{"id":56035,"date":"2018-03-27T01:50:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T01:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56035"},"modified":"2018-03-27T01:50:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T01:50:38","slug":"what-it-really-feels-like-to-be-asked-what-are-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56035","title":{"rendered":"What It Really Feels Like To Be Asked \u201cWhat Are You?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

What It Really Feels Like To Be Asked \u201cWhat Are You?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Refinery29<\/a>
\n2018-02-28<\/p>\n

Khalea Underwood<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nNali Henry, 19, Artist Photographed by Myles Loftin.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are your parents from?”<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom\u2019s from Ohio<\/a> and my dad\u2019s from Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, you know what I mean: What are you?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the way most conversations with Tasha Gear,<\/a> a 25-year-old photographer based in New York City<\/a>, start. Tasha, who\u2019s half Black and half white, has been fielding questions about her background since she could talk. \u201cPeople barely say two words to me and then ask what I am,\u201d she says. And hers is not an isolated experience.<\/p>\n

Since interracial marriage was legalized<\/a> in 1967, the percentage of interracial couples in the U.S. has grown from three percent to 17 percent<\/a>. As a result, a new generation of ethnically ambiguous young people has formed; nearly one in seven infants born is considered \u201cmulti-racial,\u201d according to a recent Pew Research Center study<\/a>…<\/p>\n

These young men and women \u2014 and the love they were born out of \u2014 should be cause for celebration. But in more cases, their experience is fetishism (every rapper on the top 40 list talks about bagging a \u201cforeign\u201d chick), speculation (“but what are you, really?<\/em>\u201d), or even a dismissal of identity within their own cultures.<\/p>\n

In their own words, five multi-ethnic young people \u2014 who all identify as Black in some way \u2014 explain why they\u2019re rejecting the \u201cwhat are you?\u201d question to explain who they really are…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their own words, five multi-ethnic young people \u2014 who all identify as Black in some way \u2014 explain why they\u2019re rejecting the \u201cwhat are you?\u201d question to explain who they really are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,20,25],"tags":[28265,28266,28261,28262,26432,28264,28263],"class_list":["post-56035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-ashley-javier","tag-jheyda-mcgarrell","tag-khalea-underwood","tag-nali-henry","tag-refinery29","tag-sebastian-rosemarie","tag-tasha-gear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56036,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56035\/revisions\/56036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}