Scholars have increasingly acknowledged that race is composed of multiple dimensions and that these dimensions do not always match. For example, an individual’s sense of personal identity can differ from the race they mark on surveys and/or how others interpret their racial identity based on appearance. The potential for racial mismatch is even greater for multiracial individuals, who are commonly asked racial identity inquiries by others wanting to know their racial background. In this article, I focus on multiracial individuals’ responses to racial identity inquiries to examine how these instances of expressed race may “mismatch” their internal race. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 multiracial young adults, I find that despite the wide range of identity options that multiracial Americans are presumed to have, participants typically responded to inquiries about race with consistent scripts that did not necessarily align with their personal identities. I refer to these scripts as “racial elevator speeches,” and discuss how they are primarily constructed not to express personal identity but to meet the expectations of others and mitigate the microaggressive nature of these questions. However, by constructing racial elevator speeches designed to be legible to others, individuals’ scripts inadvertently reify U.S. racial structures.

中文翻译：

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种族电梯演讲：多种族个人如何回应种族身份调查

学者们越来越多地承认种族是由多个维度组成的，并且这些维度并不总是匹配的。例如，个人对个人身份的感觉可能不同于他们在调查中标记的种族和/或其他人如何根据外表来解释他们的种族身份。对于多种族个人来说，种族不匹配的可能性更大，其他人通常会向他们询问种族身份，以了解他们的种族背景。在本文中，我将重点关注多种族个体对种族身份调查的反应，以检查这些表达种族的实例如何“不匹配”他们的内部种族。通过对 30 名多种族年轻人的深入访谈，我发现尽管多种族美国人被认为拥有广泛的身份选择，参与者通常使用不一定与他们的个人身份一致的一致脚本来回答有关种族的询问。我将这些脚本称为“种族电梯演讲”，并讨论如何构建它们主要不是为了表达个人身份，而是为了满足他人的期望并减轻这些问题的微观攻击性。然而，通过构建旨在对其他人清晰易读的种族电梯演讲，个人的剧本无意中具体化了美国的种族结构。”并讨论如何构建它们主要不是为了表达个人身份，而是为了满足他人的期望并减轻这些问题的微观攻击性。然而，通过构建旨在对其他人清晰易读的种族电梯演讲，个人的剧本无意中具体化了美国的种族结构。”并讨论如何构建它们主要不是为了表达个人身份，而是为了满足他人的期望并减轻这些问题的微观攻击性。然而，通过构建旨在对其他人清晰易读的种族电梯演讲，个人的剧本无意中具体化了美国的种族结构。