Siena
My mom is Korean and my Dad is a white American. The interesting thing about my mom is that she was adopted by two white Americans, so she grew up really disconnected from any form of Korean culture. Interestingly, she was adopted with her twin brother, so even though she is adopted, she still knows her actual blood brother. Both of them don't remember anything before they were adopted since they were months old when it happened. Then she grew up in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, in predominantly white towns. So, growing up I always felt weirdly disconnected from Korean culture despite being so visibly Asian. I also grew up in mostly white areas, but we moved around a lot. So depending on where I was, at the time, I experienced more diverse communities, especially during my most recent moves. My parents moved me in the middle of high school from London to Princeton New Jersey, and I think that was actually the most diverse school I had been to in a while. I feel like that is where I felt the least singled out apart from in New York City.
Do you ever get asked the question, “What are you?”
All the time. I think I started getting asked that less when I moved to Princeton, because people were more used to seeing people of different races and were more sensitive to not saying stuff like, "what kind of Asian are you"? But before that, I had always gotten that question. And I had always answered it more kindly than I wish I had. I feel like I spent a lot of my childhood trying to get rid of my Asian side and seem closer to my whiteness, which is really sad to say, but at the same time, I always struggled to feel any claim to my Korean side. So it has always been a really interesting and complex relationship with how people perceive me and how I felt I truly was. I go to NYU now so as you can imagine, people are a lot more used to that kind of complicated background. Everybody has some weird backstory. I never get asked that question, really, unless it's another Korean person who can tell that I'm Korean just by looking at me.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, because race has obviously been a very prominent topic, is my own anti-Asianness- those moments when I really tried to be like the white people who I was surrounded with to be cool or whatever. Mostly when I was in middle school.
I have this really distinct memory of doing eye exercises to make my eyes look bigger. I really wanted to have an eye fold.
There was a weird phase when I was going into high school where my eyes couldn't decide whether they wanted to fold or not.
Me too!! I totally forgot about that.
It's so weird because white people probably never even think about if they have a crease in their eyelids. I was reading an Instagram infographic post that was about Asians perpetuating Anti-Asian sentiment and making racist comments about themselves defensively so that nobody else makes them first and it hit me that I used to do that all the time. I remember when I was younger some of my friends would do this [stretches eyes]. And I would do it too. Even though it obviously made me really uncomfortable, to make it seem like I was cool and laid-back I would just go along with the joke, but that kind of thing really did affect my self-image. I'd never make fun of my eyes like that now, because it's not just offensive and damaging to yourself, but also to other Asians.
I have a sister who is in ninth grade. And one thing that was interesting to me, which is a decision she made last year, is that she's taking Chinese. Obviously we're not Chinese, we're half Korean, but I had the option to take Chinese when I was younger, and I didn’t do it just because I was afraid that by being in that classroom, I'd get so many Asian comments and jokes. I just wanted to separate myself as much from Asianness as I could. My sister has no problem taking it and she's really good at it. But I also do think that what's being talked about now, about race and just how prominent it is in our society’s dialogue pretty much, is helping with that generation too.
I was on a Gen Z for Biden (Gen Z for Change) zoom call. A few of the Gen Z for Change creators were talking to whoever wanted to join the zoom. And there was this girl, I can't remember her name, who was a sixth grader. And she just sounded so accepting, so aware of what was going on, of racism and in a way that I could have never said to someone when I was in the sixth grade. So I really do think that what we're talking about is going to those younger kids, especially through platforms like Tik Tok. I like Tik Tok a lot because there are so many people who are on there for educational purposes.
Even the culture of Instagram has changed, where it's normalized for people to share information on their Instagram pages now. And it's interesting. That’s a whole other conversation, some people who I know are really annoyed by people posting political things on their stories now, but I think that it's really good that people now share their actual thoughts on social media and aren’t afraid to align themselves with activism anymore, I feel like it makes it more real.
Has your relationship to your racial identities changed in the past year?
It's definitely been on my mind more. It's really weird, because I still feel whitewashed, in a sense. But also, I feel like it's especially weird in my position, just because I don't know any extended family who have any connection to Korean culture. So sometimes I feel like we're faking it. When my mom wants to go eat at a Korean restaurant or something, I'm like, we're such fake Koreans right now. But my white dad actually started working for a company that's based in Korea, which is really interesting. It wasn't on purpose. It just so happened that they were looking for someone to run the business in the US. But that has definitely been an interesting addition to my journey with race. It’s brought a lot more Korean culture into my life. It's a little restaurant bakery chain. My dad is bringing home all of these Korean treats, which is super funny, because he's the white one.
I've definitely done a lot of reading and learning over this period of time. And self-analysis. Obviously, as a person of color growing up, you are very aware of race. But even sometimes there are a lot of people who still have to take a step back and think about the way that they're handling it. Even as a person of color, you can be racist to people who aren't of your race, but also to yourself, you're sometimes doing yourself damage, and I definitely used to do damage to myself or to other Asians, other people who literally looked like me, in order to gain some kind of whiteness, and it might feel like it works for a second but it doesn't work forever.
I was reading a lot about [this phenomena] last year where you must have known a tomboy in middle school; if you weren't the tomboy, you definitely knew one. There's no male equivalent to the tomboy in middle school, and there's a reason for that. And it's because when you're younger, there are some girls who maybe do masculine oriented things. But in addition to that, they also see that there's privilege in masculinity. And when you're still a child who hasn't gone through puberty, adults allow those girls to have the same privileges as boys, as long as they take on those trademarks of masculinity. And that doesn't travel with us after puberty, which is why it's a tomboy, not a tom-man. That's a really interesting concept to me.
I think we do the same thing with whiteness. You try to identify yourself with whiteness, so that you can be seen as an individual, the way a white person is; where their individualism is seen first rather than their race. I feel like with Asians, there's every single stereotype. You like dance, there's a hip hop dancer, Asian stereotype. You like math, that's an Asian stereotype. You're smart at science, that's an Asian stereotype. You like reading? That's an Asian stereotype. There's literally nothing that you can like without it being a stereotype of your race.
Greatest single challenge with being mixed race?
I think I will go with the classic; you don't belong to either. I’ve visited Korea before, and when I went, it was just so obvious to everyone around me that I was being seen as a whitewashed person. Not totally white, they knew I was mixed, but they were like, you're not Korean. And even in those rare moments in the US where I find myself in a very Asian circle of people or area, even when I go visit Flushing, I feel singled out there the same way I feel singled out in a totally white space. So I feel the challenge is not feeling a claim to either of those things, and I probably never will. I think the best remedy to that is having a diverse group of people around you. Because when you're in a room full of people of all different races, nobody cares, for the most part.
Any advice for young half Asian girls?
Oh my gosh, don't be racist to yourself. Don't defensively make racist comments about yourself because you're afraid somebody else will first. Don't be afraid to express your offense when somebody says something racist. It doesn't make you not cool and it only hurts yourself more. I was always afraid. I never stood up for myself in those situations when I was younger because I didn't want people to think I was uptight or not cool. Don’t be like my childhood self, stand up for yourself, and if you lose friends for it, you needed to get better friends anyways.
