As any college sophomore can tell you, race is not a biological fact, it is a social construction. Racial constructions can be studied from a variety of angles: as matters of a dominant group wielding power through law, government, economic, or social means; as images and social interactions between groups; as interaction and bonding among Black people; as literary or artistic expression; and so on and on across many disciplines and racial groups. This panel will focus on race as personal assertion through performance among selected Black, White, and mixed-race Asian Americans. In Tara Kendall’s paper, we learn that Bert Williams was a Bahamian of African and European descent who came to the United States around the turn of the last century and entertained thousands of Americans as a comedian in blackface. He asserted a subtle racial identity, portraying Black Americans but not quite becoming one of them. In Tuula Kolehmainen’s, we witness as Jamie Foxx and other Black comedians reflect on their relationship to their masculinity in the context of their race. In Rena Heinrich’s paper, we witness the shape shifting identity performance of dancer Sono Osato: a Japanese-Irish American whose father was interned and whose brother served in a segregated army unit, meanwhile Sono portrayed an all-American girl on Broadway. In Paul Spickard’s, we learn that Johnny Otis was a mid-20th-century bandleader revered “as the godfather of R&B”; Rachel Dolezal was a 21st-century activist for Black civil rights. Both had only White ancestry but both performed Black identities, with differing results. Otis was able to make his Black identity stick, but Dolezal was not. Each of these individuals represents a particular performance of race in its respective context. Together they illuminate aspects of the changing nature of racial identities and expression over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st.