Editor's Note: This article is part of Parenting in an Uncertain Age , a series about the experience of raising children in a time of great change. I recently confessed to my son that I would have to miss back-to-school night for a work trip. Most parents can expect one of two reactions from their children to this news: relief or a guilt trip. Read: Do conversations about race belong in the classroom?

The Atlantic Crossword


Many residents in East Jackson were raised to identify as black. Thu 25 Jul T he stale, smoky air around Clarice Shreck heaves. She takes a long hit of oxygen from the tube under her nose. The pale woman with frizzy grey-streaked hair commands her on-and-off partner of over 20 years, Jimmy — who is from one of the few white families in East Jackson — to fetch her purse. He plops it on to her lap; she struggles to get at an old piece of paper folded up in her wallet. She slowly unfolds it to present her birth certificate. She looks up triumphantly, victory in her periwinkle eyes. The last known full-blooded black person in her family was her great-great-grandfather Thomas Byrd, her parents told her. Their stares follow her throughout their former home.
Welcome to Mixed Up, a series looking at the highs, lows and unique experiences of being mixed-race. Mixed-race is the fastest-growing ethnic group in the UK. It means your parents hail from two or more different ethnicities, leaving you somewhere in the middle. Alongside the unique pleasures and benefits of being exposed to multiple cultures, being mixed comes with complexities, conflicts and innate contradictions.
Actress Jennifer Beals, best known for her role in "Flashdance," is the daughter of an African-American businessman and an Irish Catholic educator. Frederick M. My father was a white man," abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote in the autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Booker T. Washington, educator and champion of rights for blacks, was born to a black woman, Jane. She never named his white father, who was said to be a nearby planter. Her mother is Indian, and her father is Jamaican-American.