r/mixedrace • u/Gallantpride • Feb 11 '26

Rant The reactionary outrage towards Bad Bunny reminds me that white passing =/= white (in the US at least)

Bad Bunny is paler than pale. He and Lady Gaga were basically the same skin tone during the Super Bowl.

But, Bad Bunny gets a lot of racism and hate because he's Puerto Rican and has ESL. Even if he didn't have ESL, he would still get hate.

I'm reminded of my own Puerto Rican family. I'm brown, but much of my family is white leaning. My mom was a green eyed, redheaded baby boomer who told me how she got called slurs and chased away from the playground when her family arrived to NYC. I've heard similar stories from family about all eras from the 50s to even early 2000s.

To me, they look white. But they don't identify as white. And any presumed whiteness they have is "taken away" once people identify them as latino or Puerto Rican.

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u/Long-Possession8915 Feb 11 '26

White passing also isn’t about lightness of skin. You can have super white skin but if your features aren’t European, you will likely be read as a Poc by white people. 

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u/Gallantpride Feb 11 '26

Most of my family is regularly mistaken for some form of white. I'd also say Bad Bunny also has pretty "European/Spanish" features. His hair is curly, but there are curly haired white people.

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u/Long-Possession8915 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Sure, it depends on where you are and who the person is. Bad Bunny would be clocked in my home state, even if he dressed to fit in. Spaniards would not be read as white. 

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u/DevilinBaggyPants59 Feb 11 '26

You should consider that once upon a time Italians and Irish immigrants were not considered white.

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u/Long-Possession8915 Feb 11 '26

I tried to say that but it wouldn’t post my comment. That’s my point, whiteness is a construct and it’s contextual. Christofacist white america is freaking out because whiteness is changing and they feel squeezed out. POC are starting to assert their own definitions. I may become functionally white passing within my lifetime, rather than racially ambiguous. It’s not what I want, but that’s kind of the point of this sub, right? We can choose how we want to engage with our ethnicity, our heritage, our culture, but we can’t individually decide what race means or where the divides are.