On Being “Mixed”
First off, I’m starting with a disclaimer: My words don’t reflect the feelings of all mixed-race individuals or even all half-Taiwanese and half-white people. I’m a single voice, but with that said, my experience is mine.
It was at a YMCA daycare program in Hawaii. I was around seven when a boy asked me, “What are you?” Being around seven, I answered, “A human being.” He looked offended, as if I had stepped on his feet with words. He reiterated, “No, I mean what are your parents?” I replied with “Oh, well my mom is Taiwanese and my dad is American.” Seemingly satisfied with these words, he walked away.
The strangest thing was that he had never talked to me before asking this question. He never spoke to me again. I don’t even know his name (or if I ever did know his name). Yet something was so disturbing about the way I looked that he just had to know what kind of unholy combination of races could have made me. Him with his pale sickly skin, the kind that peels and blisters into angry ugly shades of red under the sun. The kind of skin that stood out in Hawaii, where a large percentage of residents are mixed-race and are all different shades of brown. Why did I have to explain myself to him?
Perhaps it is in the very existence of a word like “mixed.” Amidst words like “white” and “Asian,” it doesn’t designate some kind of specific racial category. It’s only used to describe someone who isn’t monoracial. Thus, there’s a lot of variation among multiracial people. We can look like the “perfect” mix of our parents. We can look like only one of our parents. We don’t always have to be half-white. And under no circumstance are we less of one race because of the way we look or dress or act.
See, the thing about race is that it doesn’t exist the way we think it does. We categorize by race—everyone with light skin is white, or if your eyes are monolid then you have to be some kind of Asian. Dark skin? You have to be partly black. These categories have a very small biological basis. They come from a place of profound ignorance and stereotypes.
If we look at the way genes are expressed, we know that out of every single gene that lies in our DNA only 1.5% of it, called exons, actually does something to make us human. A lot of these things account for more basic stuff like how our cells respirate or how our muscles form, which explains why we are 98% or so the same as our closest living cousins, the chimpanzee or bonobo. Naturally between people, that percentage goes up and we are even more closely related. Even with the effect of epigenetics, traits that change depending on external factors, we are still very similar.
That little bit that determines surface features like height or pigmentation is how we categorize people. Isn’t it strange how such a small amount of DNA decides how people view you? Something so out of our control determines your place in an antiquated hierarchy built for the benefit of some people.
If we keep looking at race in this very single-minded way, it leads to multiracial individuals becoming a target of racism. I’ve struggled with my racial identity before because I was taught the notion that race is something so concrete. When you are a person whose race is ambiguous, you don’t ever fit in with a group. There’s always this awareness that you are something odd and abnormal. The little boy who asks, “What are you?” is only curious. The people who say, “I had no idea you were half-Taiwanese” were just being honest. Of course people had to ask who my father was; I certainly don’t look like my mom.
Whether it is the shape of my eyes or the curliness of my hair, I don’t have features typical of modern Taiwanese people. Moving to Taiwan, the foreignness of my features stands out even more. I don’t have the straight black strands of hair like my mother. My skin isn’t the same kind of tan; it’s lighter and comes with slight discolorations. When people talk to me they speak in hesitant Mandarin, testing my fluency (or rather lack thereof). I can’t speak Mandarin fluently or much at all, despite my mother’s attempts to teach me or the many months spent in Chinese schools throughout my life.
It’s these differences that make me hesitant to call myself Taiwanese. Because if I don’t look the part or speak the language, then am I really Taiwanese? Could I just be a fake, someone who’s from a place of whiteness that simply wants to be cool and “exotic”?
But things aren’t so simple. With race being a superficial categorizer, labeling by race leads to misunderstanding and division. I like to think of these things more like genetics. For each living thing on Earth, there are distinct traits that its offsprings inherit. In Mendelian terms, this is the underlying gene of something called the genotype. But the way the offspring ends up looking is something else, called the phenotype. For humans and our complex genetics, a number of combinations could result in a wide array of traits.
If race is just phenotype, then what really determines someone’s culture is more like their genotype. (Not that genotype is exactly what I’m talking about.) But in a metaphorical sense, genotype is like ethnicity. And ethnicity is not skin deep. It is the product of many lives spanning generations. Even if I don’t really agree with the use of a term like mixed, in this racial climate it’s the closest thing that comes to recognition.
To be mixed and live with both of my parents is to live a life that is not Taiwanese and American. It’s mixed, not exactly 50% Taiwanese or American.
