I dunno. When I meet people it's usually patently obvious to them that I'm not what you would call "white", but they also have immense difficulty fitting my ethnicity into one of the preconceived categories they have in their head. People who are of African or Caribbean origin can usually clock it pretty easily (I'm half Irish, half black West African, for reference), but I've had people ask me if I'm Brazilian (makes sense I guess), Jewish, Moroccan, Iranian, Spanish and Italian (not all at the same time...).
It doesn't bother me too much though. I know enough to know that racial categories are largely arbitrary (even if their social or political significance is very strong), but I've also learnt not to expect others to come equipped with that same knowledge. There's usually no malice intended in their question.
Occasionally it does piss me off to be asked about my ethnicity. When I got a lift from an old Afrikaner in South Africa, and I could tell that my answer would have a direct bearing on how I was going to be perceived, I was pretty quick to change the subject. But I find that most of the time people are just interested to learn a bit about a culture or heritage that's unfamiliar to them. Obviously culture and physical features are, essentially, completely distinct things, but I have had genuinely fascinating and enlightening conversations with people that have come about because they asked me "where I was from".
Of course, if I ever have a similar curiosity about someone else, I'm always careful to couch my question in slightly less reductionist language. And if I ever get the chance to try to help someone gain a slightly more nuanced understanding of the many significances of racial classification, I'm always keen to take it.
