I apologize if this point is too obvious, but the reason these odd situations occur is that many people mistakenly believe that categories such as "white" and "black" correspond to intrinsic, biological categories, that it makes sense to ask if someone is "really" of one race or another. Whereas racial categories like these are socially constructed, and do not correspond all that well with genetic population groupings. The subject of the story categorizes himself as "black" because he categorizes his parents as "black". But they were Americans with very light skin, which means that their ancestry originated from both Europe and Africa, the same as all "white" and "black" Americans, and this categorization is a social convention. The subject's classifying himself as "black" is arbitrary, a remnant of the racist "one drop" attitude that helped support slavery and, later, segregation. The book referred to in the article, <i>Black Like Me</i>, is great reading, by the way.<p>EDIT: Some replies suggest that I may have been unclear. The social grouping into race is obviously not random, but based on perception of visible morphological attributes. However the categorization that results is probably not the same categorization that you would get if you looked at the whole genotype and tried grouping humans together based on genetics. One basic fact of human genetics should guide you here: there is more genetic variability within any socially constructed "race" than between "racial" groups. So claims that common racial categories correspond to big differences in genotypes don't make sense. Whether there are races at all in humans is something that biologists disagree about, with most at the moment saying "no". Whether race is useful to medical diagnosis is also contentious. The human species is unusually genetically uniform. Most animals that all look about the same to us, like chimpanzees, have (in that case) about three times our genetic diversity.
The author says this is progress. Maybe it is, in a way. But to me it still means we're very primitive, still very tribal, that we still care about any of this crap.<p>On forms, I never answer any question about my supposed ethnicity. How would I even really know? And why would I care? If there is some word with a capital letter that is the name of my supposed tribe, and all my heritage is attached to that, I hereby throw it in the garbage. It isn't worth it, if it's a wall between me and other humans. The special dance of my ancestors, the special holiday tradition, blah blah blah, on and on, whatever, I reject it, and choose to be a generic mutt in the one real tribe there is, called the human race. To me, <i>that</i> is progress.
I think this is still an extremely common phenomena these days. Speaking from personal experience, someone making the mistake isn't that jarring, it's the insistence of the other individual that you are mistaken that is always jarring/shocking to witness.
There's a lot more racial admixture in the American population than most realize, especially among populations who have been in the country for long periods of time. At least 4% of self-identified "white" Americans have recent (within the last 200 years) African ancestry, pointing to a historical level of permeability in the racial barrier.<p>This is not overly surprising because "race" is a social construction, not a biological category, and individuals of ambiguous racial admixture are not uncommon today. Take for example Congressman G.K. Butterfield, who is constantly subject to questions about his membership in the Congressional Black Caucus among other topics, despite having two parents of visible African ancestry. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Butterfield" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Butterfield</a><p>The real point is that racial categories are silly. Humans are remarkably genetically similar across the globe. There is greater genetic variation in two chimpanzees from the same troupe than there is between humans from the tip of Patagonia and the Khoisan in Africa.
I think you can relay this in a lot of ways to just preconceived notions or judgements of others. I think judgement can be a good thing as it can protect us or give us opportunities to discover, but there should be an openness to let those early notions be trumped.<p>Perhaps it's like not necessarily having convictions about others, but just allowing others and ourselves to change our opinions.
I know a few people who have to deal with these sorts of issues. They identify as black, but by appearance people assume they are White, or Greek, or Hispanic, or Asian, or something besides black.<p>Occasionally, people ask them why they have so many black friends or tell racist jokes in front of them. Other times, people who believe that they share a common heritage will speak to them in languages and become angry when they don't understand.<p>Human beings are all to apt to judge a person's ethnicity by their appearance, but in many instances one's appearance is not an accurate gauge of their ethnic heritage.