“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us Page: 38
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appearance and racial identity. Somehow racial appearance is supposed to indicate what can be
expected of individuals of different racial groups. It is this idea of racial expectations that the
interviewees in this study frequently encounter. They do not look black, or Native American, or
Filipino, etc. The expectations about their appearance or behavior by race are pervasive. They
face them every time someone, whether stranger or acquaintance, asks them the question "What
are you?" and then follows it up with a surprised reaction to the answer. This study provides a
closer examination of the effects of racial expectations and curiosity as a constant presence in the
interviewees' lives and will be discussed more in the chapters dealing with the grounded theory
aspects of this study. Racial expectations are a major factor in race relations in the U.S., but Omi
and Winant (2008) also discuss at great length the racial dictatorship of the U.S.
They describe the racial dictatorship of the U.S. as basically a social order in which
whites, and people who can present themselves as white, are at the top enjoying many privileges
(Omi & Winant, 2008). Over time this racial dictatorship doled out some privileges to light
skinned people because they were deemed more attractive and smarter than darker skinned
members of minority groups or because they were able to pass as members of the dominant
group. Although, as shown in the literature review of this paper, racial mixing had been a feature
of every epoch of the history of the U.S., it has not been treated as a positive development for
most of U.S. history. In slavery, the mixed children of white masters and their enslaved women
were not classified as white but black so that they would become their fathers' property and
increase his wealth. After slavery the one-drop rule and hypo-descent continued this tradition of
prohibiting the offspring of black/white unions whether involuntary or voluntary to identify as
anything other than black. Omi and Winant go so far as to say the U.S. is the only country in the
world that has instituted this kind of racial classification system.38
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Smith, Starita. “What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us, dissertation, May 2012; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115163/m1/45/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .