988). For example, Brown et al. (2003:44) writes, “The benefits of being white are related to the costs of being nonwhite.” This assertion begs the question, what does this mean for people who are both White and non-White? My study begins to answer this timely question. A critical exception to the academic tradition of exclusive monoracial White privilege includes the seminal work of Bonilla-Silva (2018). Yet even the “honorary white” designation is based on skin color as well as racial and ethnic categorization, not necessarily White parentage, which is becoming progressively common in the United States and is consequently, worthy of an empirical analysis.

My findings show how White privilege transcends and confounds the monoracial paradigm by unveiling a more elusive rendition of White privilege precisely because it is procured through a White parent, which extends beyond how even the most “racially conscious” people conceptualize White privilege. I refer to this theme as “white privilege by proxy” because participants can access valuable resources (i.e., housing, legal representation, etc.) through their White parent that affords them life-changing opportunities, despite never being able to pass as White. Although this is significantly different from being viewed as and treated as a White person daily in the United States, it is strikingly similar to customary White privilege in the sense that it is unmerited and is often unnoticeable to the recipient until it is brought to their attention. By this, I mean when I asked respondents if they experienced White privilege, not one participant referenced examples through their White parent. It was only when I explicitly asked if they think having a White parent afforded them any privileges that they began to share stories about this overlooked trend. Also, in some cases, participants denied having any privileges associated with their White parent, another parallel between “white privilege by proxy” and traditional White privilege.

Esmerelda is a 22-year-old Black/White college graduate. When I asked if there are benefits associated with having a White parent, she began with a social media reference:

I saw a meme once that said, “Mixed kids are Black kids with white privilege.” I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think it’s true. I am a Black ⁷ person that has had privileges because I had a white parent who grew up in a [middle-class] town like they did.

Esmerelda’s answer acknowledged her mother’s White privilege and class privilege. She then asked if she could share a story about her brother’s experience with law enforcement. Her brother, Ernest, attended a college party with three male friends (two White, one Black), and on the way home, they stopped at a restaurant. Once they ordered, police officers “appeared out of nowhere” and asked who was driving their car. When Ernest disclosed that he was driving, they demanded the keys, searched the car, and found marijuana. The police officers arrested all four young men and took them to the police station. However, only Ernest and his Black friend were charged. His two White friends, who were also in the car and were also smoking marijuana, were not charged. Esmerelda explains that her mother’s White privilege played a pivotal role in how the circumstance unfolded as well as how her mother interpreted her own White privilege, without using such terminology:

We hired a lawyer to help us, and my mom said something that stuck with me. She said, “Usually [the police] can just get away with this. They don’t expect these Black kids to have white moms that will go get lawyers,” and I was like, “That is the truth.” So that’s another way that the “Black kids with white privilege” thing came in. Ernest’s [Black] friend didn’t hire a lawyer. He just took the charges and paid the fines and everything . . . He didn’t have a white mom that knew what to do in that situation.

Esmerelda’s story is an example of “white privilege by proxy” in the context of the criminal justice system. The relationship between White privilege and the criminal justice system was a common theme, which might result from the racial justice movements that were referenced earlier. While Ernest was still involved in the legal process at the point of our interview, the fact that his White mother had the financial capital to hire a lawyer and confidence in the legal system was an advantage that his monoracial Black peer did not appear to share.

Andre is a 23-year-old Black/White man who grew up in a diverse Midwestern city. When I asked him if he experienced any privileges through his White parent, he explained that he had recently read McIntosh’s essay and was reflecting on his privileges that are inextricable from his White mother.

I thought about me being privileged with having a white mother because in the poor area of Lake City, whether it’s slum lords or whatever, the landlord would say, “I’d rather rent to somebody who is poor and white than poor and Black,” due to certain stereotypes. ⁸ So, me having a white mother, I benefited from that because what she would do is, she would go solo. She never had her kids go with her to look at a house when we rented. She never wanted to bring her boyfriends either, who were all Black.

Andre went on to say that he wondered, “Are you ashamed to bring your Black kids for [the landlord] to see this is what ya got?” He then chuckled and shared that as he aged, he grew to understand his mother’s behavior from the perspective of “survival,” a mother trying to protect her children. His family was able to rent in those neighborhoods, which he characterized as less dangerous than other areas in the city. In his words, “I never heard gunshots. I never heard any of that. Perhaps my mother’s privilege allowed us to get the best of the poor neighborhoods versus the worst of the worst.” This story shows how Andre’s mother’s White privilege positively impacted the housing options and community experiences that Andre and his biracial brothers were exposed to. Moreover, her White privilege afforded him and his brothers a level of physical safety, a life-enhancing privilege, as communicated by his comment regarding not hearing gunshots in his neighborhood. Andre’s testimony is particularly pertinent because it highlights how even as a poor visible person of color, he benefited from his mother’s White privilege, which would be untraceable if we limited our analytical lens to the compulsory White privilege framework.

Notably, not all participants thought that having a White parent generated privileges for them. I asked Shade, a 21-year-old, White-passing, second-generation Black/White participant, if she experiences any privileges due to having a White mother and Black/White father. She said, “I don’t really think so. I can’t really relate to anything like that.” Although Shade was able to list the advantages that she experienced as a phenotypically White person—after some probing—she also conflated White privilege and class privilege by stating, “the person who makes the most money in my family is my dad and my dad’s Black ⁹ ” when I pointedly asked her if she experienced privileges by having a White parent.

Serena is a 26-year-old Black/White woman who was adopted by two White, middle-class parents. When I asked her if she experienced any privileges due to her White parents, she said, “I don’t think people like us have any type of White privilege, in all honesty.” Serena shared many struggles with her family life that were inseparable from having two White parents who were not intimately familiar with the Black community and Black experiences. In particular, she endured stressful hair challenges due to her parents’ lack of exposure to Black hair textures, products, and practices. In Serena’s case, it is possible that her experiences as a transracial adoptee with racially oblivious parents ¹⁰ eclipsed any awareness of the privileges that her White, middle-class parents afforded her.

On the other hand, Shade and Serena’s reflections might mirror a racial socialization pattern scholars have identified in some White families that practice a colorblind approach “. . . that makes whiteness invisible and normalized . . .” rather than a color-conscious approach that encourages White children to recognize Wbiracial familieshite privilege (Hagerman 2014:2611). Alternatively, Shade and Serena’s narratives might reflect what scholars have found in Black/White biracial families: frequent conversations about ethnic-racial heritage are less prevalent in Black/White biracial families than in Black families (Csizmadia, Rollins, and Kaneakua 2014).

The Price of Privilege: Fear and Lack of Acceptance among People of Color

It became clear after only a few interviews that although White-passing participants experienced benefits due to people assuming they are White, these benefits came with a high price. Participants endured negative experiences due to their proximity to whiteness, which is not discernible if we restrain our analysis to the default monoracial framework. An inclusive analysis that is not tethered to the omnipresence of the monoracial model allows us to detect how privilege operates in a paradoxical way in the bi/multiracial community, unlike in the monoracial White community. Some participants explained that they were targeted and even assaulted by fellow people of color exclusively for looking White, in their eyes, although I consider the web of community characteristics that contributed to extraordinarily high racialized tensions. Other respondents felt exiled from the very community they hoped—and initially, expected—would understand, affirm, and accept them: people of color. These findings are relevant to include in the conversation about the White privilege that bi/multiracial people with White ancestry experience because they highlight how whiteness for bi/multiracial Americans comes at a clear cost.

Bianca earlier explained how her White privilege “saves” her. She also included instances where White privilege “immediately isolates” her. She detailed several traumatic encounters in high school, college, the workplace, and her community where she was excluded and targeted by people of color for looking White. Students of color in high school regularly made comments like “Fuck you, white girl,” even after she disclosed her Puerto Rican heritage. Bianca grew up in “a [predominately Latinx gang]-controlled neighborhood” on the East Coast. She explained that part of the reason she moved to the Midwest was because she was afraid for her safety, which is conveyed by her impassioned response:

They always treated me like shit. It was getting bad. I was just miserable. It was extremely tense. There were lots of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids in my neighborhood. It was dangerous! It was scary and looking white made me a target all the time. I mean, I got followed home. I got harassed. I got constantly harassed, called “white girl,” “cracker.” I wanted to scream back “I’m Puerto Rican!” but what the hell kind of stupid ass comeback is that? Who cares? They’re harassing you. Just get away! Get to safety.

Bianca’s narrative underscores the stress and fear that accompany appearing White and consequently, being rejected by her peers and being physically targeted due to the highly racialized and politicized tension in her community. It is possible that Bianca’s classmates’ behavior was a reaction, albeit unhealthy, to the “. . . racial hierarchy that privileges the experiences, talents and knowledge bases of Whites” in American schools (Irizarry and Raible 2014:441). Although Bianca has Puerto Rican ancestry, her skin color could have trumped her ancestry with regard to classmates expressing anger and frustration rooted in institutional racism. Given the preponderance of immigrants in her neighborhood, it is important to acknowledge the ethno-racial trauma and lack of trust that many Latinx immigrants endure as they navigate racism, ethnocentrism, and nativism during “. . . one of the most anti-immigration periods in modern U.S. history” (Chavez-Dueñas et al. 2019:52). I offer these interpretations not to excuse or condone this behavior, but to contextualize it and to outline how White supremacy causes suffering for monoracial people of color as well as bi/multiracial individuals of White descent.

Ezra is a 37-year-old Black/White man who relayed a similar experience with being singled out because of his light complexion. He described himself as “pretty white-looking” as a child, yet as he aged, most people code him as a person of color. Ezra grew up in what was colloquially referred to as “the crack capital” of a large Midwestern city. He resided in a housing project with his White mother and biracial siblings. He detailed how his skin color and location created a “sickening” cycle of violence:

Ezra had a physical disability as a child, and subsequently, wore leg braces. Some of these physical altercations took place while he was wearing his braces, making him exponentially more vulnerable. His story underlines the emotional toll and physical anguish of appearing White in an almost entirely Black, low-income neighborhood in a city with a well-documented infamous history of housing segregation based on race (Gordon 2018) and class (Bonds 2019). It is essential to mention that in neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage, exposure to violence is disproportionately high (Quam et al. 2020). Furthermore, the chronic stress of systemic racism, peer pressure, and masculinity norms often facilitate an unhealthy expression of emotions (Quam et al. 2020). Collectively, these contextual factors put Ezra in the crosshairs of a community suffering from long-lasting racial trauma that profoundly impacted his physical safety and sense of community.

Notably, Ezra’s experience with having to defend himself paralleled the only other two considerably light-skinned Black/White men who came of age in low-income Midwestern cities with high rates of racial and socioeconomic segregation. Louis is 20 years old and has a Black/White biracial mother and a Black father. He explained how family and community members “stigmatized” him and other light-skinned people “as soft [not masculine]” rather than “just being a tolerable person.” He went on to say that people “kind of even take advantage of you and kind of push you past your limit.” Riley, a 21-year-old Black/White man, shares a similar experience: “People think you’re soft being light-skinned and that shit is confusing. I’ve had to be like, ‘No, it definitely ain’t that, son.’” Although Louis and Riley are not white-appearing, their testimonies demonstrate the disadvantages of being light-skinned in racially segregated cities in ways that foster frustration and lack of family and community acceptance. They both explained that constantly having to prove that they are not “soft” was “exhausting.” Notably, colorism is a form of discrimination that researchers have found affords higher status to individuals with more White/European features, such as light skin (Thompson and Keith 2003). However, my findings tease out a gendered exception to this trend in which light-skinned Black/White biracial men are viewed as less masculine or “soft,” at least initially, which is a status demotion in a patriarchal society. Their lightness being associated with “soft” is a demonstration of how light-skinned privilege is not the same as White privilege because White privilege yields twofold advantages when it is coupled with male privilege, whereas Riley and Louis are revealing a clear disadvantage.

Gloria, a 24-year-old Black/Native/White graduate student, shared a story of being excluded from the Black community based on her White-passing status. She recalled when one of her classmates exchanged racial micro-affirmations with other visible students of color on campus. Micro-affirmations are small acts of inclusion that signal support or recognition and are associated with academic success in higher education because they often generate empowerment and connection (Rowe 2008). Gloria felt “left out” of these micro-moments of bonding with people of color, which caused her stress because her lived experiences were enmeshed with racial oppression. In her words, “Just because I’m mixed doesn’t mean I don’t have generations of stress in my DNA. It’s still there. I was raised middle-to-high income. It didn’t matter; my [Black/Native] father still went to jail.” Gloria expressed yearning for the recognition and support that comes from communities of color for people who are unmistakably a person of color.

Gloria’s sentiments mirror Louis and Riley, who resent being singled out by African American peers for being light-skinned, as well as Ezra and Bianca, who loathed being isolated from people of color through violent and terrifying means. Importantly, my participants’ stories show that whiteness and White privilege come at a price for those who are not monoracial. This finding reveals yet another departure from the traditional understanding of White privilege, which does not come with a cost. Notably, the price of privilege overlaps with monoracism, and yet, it is also distinct from monoracism because it is directly connected to whiteness and not all bi/multiracial people are White-appearing or have White ancestry. Strikingly, some of the same participants who benefited from white privilege were also disadvantaged by it, which underscores the paradox of White privilege in this group: it provides both advantages and disadvantages. The complexity of simultaneously being privileged and oppressed as a person of color with White ancestry produces the ultimate racial paradox, which might be why some participants did not acknowledge any privileges because experiencing racism is associated with the absence of White privilege.