Biracial Celebrities and Application of "Common Sense"

As a young, biracial woman I’ve often noticed that how people perceive me, specifically in terms of my race, often depends on the context in which I am being seen.  Whether I’m out shopping with my tall, blonde-haired mother with blue eyes or sitting quietly at a restaurant with my shorter, straight black-haired father with “no eyelids”.  When considering me on a specifically individual level, people are often uncomfortable about making assumptions about my race, because as Omi and Winant note, “Our ability to interpret racial meanings depends on preconceived notions of a racialized social structure…We expect people to act out their apparent racial identities.”  It is only after I inform others that my father is from Korea that they say “Oh, I could kinda tell you must be part Asian because of your eyes.”  

People generally tend to have these fixed ideas of what it means to act or look of a particular race and consequently miss the importance of self-identification and ethnicity.  I’m not Korean, but I’m not Irish either. I don’t bow or even know how to speak Korean, but I’ve also never taken a swig of whiskey while reciting James Joyce.  So what does that make my race?  What does it mean to be American?  For what reasons is my race worth identifying within this American integration of cultures?  

On BuzzFeed one can find a page entitled “34 Celebrities You Never Knew Were of Mixed Heritage.”  It serves as a similar example in Pop Culture of people’s tendencies to make assumptions about what are considered racial identifiers.  Phrases include “part Lebanese” and “Her father is a Native of Iraq”.  So do these potentially new bits of information change the way people may look at the meaning of “Lebanese” or of the celebrities themselves?  How do the celebrities identify themselves, and what is more worth noting?

BuzzFeed 34 Celebrities You Never Knew Were Of Mixed Heritage