Both of my parents grew up in very conservative families. My father grew up in a German dominating city in Texas and my mother grew up in Japan. They both ended up being the wildcards of the family, which speaks volumes into the type of person I am today. I went to a primarily black high school, but it was just barely so. Everyone got along extremely well and race hardly ever played a role in my relationships growing up.
If being multiracial has had any impact on my life it is learning to be open minded. Staying woke to the fact that there is not necessarily a right or wrong way of thinking, there are just different ways of getting to the same place. I have seen the way people speak to my mother, slowed down and more articulate like she doesn't understand what they are saying. Little do they know she has her college degree in English and probably has better grammar than them. But she always told us not to let others cultural ignorance offend us, they just didn't grow up knowing better.
I am fully accepting of both my races, even though being white is not of popular demand right now. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, "I don't even think of you as a white person," or, "there is no way you are white." Then there is the counter statement, "You don't really act like an Asian person," or "the only thing Asian about you are your grades." The best statement I get from people, in terms of my race is, "You are just... Ann." Comments like that do not bother me because I've never felt like I need my race to define who I am or who I am not; my actions should define who I am and how others think about me.
People usually prefer to highlight that I am Asian, because it's the "popular race" to be right now. Everyone is all about green tea flavored everything and Asian styled tapestries. However, it wasn't always like this, people used to make fun of us little Asian girls because we has this reputation of being nerdy and skinny and awkward and no one wanted us; but now, pop cultural has made being with a "foreign girl" cool and interesting. My cousins are Iraqi, one of my brothers-in-law is black, the other was adopted into a Lebanese family, so integration was something I grew up believing to be normal. When someone is interested in pursuing me because I am Asian, it comes off as them being very ignorant. There is a soul that is colorless inside the yellow skin people seem to be so infatuated with right now. That is what people should be interested in getting to know.
I love being Japanese, my white father loves that we are Japanese. I love having German descent; my mother loves that we are American, even though she is not. But most of all we love each other because of the people we have developed into, regardless of our race. Our home is overwhelmingly both Western and Asian. We have a chicken coop out back and wood finished counters, but also a Japanese garden and traditional tea room. So I fully embrace being both white and Asian.
When I was in first grade I felt like a normal kid, but it was quite obvious that I did not look like everyone else. I was the only student in my grade that was of Asian descent. People would always ask me, "what are you?" And since I was born with an attitude I would generally respond, "A human." But I knew what they meant, the other kids wanted to know why I didn't look like them and why my mom would pack my lunch in a bento box with chopsticks, rather than a peanut butter sandwich and chips from time to time. I remember wishing that I had hazel eyes and freckles like the other girls in my class, there were often times that I wouldn't believe I was the strange looking girl looking back at me in the mirror. But that thought process changed quickly with the ethnic integration that came not soon after, it can just be hard when you are that young and people point out how much you don't fit in.
