My identity has always been something I have fought hard to accept. There are times I am so proud of where I come from, what has made me, and the people who raised me. On February 14, 2002 at 1:00am in Durham, North Carolina, I was born a half-Filipino, half-Caucasian girl with extremely dark brown hair and eyes that are the color black. At least that’s what people like to tell me. People like to tell me a lot of things they think they know about me, basing all their assumptions on my appearance. My peers seem to enjoy guessing my ethnicity or taking a shot at where I “came from.” To them, I’m not Filipino, I’m ambiguous, or they claim I’m “exotic” or a racial guessing game to speculate on my features. There are biases and stereotypes engraved in today’s society, but the human brain has always used categorization based on appearance as a method of survival. Unfortunately because this method began so early on in life, unconscious and conscious racial stereotyping and bias became the result. Although it still amazes me how badly people feel the need to know, but it becomes too much when people constantly feel the need to figure out “what I am” so they can define me not by who I am, but what racial group I identify with. Knowing “what I am” is a question I’ve had to grapple with all my life. This isn’t a story of racial discrimination, but of my own struggle with racial identity.
My father’s side of the family is made up of a lot of white, southern, conservative and religious people and I love them with all my heart. My mother’s side of the family consists of democratic, judgy Filipino people who I also love dearly. It might be obvious how these two sides conflict in some ways. I share love for both sides of my family, but my identity confusion began when I was very young. It started when I was little, and I would go somewhere with my dad. People would have no idea we were related – last year someone even asked if I was his intern just because they couldn’t even grasp the idea that I could possibly be his daughter. I only have one dominant feature that is obvious it came from my dad, and that would be my nose. My grandma on my dad’s side one day said, “Sorry Caroline, you got the ugliest feature and that’s from my granddaddy.” When I am with my mom people don’t look twice, we’re both pretty short, both have dark hair and we’re both tan, for part of the year at least, so they assume we’re together. I only ever got to belong to one parent at a time, and it’s still tiring to go out with my family hearing the staff ask “together or separate?”
People constantly guess my race and I’ve heard it all: Hawaiian, Korean, Middle-Eastern, Mexican, Puerto Rican and more. I get this from all people, not just Caucasian ones. It often feels as though there is a microaggression towards not choosing only one race to identify with. Other Asian people say that “I’m not Asian enough” or I don’t understand or something along those lines. When it comes to caucasian people they only see me as Asian just because I resemble difference. Even my own family doesn’t think about me as half, my cousins on my dad’s side just identify me as Asian. It’s hard to accept who I am for both sides when no one else can seem to accept it. I have always identified as mixed-race, the second I convince myself that I accept and proudly love both sides, something happens to make me self-conscious all over again.
— By CC Kallam