“What are you?”
April 24, 2023 5:43 PM Subscribe
MIXED! Stories of Mixed Race Californians. “People are defining you according to this boundary, that you have to be ‘this much’ this,” said Fulbeck. “You have to speak this language. You have to take off your shoes, whatever it is. It's like if you're going to go off those definitions, then you're going to be in a world of hurt. You have to find your own way to define yourself."
My dad is biracial (half-European/half-Filipino ancestry). He looks Italian and thinks of himself as white. I also am white-passing, but my sister has always been very dark skinned and, as we joke, "a woman of ethnic mystery." She's been mistaken for virtually every POC identity over the years. Our favorite story was from when we were in college back in the 90s... she had just met a young Black student at the union one day, and he asked her the usual question, "What are you?" When she replied, "My dad's half-Filipino," he just grinned and replied, "Oh, you Black." They were fast friends. The confusion of identity is real for us multi-racial folks, but she appreciated the instant acceptance and inclusion.
posted by hessie at 7:17 AM on April 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by hessie at 7:17 AM on April 25, 2023 [9 favorites]
I grew up with many people who fit this description, and as I've watched my generation marry and produce children it seems like the number is expanding rapidly. From inside that bubble it's easy to start asking when in the next few generations "race" is going to be dominated by "other" on census forms.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:17 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:17 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Huh. I haven't been imagining things and it's not just the bubble I was in.
By 1980, the share of [U.S.] intermarried newlyweds had about doubled to 7%. And by 2015 the number had risen to 17%
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:32 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
By 1980, the share of [U.S.] intermarried newlyweds had about doubled to 7%. And by 2015 the number had risen to 17%
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:32 AM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
My MiL grew up on the edge of the Sahel of French, Lebanese and Toubou ancestry. She was educated by St Louis sisters from Ireland and as a teenager prayed every night to St Patrick to help her escape. She was just turning 20 when a hapless Irish chap appeared in town as the answer to her prayers. Exchanging small-town Nigeria for small-town Ireland counted as a win for her - YMMV. She knew exactly who she was, so the question "Where do you come from?" was blithely dismissed with "Clonmel". The follow-up "Where do you really come from?" elicited more information: "Gladstone St., Clonmel".
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:55 AM on April 25, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:55 AM on April 25, 2023 [12 favorites]
Thank you for posting this. A lot of my friends are raising multi-racial kids. Some of them have kids that I would say are "white-passing" and on some level I feel it is a positive, maybe they won't feel as conflicted about identity and maybe life will be "easier" for them. But at the same time I am sad that they don't seem to have much exposure to my/our non-white culture and language, and my friends don't seem very interested in passing on the language, either. Or maybe they just feel it is not worth the effort... parenting is hard enough as it is.
posted by tinydancer at 9:36 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tinydancer at 9:36 AM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
My child is mixed race and can pass for pretty much anything. His class is mostly multiracial and they oddly call themselves "half-English" because they all speak English and have other languages and cultures. It's pretty cute. I would like to think they will grow up in a city where being white, non-white or multiracial isn't a big deal since a large part of the population will be mixed.
posted by ichimunki at 11:27 AM on April 25, 2023
posted by ichimunki at 11:27 AM on April 25, 2023
Thank you for posting this. I teach Ethnic Studies, and this just might find it's way into my classroom!
posted by dfm500 at 11:53 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by dfm500 at 11:53 AM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thank you for posting this. I have a lot of complicated feelings about being mixed race, and it's nice to see a whole lot of different perspectives from people like me.
Being ethnically ambiguous, sometimes white-passing is a weird space to be in when it comes to identity. Like do I really have the right to claim Asian-American identity when I am never going to be the target of random anti-Asian violence? Do I really understand what the Asian-American experience is if my appearance doesn't immediately make people think "Asian-American" when they look at me, and treat me accordingly?
Then there's the fun part of bigots feeling free to express their shitty opinions and/or microaggressions, because they don't see an Asian in the room with them. I mean, I guess it's good to know how shitty people are, really, instead of the front they might put on in the presence of a visible Asian in the room.
Some of the parts from this article (and a related one) that resonated the most with me:
In a way, I represent the breaking of cultural and institutional barriers that exist or existed. But breaking down barriers may just be a poetic way of saying you're being slammed into a wall. And that's certainly what it sometimes felt like growing up mixed. (Ruben Villareal Halprin)
When you're mixed, your parents don't get to tell you what it was like. They don't get to say, ‘When I was a kid, it was like this," because they don't know - Kip Fullbeck
It took me decades to figure that out, that no one in my family was going to fully understand my experience. My parents don't understand what it's like to be mixed race. My mom doesn't understand what it's like to be ethnically ambiguous instead of clearly white. My dad didn't understand what it was like to be an ethnically ambiguous woman, and neither does my brother.
"What am I? Shouldn't you be asking my name first?" (Christine from the Hapa project)
Hoo boy, yeah, I find it infuriating to have random strangers on the street, or people I'm meeting for the first time, immediately go for the "Guess the Ethnicity" game, like they cannot engage with me as a person until they categorize me. I refuse to play any more, after someone smugly told me, "I can always tell," which made me feel like a specimen that they identified to make themselves feel special and clever. If someone gets to know me, eventually I may bring it up, or bring up a topic that leads to that discussion, and that's fine.
I will also cut a bit of slack for POC who are clearly asking because they're looking for a connection, like the Mexican guy who worked at my very-white firm who asked if I was Mexican. But yeah, for me, it's a very loaded question. I hope it's better for kids growing up now, when there are a lot more mixed-race people around, and it doesn't feel quite so fraught.
(I don't love the "where are you from" question either, but I do have fun answering truthfully in ways that will frustrate the interlocutors to no end. I was born in [Pacific Northwest City], my dad was born in [Other PNW City], my mother was born in [East Coast City], etc.)
posted by creepygirl at 12:02 PM on April 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
Being ethnically ambiguous, sometimes white-passing is a weird space to be in when it comes to identity. Like do I really have the right to claim Asian-American identity when I am never going to be the target of random anti-Asian violence? Do I really understand what the Asian-American experience is if my appearance doesn't immediately make people think "Asian-American" when they look at me, and treat me accordingly?
Then there's the fun part of bigots feeling free to express their shitty opinions and/or microaggressions, because they don't see an Asian in the room with them. I mean, I guess it's good to know how shitty people are, really, instead of the front they might put on in the presence of a visible Asian in the room.
Some of the parts from this article (and a related one) that resonated the most with me:
In a way, I represent the breaking of cultural and institutional barriers that exist or existed. But breaking down barriers may just be a poetic way of saying you're being slammed into a wall. And that's certainly what it sometimes felt like growing up mixed. (Ruben Villareal Halprin)
When you're mixed, your parents don't get to tell you what it was like. They don't get to say, ‘When I was a kid, it was like this," because they don't know - Kip Fullbeck
It took me decades to figure that out, that no one in my family was going to fully understand my experience. My parents don't understand what it's like to be mixed race. My mom doesn't understand what it's like to be ethnically ambiguous instead of clearly white. My dad didn't understand what it was like to be an ethnically ambiguous woman, and neither does my brother.
"What am I? Shouldn't you be asking my name first?" (Christine from the Hapa project)
Hoo boy, yeah, I find it infuriating to have random strangers on the street, or people I'm meeting for the first time, immediately go for the "Guess the Ethnicity" game, like they cannot engage with me as a person until they categorize me. I refuse to play any more, after someone smugly told me, "I can always tell," which made me feel like a specimen that they identified to make themselves feel special and clever. If someone gets to know me, eventually I may bring it up, or bring up a topic that leads to that discussion, and that's fine.
I will also cut a bit of slack for POC who are clearly asking because they're looking for a connection, like the Mexican guy who worked at my very-white firm who asked if I was Mexican. But yeah, for me, it's a very loaded question. I hope it's better for kids growing up now, when there are a lot more mixed-race people around, and it doesn't feel quite so fraught.
(I don't love the "where are you from" question either, but I do have fun answering truthfully in ways that will frustrate the interlocutors to no end. I was born in [Pacific Northwest City], my dad was born in [Other PNW City], my mother was born in [East Coast City], etc.)
posted by creepygirl at 12:02 PM on April 25, 2023 [13 favorites]
I am also asked "What are you?" as an Asian American person. I could be Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc. For me, I don't hold it against people. I went to an all white school and then attended a predominantly Asian American school. Same question still asked everywhere. It is what it is.
I have been attacked before physically, verbally, etc. Not worth it to have a chip on my shoulder. You will know when folks have the wrong intent. Most people are clueless and/or genuinely curious.
posted by ichimunki at 12:13 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have been attacked before physically, verbally, etc. Not worth it to have a chip on my shoulder. You will know when folks have the wrong intent. Most people are clueless and/or genuinely curious.
posted by ichimunki at 12:13 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've heard more than one story about a non-white parent (usually a woman) who is assumed to be the nanny of their white-passing kid.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:27 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:27 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think most of the mixed Asian / non-Asian friends I had in my early adulthood envied mixed race people who grew up in the Hawaiian islands (where the term "hapa" comes from) and people tend to claim ALL their forebears as part of the plantation labor legacy. Of course you would serve kimchi with your laulau, obsess over malasadas and andagi.
Also I think I first had an inkling of the complexity of growing up mixed/multiracial when I met the older siblings of my roommate. My roommate looked mixed to my monoracial eyes, while their eldest sibling looked white to me and the middle sibling looked East Asian. If you stood them all together, they were clearly siblings, but individually they were perceived as being different races.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:32 PM on April 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also I think I first had an inkling of the complexity of growing up mixed/multiracial when I met the older siblings of my roommate. My roommate looked mixed to my monoracial eyes, while their eldest sibling looked white to me and the middle sibling looked East Asian. If you stood them all together, they were clearly siblings, but individually they were perceived as being different races.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:32 PM on April 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've heard more than one story about a non-white parent (usually a woman) who is assumed to be the nanny of their white-passing kid.
This happened to my mom when I was a kid. I am a mixed race woman that is white-passing and because my mom is clearly darker than me, people assumed she was taking care of me for my presumably white parents. A lot of people have difficulty believing that I am of Hispanic descent, which is often said as "Oh wow, you don't look like a Mexican!" My response runs along the lines of "I'm sorry, I guess I'll wear a serape next time" or "that is not the compliment you think it is."
I was the first grandchild on my mom's side of the family to pass as white; there are photos of me as a baby with a deer's eye tied with red string around my chubby little baby wrist because my grandmother was terrified that I would be given the Evil Eye.
posted by Kitteh at 1:10 PM on April 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
This happened to my mom when I was a kid. I am a mixed race woman that is white-passing and because my mom is clearly darker than me, people assumed she was taking care of me for my presumably white parents. A lot of people have difficulty believing that I am of Hispanic descent, which is often said as "Oh wow, you don't look like a Mexican!" My response runs along the lines of "I'm sorry, I guess I'll wear a serape next time" or "that is not the compliment you think it is."
I was the first grandchild on my mom's side of the family to pass as white; there are photos of me as a baby with a deer's eye tied with red string around my chubby little baby wrist because my grandmother was terrified that I would be given the Evil Eye.
posted by Kitteh at 1:10 PM on April 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I grew up in Britain with Irish and Arab heritage. I only realised recently how difficult I had found this. I didn't look Arab at all (aside from the sprouting of reams of thick body hair in puberty). I didn't speak the language. My family in the Middle East were occasional, distant and strange. My father felt little attachment to his nation and the cultural life of my family was dominated by my mother and her mission to Be Every Bit As Good As The English.
I grew up feeling like I was different to English people. We had no roots here; we had weird accents; I was socially adrift at school, with my inability to understand or play football, rugby or cricket; being Irish/Arab meant the other kids made a lot of jokes about terrorism; my Dad was hardly taking me to see the local football team with a season ticket he'd inherited from his Dad. But I also definitely wasn't Arab, I was too white for that and couldn't speak a word of the language. As a child I remember wondering if my father's occasional bursts of Arabic on the phone were just a made up language he used to confuse us. So over time I slid into Englishness and my Arab-ness became a sort of embarassing footnote that I couldn't justify or explain.
I finally began to feel it when I did one of those DNA tests and half the map showed Levantine Arab and Egyptian heritage. I began to wonder about all those people from whom I am descended. It is now I am older that I realise:
a) Unlike many others in my position, I was able to choose. And it wasn't much of a choice. Everyone around me treated white Englishness as the default. As if I couldn't possibly want to have any other identity, as if being anything else was an odd aberation and the only people who were really people were the ethnic English, and everyone else was the odd flotsam from countries that wished they could be us. So I chose this identity, and with that kind of messaging, it's no wonder I went the way I did. I regret that now.
b) It was actually really humiliating to hear, "OH BUT YOU DON'T LOOK MIDDLE EASTERN" whenever I described my background, and everyone who said it can entirely fuck themselves.
I was in Arizona during the mid-term campaign and it was really, really weird hearing an older Conservative voter explaining to me that the Western tradition binding Britain and America is not in ideas like democracy or the Enlightenment or anything like that, but our White racial identity which is under assault from international immigration. Wherever I am in the world, people think it's ok to say stuff like that to me. Next time, when they finish speaking, I might show them my DNA results.
I now look at my siblings' children - themselves growing up in California - and wonder what kind of identity they will feel they have, immigrants again, one more generation removed from being able to properly embrace their still recent ancestry. I am sad that I won't have more of that history and heritage to share with them. But I am collecting what I can now from my father.
posted by Probabilitics at 4:11 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
I grew up feeling like I was different to English people. We had no roots here; we had weird accents; I was socially adrift at school, with my inability to understand or play football, rugby or cricket; being Irish/Arab meant the other kids made a lot of jokes about terrorism; my Dad was hardly taking me to see the local football team with a season ticket he'd inherited from his Dad. But I also definitely wasn't Arab, I was too white for that and couldn't speak a word of the language. As a child I remember wondering if my father's occasional bursts of Arabic on the phone were just a made up language he used to confuse us. So over time I slid into Englishness and my Arab-ness became a sort of embarassing footnote that I couldn't justify or explain.
I finally began to feel it when I did one of those DNA tests and half the map showed Levantine Arab and Egyptian heritage. I began to wonder about all those people from whom I am descended. It is now I am older that I realise:
a) Unlike many others in my position, I was able to choose. And it wasn't much of a choice. Everyone around me treated white Englishness as the default. As if I couldn't possibly want to have any other identity, as if being anything else was an odd aberation and the only people who were really people were the ethnic English, and everyone else was the odd flotsam from countries that wished they could be us. So I chose this identity, and with that kind of messaging, it's no wonder I went the way I did. I regret that now.
b) It was actually really humiliating to hear, "OH BUT YOU DON'T LOOK MIDDLE EASTERN" whenever I described my background, and everyone who said it can entirely fuck themselves.
I was in Arizona during the mid-term campaign and it was really, really weird hearing an older Conservative voter explaining to me that the Western tradition binding Britain and America is not in ideas like democracy or the Enlightenment or anything like that, but our White racial identity which is under assault from international immigration. Wherever I am in the world, people think it's ok to say stuff like that to me. Next time, when they finish speaking, I might show them my DNA results.
I now look at my siblings' children - themselves growing up in California - and wonder what kind of identity they will feel they have, immigrants again, one more generation removed from being able to properly embrace their still recent ancestry. I am sad that I won't have more of that history and heritage to share with them. But I am collecting what I can now from my father.
posted by Probabilitics at 4:11 PM on April 25, 2023 [6 favorites]
“A lot of my friends are raising multi-racial kids. Some of them have kids that I would say are "white-passing" and on some level I feel it is a positive, maybe they won't feel as conflicted about identity and maybe life will be "easier" for them. But at the same time I am sad that they don't seem to have much exposure to my/our non-white culture and language.”
Hopefully, the kids will ask about it at some point. I know I did, and what you describe seems to very roughly apply to my pale face and how I was raised.
On my end, since my mother is mixed and without the language I asked my grandmother (also mixed but raised with the language). Unfortunately, the residential school had done its job and she didn’t remember much of her mother tongue. I sure hope those kids don’t face any similar barriers.
Shifting to the more general topic of the mixed race experience, I can confirm the joys of looking white yielding unfiltered opinions from bigots thinking you might share their views. I’ve also had a few not so bigoted white people, and a Chinese guy, get weirdly insistent that I was all white. One guy thought me being mixed was just my “out” from white guilt.
In testimony to stereotypes my longhaired hippy punk days occasionally meant I got to be the object of racist crap. Conversely, I sometimes got asked (with obvious distaste) why I was so pale and did I not get any sun?
Oddly enough, I have received the “what are you?” question, but it was along the gender axis back in my longhair days.
The good news is most of the negative experiences were back in the previous century and even back then plenty of people had positive reactions to finding out my mixed background. Nowadays I have a mixed partner (Filipino, Chinese, European) and our daughter is extra double mixed, though she does seem to be carrying on my tradition of being rather pale.
posted by house-goblin at 4:15 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hopefully, the kids will ask about it at some point. I know I did, and what you describe seems to very roughly apply to my pale face and how I was raised.
On my end, since my mother is mixed and without the language I asked my grandmother (also mixed but raised with the language). Unfortunately, the residential school had done its job and she didn’t remember much of her mother tongue. I sure hope those kids don’t face any similar barriers.
Shifting to the more general topic of the mixed race experience, I can confirm the joys of looking white yielding unfiltered opinions from bigots thinking you might share their views. I’ve also had a few not so bigoted white people, and a Chinese guy, get weirdly insistent that I was all white. One guy thought me being mixed was just my “out” from white guilt.
In testimony to stereotypes my longhaired hippy punk days occasionally meant I got to be the object of racist crap. Conversely, I sometimes got asked (with obvious distaste) why I was so pale and did I not get any sun?
Oddly enough, I have received the “what are you?” question, but it was along the gender axis back in my longhair days.
The good news is most of the negative experiences were back in the previous century and even back then plenty of people had positive reactions to finding out my mixed background. Nowadays I have a mixed partner (Filipino, Chinese, European) and our daughter is extra double mixed, though she does seem to be carrying on my tradition of being rather pale.
posted by house-goblin at 4:15 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm multiracial, but of Filipino/Mexican heritage so I've had no angst over being white-passing. Though it really doesn't matter to racists if they think there's a chance they can get away with saying racist things. I've had white dudes insult Mexicans and laughing it off by apologizing, "but I thought you were Filipino." When I was a teen I thought these were sincere mistakes but still fucked up. It's not okay to be racist about a particular ethnicity as long as you're talking to people of a different ethnicity!
But it's even more fucked up than that when I think on it. That was really using my multiracial identity to provide cover for being racist to my face. Racists know what they're doing.
posted by Mister Cheese at 4:53 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
But it's even more fucked up than that when I think on it. That was really using my multiracial identity to provide cover for being racist to my face. Racists know what they're doing.
posted by Mister Cheese at 4:53 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Wow, creepygirl, your comment rings very similar to a comment of mine from a similar multiracial thread a few years ago.
I hope people understand that being "white passing" (erm, I guess we are supposed to say "white presenting" now....) isn't some get out of jail free card. While it's not the same thing as being a visible minority, it still comes with a lot of issues from both/all groups/races. There's not necessarily a sense of refuge or welcoming to be found in black/asian/native/POC spaces and there's too much of an intimate understanding of race to fall asleep in whiteness like other whites mostly do.
posted by flamk at 8:12 PM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hope people understand that being "white passing" (erm, I guess we are supposed to say "white presenting" now....) isn't some get out of jail free card. While it's not the same thing as being a visible minority, it still comes with a lot of issues from both/all groups/races. There's not necessarily a sense of refuge or welcoming to be found in black/asian/native/POC spaces and there's too much of an intimate understanding of race to fall asleep in whiteness like other whites mostly do.
posted by flamk at 8:12 PM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thanks for that older link, flamk. Very interesting and well said. I think I may be a 10 on the passing scale nowadays, but these posts reminded me that when I was in elementary and high school it wasn’t too unusual for people to assume I had some Asian in me because of my eyes.
And I think I can relate to your point about falling asleep into whiteness. It may be tempting, you may even be getting a bit drowsy, but then you are jolted awake by something like: “who’s that [asian slur]?” or “hey, there’s a [indigenous slur] pointing at you” and you’re left to mutter “that’s my brother” or “that’s my gramma.”
I’ve also read more from the posted articles and the Cherry Moraga and Professor Reginald Daniel ones really stood out to me. Mango, I would have liked a class like the Betwixt and Between one he started.
posted by house-goblin at 4:08 PM on April 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
And I think I can relate to your point about falling asleep into whiteness. It may be tempting, you may even be getting a bit drowsy, but then you are jolted awake by something like: “who’s that [asian slur]?” or “hey, there’s a [indigenous slur] pointing at you” and you’re left to mutter “that’s my brother” or “that’s my gramma.”
I’ve also read more from the posted articles and the Cherry Moraga and Professor Reginald Daniel ones really stood out to me. Mango, I would have liked a class like the Betwixt and Between one he started.
posted by house-goblin at 4:08 PM on April 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
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