The Joy of Being Racially Ambiguous: Please Stop Asking

“What are you?” A favorite of strangers, peers, and just about anyone I’ve ever met, this innocent-seeming question makes me want to tear my hair out every time I hear it. Those three words are so harmlessly curious, so seemingly pure, that it almost makes you forget it’s really just a backhanded way of saying, “You don’t look like any race I’m used to, explain yourself.” 

When someone asks, “What are you,” they don’t want to know my political beliefs, or whether I am a dog person. No, they want a complete racial breakdown, with percentages and ancestry, like I’m some walking DNA test. Because, apparently, before I can talk about our schoolwork or play basketball, they desperately need to file me away in a special racial category. And sure, maybe the person asking doesn’t mean any harm, and maybe their curiosity just made them blurt it out without any intended malice. But it’s funny how this innocent curiosity always lands on the mixed-race members of society, as if our very existence is a mystery that they need to solve. They scramble for a box to put us in, because God forbid we exist without a premade racial label, and it never occurs to them that this question may not make us feel all warm inside. I don’t want to be labeled, and just because I may be half of one racial stereotype and a quarter of another, that does not mean I want every friend I meet to interrogate me on my racial background. And even when I do try to answer, “Well I’m part French, Italian, German,” they usually just squint their eyes until I tell them what they want to hear, that my mom is black. It gets very old after hundreds of questions, and to whoever is reading this, please keep your curiosity to yourself.

 I understand that it may be hard to talk to someone without knowing their heritage, but wait until you really know me before asking me a question like that. Being mixed-race isn’t some kind of mystery that needs solving, or a box full of excitement just waiting to be opened. It’s an experience, often a difficult one, and it is much more nuanced than a wide-eyed, three-word question. For a lot of us, there is no simple answer to What are you?, because our race and identity aren’t simple. So please, stop asking. And for my ethnically ambiguous readers, when someone asks you this, ignore them. Trust me, they don’t deserve your time.