The Question

While I was at Panera Bread this morning getting my usual a.m. coffee fix, an older man approached me at the coffee creamer station and asked me the question I’ve been asked at least a million times before in my life:

“What are you?”

As a biracial person (my mom is black, my dad is white), “What are you” is a very common question for me. And it’s almost always preceded or followed by the person’s best guess at my heritage, with those guesses including Filipino, Latina, Navajo, Chaldean and Hawaiian – and that’s just the short list. In this case, the man was Filipino and said he was curious because he thought I might also be Filipino, or maybe Mexican.

Now I know I’m in the minority here, but I’m rarely bothered by the question of “what are you?” Most biracial/multiracial people I’ve met detest the question because it makes them feel like their ethnicity is being dissected by others or that people are just trying to figure out what stereotypes to apply to them. But for me the question, and whether I feel like answering it, all depends on the context of the situation.

It’s obvious to me when people ask “the question” because they have some sort of nefarious reason for it. For instance, I’ll sometimes get the question from people who are wondering if it’s ok for them to say something racist against black, Asian or Latino people by seeing if I might be fit into one of those groups myself. Those people usually get the “bitch, please” face from me before I ask them why they want to know – which is always fun if you want to make someone turn red in the face and start stuttering about how they didn’t have any particular reason for asking.

But nine times out of 10, I would say I get “the question” from people who are mainly curious – and I’ve never minded giving them an answer. Maybe it’s because I’m an eternal optimist when it comes to people’s intentions, but to me “the question” in that context is a product of natural curiosity that people tend to have and creates an opportunity to have a dialogue – however brief – about race and culture. And that’s always a good thing in my book.

Though I identify as black (a long story I’ll get into at some point), I almost always break down my ethnicity to people who ask out of curiosity. And they almost always respond with something positive, even though it might be a positive stereotype (i.e. “Mixed people are the future of America;” “All mixed people are beautiful;” “You have the best of both worlds.”).

In any event, I would rather talk openly with people about my race and race in general, instead of allowing those people to make assumptions about what I am or have them assume that the topic is off limits, which just fosters misunderstanding and ignorance in my opinion.

I know there’s people out there who would disagree with me, so what do you think? Is “what are you” a question worth answering, or does the answer just feed into negative perceptions/discussions about race?