Why Do Some People Lie About Their Race?

Exploring a case study in “ethnic fraud”

Photo by Chad Greiter on Unsplash

Race, as a social construct, has always confused and confounded me. The categories we put certain ethnicities always seemed arbitrary — why are Asians and Pacific Islanders grouped together? I saw a graph that separated the two groups for the first time in forever the other day, but I also always wondered why my Iranian friend…