bi-racial, mixed, mulatto...are you offended yet?

i thought i was done with race posts, but i saw this post on ontd and couldn't resist. actress paula patton recently said:

"I find [the term biracial] offensive. It’s a way for people to separate themselves from African-Americans….a way of saying ‘I’m better than that’. I’m black because that’s the way the world sees me. People aren’t calling Barack Obama biracial. Most people think there’s a black president."

 oh goodness. where do i begin?

-i'll start off with saying, i understand where she is coming from. i know many half-black, half-white individuals who solely identify as black. sometimes it is  because that is how they appear to the "rest of the world" or they are blatantly told to identify as just black. sometimes it's a cultural identification. but, for one reason or another they only identify as black. it's a choice, not a choice that i would make, but i don't judge the people who do.

-not all blacks are african-americans. they are jamaican, haitian, panamanian, dominican, cuban, the list goes on. (sorry, i'm feeling snarky)

-the word biracial is not exclusive to half white, half african-americans. it applies to millions of people of all different mixes.how are they supposed to identify without using such an "offensive" term?
-deeming the word biracial offensive because of a few stuck-up, bourgeois mixed girls is hardly fair. when most people identify as biracial, they are embracing their mixed heritage, not using it as a tool of separation from one community or another. being biracial is not always simple, in fact, i could argue that identifying as one race is a lot easier. 

i just hope that in a country that is finally allowing to check more than one box, people will feel comfortable enough to do so.