Born to a sexually promiscuous black mother and a white father who could not resist the sexual lure of a black savage, the tragic mulatto emerges. She is so affected by her circumstances that she completely rejects her African heritage to pass as white and seeks her identity by having sex with numerous men. She has the looks and class of white men but deep down she is as wild as her mother was, which makes her a great lover but never a woman to marry. This is the stereotype of the tragic mulatto portrayed in the late 19th and 20th centuries in novels such as Nella Larsen's Passing and films such as Imitation of Life. Peola, the lighter-skinned mixed-race character in Imitation of Life chooses to pass as white until, when her mother dies, guilt overwhelms her and she reveals her African ancestry. But what shaped Peola's racial identity, and if she were here today, where would she find belonging? Within a society that still retains the vestiges of 400 years of chattel slavery, black and white racial identity was formed within a dichotomous system that maintains racial hierarchy. Multiracial identities are not exempt from these restrictive categories, and indeed have been shaped by them. As miscegenation grew in the United States, so did mixed-race bodies, and as brown, tan, and olive skin tones populated the United States, whiteness and its purity were threatened. Mixed-race women have been the primary targets of racial policing, including being subjected to sexual objectification and stereotyping. In this article I will argue that, due to a history of dichotomizing racial identity as black and white, biracial or multiracial are not yet racial categorizations visibly recognized by most Americans. In the... center of the paper......55.Walker, 69.Walker, 99.Musser, Amber J. Other Tongues: Mixed-race Women Speak out. Ed. Adebe DeRango-Adem and Andrea Thompson. Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2010. Print. 63.Kobayashi, Other Languages: Mixed-Race Women Speak, 91.Jean-Paul, Michelle. Other languages: Mixed-race women speak. 128Afi-Quinn, Rachel. Other languages: Mixed-race women speak. 135Mixed Chicks Chat won “Best Podcast” at the Black Weblog Awards. The hosts have appeared on NPR, CNN and in the Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle and Blur Digital. For more information, visit www.mixedchickschat.com. For more information about the Mixed Roots Literary and Film Festival, visit http://www.mxroots.org/http://www.mxroots.org/aboutLee, Felicia R. “Pushing Boundaries, Mixed-Race Artists Get Noticed. " New York Times, July 6, 2011: C1. Press.