It’s the last days of Black History Month, when non-Black people are encouraged, with varying degrees of success, to engage with and show curiosity toward Black people and our stories. And this engagement is a good thing. Still, it comes with complexities any mixed Black person will recognize — meaning, any Black person with a parent (or perhaps grandparent) who isn’t Black.
I’m talking about the question: What are you? Meaning, what are you racially. We’re not the only mixed people who get questioned about our identities and where we come from. But, in my experience, mixed-Black folks get this question in a particular way. It comes at us with a particular emotional tone — entitlement and bewilderment swirled together. It comes from strangers. It comes often. It comes in public; you would think such an intimate and, frankly, odd question would be reserved for private moments but no, we hear this question at conference tables and happy hours and birthday parties, and because we have been conditioned by the same forces as the person asking, we feel obliged to smile and answer.
Human beings are curious animals and we live in a society preoccupied with race. So I get why someone might look at me, and the relative racial ambiguity of my light skin but broad nose, kinky hair but green eyes, and think, I wonder…
