Multiracial People, What Things Are You Sick Of Hearing?
Complete Stranger: "What are you?"
As a mixed-race person, I've learned over the course of basically my whole life that people ask so, so many questions about my race or ethnicity. They don't even have to know me, they can just stroll right up to me and hit me with one.
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At this point, I think I've heard most of them. For instance, there's the constant, "What are you?"
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Cyborg, alien, human, oh my!
Or my personal least favorite, "How'd your parents meet?"
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Do I go around asking strangers how their parents met? No. Plus, my parents met at a park in the '80s. Which inevitably leads to, "What were they doing there?" I don't know, dude, what do people do at parks?
And we can't forget the classic, "Is that your mom / dad / grandma / grandpa / nanny?"
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Raise your hand if people think you're being kidnapped or are adopted! Ok, kidnapping is a real concern, so kudos to those being vigilant. But it is a ~little~ frustrating when that guy is, in fact, my father.
Then, there are the gatekeepers who like to decide what counts as "enough" or if you're "really" that race.
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Talk about policing.
Listen, do I expect people to know these things or not be curious? No. And I'm not really mad. But it doesn't mean that a bunch of multiracial people and I haven't heard these things thousands of times before.
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It just gives me more time to practice my answers.
So if you're multiracial, please, tell me what you're sick of hearing! You could be featured in a BuzzFeed Community post!
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Just submit it in the dropbox below.