... About Being Mixed-Race Pt. 2

The more I talked with other mixed kids about creating a hapa community at Dartmouth, the more excited I became. I mostly received positive feedback but I some people questioned the necessity or practicality of creating a community of hapa people. After all, mixed-race is a very broad category. People who are mixed-race can present in many different ways. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I am white-passing, but one of my good friends, who also has a Chinese mom and a White father, looks fully Chinese. Surely our experiences aren’t the same.

I talked with him about our different experiences and found that, just as I expected, we had different lived experiences. I have never been called a racial slur, but he has. I have never been the only person who looked like me in my class, but he has. But we both grew up eating grilled cheese sandwiches and wonton, celebrating Chinese New Year and Christmas. Our cultural backgrounds were very similar, but our appearances are not. How do we reconcile these two things? I believe it is important to be able to both recognize heritage and culture and to recognize how one walks through the world. This is especially important for those of us that are light-skinned or white-passing.

A few weeks ago, I was sharing all of this with a friend. I was talking about how frustrating it can be for hapa people to be told that they are not [insert ethnicity/race here] enough and to have our opinions dismissed. I have experienced this before with something as simple as explaining the rules to mahjong, which I have been playing with my grandparents since I was four. My friend said that she understood what I was saying, but also while mixed people should be able to fully be who they are and embrace their cultural heritage, white-passing mixed people also have a choice. We can escape the “bad” parts – the racist remarks, the discrimination, etc.—and just embrace the rich culture and heritage. We can choose to identify as Chinese when it is convenient and when it benefits us. How is that fair?

I spent a lot of time thinking about that. For myself, I wouldn’t think it would be fair to say that I understand what it means to be a Chinese American woman. I really don’t. I understand what it means to be a half-Chinese, half-White American woman, though. I would not argue that I have more understanding of what it means to be Chinese American than someone who is fully Chinese American. Still, the cultural knowledge that I have that was passed on to me through my grandmother and grandfather, and my mother is real. It is part of me and I refuse to turn my back and pretend that it isn’t there. I explained this all to my friend and she understood what I was saying. But where does that leave us?

I think it leaves us at an interesting place of compromise. I believe that mixed-race people need to try harder to understand how they walk through the world and how that affects their lived experience compared to that of their parents, siblings, and friends. At the same time, how a mixed-race person looks should not fully discount who and what they are. Mixed-race people should not have to choose one side of their identity or risk being ostracized by all sides. To make this mental shift and to make racial communities inclusive of their hapa family is going to require a whole lot of uncomfortable conversations. I know that for me, this was just the first of many.