Race didn't really exist to me when I was a child. I just was.
I grew up in a predominantly white suburb of New York, where just about everyone in my class was white. And I was, too, with some minor differences.
I grew up in a predominantly white suburb of New York, where just about everyone in my class was white. And I was, too, with some minor differences.
When I was a child, my father made a point to teach me Chinese, and my parents were excited that the babysitter they found was Cantonese. It was important to them, at the time, that I could ask for apples and say I needed to use the bathroom in both languages. That I could talk to all of my grandparents in whatever language they wanted. That I glued their two worlds together.
And so I grew up eating pork buns and ramen for breakfast, being praised for my Chinese vocabulary, eating weekly dim sum with my father's extended family and seeing myself in my Chinese babysitter's sons. But I also didn't feel too different from my white classmates and friends.
But I was different, even if I couldn't see it or didn't want to admit it. There are things I wish I had known growing up, but one of the most important was this: No matter how white I felt in Westchester County, this world sees and has always seen me as a biracial woman, as an Asian woman.
At the same time, although my whiteness has been a shield, it's my Asian side that has forced me to evolve in the face of adversity.
After the tragic shootings in the Atlanta area last week, I've thought about my racial identity more than ever. My horror is a collective horror, my grief a collective grief. They have forced me to look inward. Because, really, who am I?
And as I try to understand myself more after last week's tragedy, I think about how race has shaped my childhood.
Suddenly I'm in first grade and a third-grader is telling me about my slanty eyes. He's speaking "Chinese" to me, but it's just gibberish.
And then I'm in second grade dressed as Mulan for Halloween, but all my friends are witches or other "cooler" characters. I remember covering up as we paraded around the parking lot, ashamed that the dress I was so excited to wear was suddenly so different. My ahma was there, and I didn't want to acknowledge her.
By the middle of elementary school, I looked less Asian and stopped speaking Chinese. This assimilation was noticed by my grandmother. Ahma pivoted to dote first on my sister and then my brother. She was short with me. To her, I was too white.
My father would come to my class for Chinese New Year every year. He read a book, brought Chinese candies and passed out red envelopes. After third grade, I asked him to stop showing up.
I think now about my father and his own rejection of Chinese culture. He was bullied as a child and still hurt by the "othering" he experienced living in rural Connecticut with parents who cooked and cleaned for other families. Being with my mom was his rebellion, his key to American acceptance. He doubled down by marrying her and raising his kids in Westchester. He didn't want us to have childhoods like his. So there was no Chinese Sunday school, and we didn't talk about his experiences with racism.
And as I got older, losing my Chinese culture felt normal, even beneficial. I found comfort in whiteness, in my mom's family, in the softness of my mother. My father's family was colder, out of touch, uninterested. My favorite family member on that side, my ahyeh, was always in China. Who was I going to speak to when no one understood me or even bothered to try?
But when I was 16, ahyeh died in a car accident in China. He was the most ageless 80-year-old I had ever met; he was supposed to live forever.
Ahyeh was the reason I found myself in mainland China after he died, experiencing my first serious identity crisis. I was thrust into a foreign culture that wasn't supposed to be so foreign. People gawked at me on the street for being white. I was tall and freckly and no longer could speak Chinese. I was, again, too white.
In high school, if my race ever came up, which it seldom did, I told people the same thing: Yes, my father is Chinese and my mom is Irish, but I am white. Last year, some high school friends named our group chat "7 white girls, 1 Latina, 1 Asian, 1 redhead." It happened when I wasn't paying attention. I remember looking at my phone confused. Asian? I was being placed in a category that they never really talked to me about.
My friends so easily evaluated my identity. To them, I was Asian. But I've lived a white life. At least, it often feels like I have.
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And yet, I check both race boxes on forms. I don't know how decisions about hiring me or accepting me are made. I don't know what strangers see when I walk down the street. I think about that now more than ever.
And in the aftermath of Atlanta, how do I reconcile my grief with this mostly white life I've lived? And why does my Asian side present itself only in times of pain, shame and neglect? What does that say about my identity?
Clearly I'm still learning what it is to be biracial, an identity that I've only begun to try on.
Unlearning my whiteness means sitting with the uncomfortable moments of my white childhood and seeing how those moments have shaped my adolescence and adulthood.
It means missing my ahyeh a whole lot during this pandemic and wondering what life would be like if he were alive.
Why does my Asian side present itself only in times of pain, shame and neglect? What does that say about my identity?
It means sitting with my emotions about my father, the complexity of those feelings, and processing how one broken relationship has inhibited my acceptance of an entire rich culture. What have I missed as a result?
It means wondering what my father would be like if he hadn't been lost in his own pain when he tried to be my father.
It means being so angry about how the world has treated Chinese people during a devastating pandemic but not knowing whom to tell.
It means worrying about my ahma because she doesn't deserve to be harassed when she goes to the store or to visit her only friend in town who's still alive.
It means grieving the loss of six Asian women I didn't know, who happened to exist in the wrong place at the wrong time, because, investigators say, some white man was angry and had "had a bad day."
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It means giving myself space to just feel, without judging myself, which is new.
It means figuring out how to hold space for both halves of myself and accepting that as enough.
