Transracial Identity: Beyond Blackface & Whiteface
Blackface is a pretty well-known phrase, while whiteface is not. Both terms however are a pretentious means of being something you're not for the purposes of making people laugh. The people engaged in the practice do not truly identify as the race they're portraying. Blackface comedy was one of the more entertaining events years ago with the likes of Al Jolson and Amos & Andy, however, there are some people who take things beyond simply painting their faces Black or White. There are a group of people in this world who truly believe they are the opposite of who they truly are racially ... they are Transracial.
Transracial is defined by Wikipedia as such:
Transracial people are individuals who assert a racial identity for themselves which differs from their birth ethnicity.
The most infamous person relative to the Transracial Identity phenomenon is Rachel Dolezal, however, here's a not so familiar story regarding a young man who thinks just the opposite of Rachel Dolezal but with the same Identity issue ... both have a Transracial Identity issue.
Meet Ja Du, a Transracial Activist, who was born White but identifies himself as a Filipino Woman:
One interesting fact about Transracial identity is that there is a vast difference in the number of persons who 'trans' from Black to White as compared to the alternate; changing from mWhite to Black, according to theconversation.com.
According to a report that came out of the 2010 census, 9.8 million Americans changed their racial identification since the 2000 census. While it still remains rare for a white person to change his or her race to black, some racial groups have extremely high rates of change.