In the end, McFarland says, it's not about black or white. It's all the shades of gray that make people uncomfortable.

Unique but certain

Brandon Stanford's parents met in school in New Jersey. His mom's Irish family rejected her for dating a black man.

They've been married 37 years.

In that time, a lot has changed about being a child of an interracial marriage. For one, the man who occupies the White House is the son of a Kenyan man and a white American woman. Many Americans think being mixed is "cool."

Stanford, 29, has his own take.

"I wouldn't say that being mixed race is either cool or not cool," he says.

"I'd say it's a reality that one can choose to embrace by seeing the beauty of a world where the possibilities of transcending the limitations of race and racism exists if one is able to recognize the oneness of humanity. Is this not what our democracy is supposed to represent?"

Stanford, a graduate student in African-American studies at Philadelphia's Temple University, has had his identity questioned by both whites and blacks. That makes being mixed race difficult for some.

Some times white people speak about black people in front of Stanford, assuming he is white. He lets them go on for a while and then says: "By the way, I am one of them."

"I have a unique position in the world based upon what my complexion is," Stanford says. "I always have an opportunity to unsettle people's minds."

But Stanford has never wavered on his identity.

"My complexion is not black, yet I am black," he says.

Stanford doesn't deny his Irish ancestry. The Irish, he points out, were thought of as inferior by the English. They, too, faced discrimination in the United States. Black people were often called the "dark Irish," he says.

But the Irish in America distanced themselves from the anti-slavery movement in the interest of joining the white mainstream, Stanford says. That's where his connection to the Irish stops.

"I identify myself as African-American because of the history of the culture," he says.

The past in the present

Black unequivocally.

That's how Kaneesha Parsard, 23, grew up. She was the daughter of parents who immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in the 1980s.

She didn't understand what her father's ancestry - her grandfather was Indian - had to do with her.

"I took the one drop rule pretty seriously," says Parsard, a graduate student in African-American studies at Yale University.

Parsard's father was born in British-ruled Jamaica. He was raised with Indian people but identified as black because, she says, of how exclusionary Indian communities can be in Jamaica.

She began to think about her own identity when roti and chicken curry appeared at the Thanksgiving table.

"What I have come to realize is that ... people's history is intertwined, that being mixed race is not at odds with being black," she says.

"When we think about blackness, it's usually along a black-white context," she says. "But there are many histories, interesting histories of resistance."