“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us Page: 75
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look like me. They would not so much question me, but look at me like I was crazy. Like
they wanted to but just didn't have the balls to, so they wouldn't do it. So yeah, it's
changed a lot.
For some interviewees the reactions of strangers would lead to some awkward and insulting
follow-up questions. Barbara, said that people often think she is racially mixed because not only
does her mother have a much fairer complexion than she does, but also because if they see her
alone, they think she is part Asian. When she tells them she is black, the clumsy response is
"well why are your eyes like that then?"
Objectification of Native Americans
Interviewees in this study who had Native American ancestry said that this tendency to
objectify people is exacerbated in their cases because American Indians are thought to be extinct.
Susan said that "being Native means that you're in a group that people tend to view only in a
historical context. You're not allowed a present. You're allowed a past and that's it...And you're
still not allowed a future." At one time Susan said that even the U.S. government put out a
publication in which American Indians were called "vanishing cultural artifacts." Susan and
David said that often children are taught in school that the Indians were killed or run off from
this or that state, or all the Indians live on reservations. Such mythology bothers them because
when they identify themselves racially, people are doubly incredulous that individuals who claim
to be descendants of the indigenous people of the United States still walk the earth, and that they
don't look like the Indians in American western films and television shows.
David, a Native American man, said that sometimes people can't even identify American
Indians when a group of them are standing nearby.
It's funny though because you can be like, you could be standing next to people that look
Indian, and if the prevailing mythology is that there are no Indians here, people say that75
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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/m1/82/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .