For the last time, don't ask a stranger "What are you?"
"As a biracial person...I have fielded this inquisition — “So what are you?” — several hundred times," Jordan Carter wrote. "It’s not as though the topic wasn’t already on my mind. I’ve been acutely aware of my own racial identity every single day of my life, as I imagine is the case for many minorities.
"I have most certainly felt the otherness that comes from feeling too white for some spaces, too black for others. People have felt free to comment on my otherness, too. “Oreo” was a nickname used so frequently in my youth that it became, in a warped way, a term of endearment."
My daughter Claire is half-Latina and half-white. Claire is tired of being pestered with the question, "What are you?" Claire was also called an "Oreo" in school. It is hurtful to be treated as an "other," that you don't belong.
Photos:
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Claire, 6-1/2, was a gypsy for Halloween. Sick of taking pictures.
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Claire, 29, married Matt, 34, at Lake Chelan in Sept. 2018.
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30 comments (26 - 30)
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Half Quebecer, half Acadian, but when I bang my bare toes on something, I'm 100% Tabarnak!
QuidamOutrepont
Level 8
July 23, 2019
1
I’m Caucasian with blonde hair....no one has ever asked me this, it’s ridiculous to ask anyone that question
Marcie1974
Level 8
July 23, 2019
1
Having grown up in a mixed culture, i feel your pain. I was not considered Anglo, because even though I was a very light skinned redhead, my last name was very decidedly cajun. The Cajuns (outside my father's family) didn't recognize me as one of them since I didn't have olive skin, dark hair, or speak French and not a Catholic plus no one heard of a red headed Cajun. This was in the 50s and 60s, in SW Louisiana Catholics and protestants did not mix, and neither did Cajuns and Anglos.
glennlab
Level 10
July 23, 2019
1
If you didn't tell me she was mixed, I would think she was just a tanned white chick. XD
demifeministgal
Level 8
Aug 14, 2019
0
Women are not "chicks." Claire is half-white, half Latina.
@LiterateHiker I have heard women called way worse.. if you bristle at chicks then the c-word must give you an aneurysm XD
@LiterateHiker It's gonna be a generational divide... women from my generation call themselves bitches and sl*ts to try and reclaim those words... your daughter is gorgeous... I always think mixed/bi racial people look amazing.
How old are you?
Thank you for saying my daughter is gorgeous! I love her so much.
@LiterateHiker I'm a millenial 
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