Individuals who are of mixed race all face external questioning of their racial and ethnic identities. Because race is such a fundamental ordering principle in our society and there are layers of social significance attached to different racial groups, it becomes "the social gauge for how one is to understand, respond to, and interact with people as representatives of these groups" (Williams, 203). Mixed race people, who are often physically ambiguous in this context, are not easily categorized along these lines. Consequently, they are often asked the What are You? question to determine their racial grouping. The students interviewed for this paper all reported that they have been faced with this question all of their lives. Jason, who is mixed Japanese / Danish, noted that,

When people ask that, what they want to hear is "Why are you not white?" It's not necessarily as antagonistic as that but that's sort of what they are getting at.

Thus, the question represents what Nash called "biracial people's mucking up the system" (quoted in Williams, 203). As Amber, a biracial Chinese / European female, noted, "People are really curious because they look at me and they can't really slot me anywhere." Because the physical ambiguity of mixed race people defies easy labeling, the interrogator is demanding a socially acceptable way of understanding the individual who they are questioning. The question often says more about the person asking the question because multiracial people embody the "contradiction between how people have been trained to understand race and the fact that the multiracial person doesn't fit that scheme" (Williams, quoted in Gaskins, 21). Jason noted that the way in which the question is posed also depends on who is doing the questioning. For example, he felt that other minorities were less likely to feel the need to be as politically correct and would often pose the question more bluntly. In other cases, however, he noted that the way the question was posed revealed a lot about the mindset with which different people approach biracial people: "People ask the question in different ways. You know what they are trying to say but they express it in sort of an awkward way."

Although several of those interviewed expressed that this is a common question with which they have a great deal of experience, they still answer it in different ways depending on the social context in which it is asked. Ayesha, who is mixed Pakistani / French, relates that when she is asked to define herself to others,

It depends on who asks me and how they ask. If a Pakistani person asks me, I tell them I'm from Pakistan and right away that's what they'll see and that's what they'll want to see. Sometimes someone will ask me and I'll say "my mother is from... and my father is from... and I was born in..." It totally depends who asks me. If another mixed race person asks me, the first thing I say is the two different things whereas if someone asks me where I am from, I'll say from Pakistan. It depends on how the question is asked too. That's the thing - it feels a lot more centred around myself and the way I am connected to everything around me. The fact that it depends who asks me and how they ask me that I'll answer differently each time.

Jason also felt that the way in which he answered the question depended on how confrontational he was feeling or how much the question bothered him at the particular moment it was asked:

If I feel like people aren't assholes, I would probably oblige them and say I'm half-Japanese or whatever… I would also say I'm half-Japanese and half-Danish if people actually sounded like they wanted to have a conversation. When people just want to know about my Japanese side, it shows that they are still coming from a mindset that our society is primarily white and then there are a bunch of other people.

The interaction fostered by the What are you? question serves as an opportunity to assert their identities in different ways. By answering in contextually-specific ways, these mixed race individuals use the question in an empowering way to define their own boundaries while forcing those who pose the question to rethink the racial assumptions implicit in such a question.

It is interesting to note that, when faced with the What are you? question, most of the respondents chose to first assert their national identity before explaining their biracial background. Although racial identity is clearly one of the most important underlying factors motivating such questions about multiracial individuals, all of those interviewed, except for Ayesha, stated that they were Canadian but with cultural and racial ties to other groups in society. Daylan asserted that he has always identified himself as Canadian:

Basically I identify myself as Canadian. I am Canadian. I know I'm not Japanese and I'm not as Japanese as Japanese-Canadians. I just know I am half but at the same time I know that being Canadian doesn't mean being white. So I call myself Canadian pretty much.

Although Canada is to a large extent associated with being white, for those who were born here, the assertion of their national identity was extremely important for delineating the scope of others' perceptions and interactions with them. Part of this lies in the level of importance on which they place the perception that, although they may be racially mixed, they remain an important reality in Canada; they may not fit the racial perceptions of a Canadian yet their assertion of national identity shows that they do not belong any less equally others.