Can 8-year-old children have identity crises?
If so, I distinctly remember my first "identity crisis" wherein I seriously questioned and contemplated who I was in relation to others around me. At the time, I was eight years old living in a small community in North Carolina. I was at the top of my second grade class and had only ever encountered praises and good remarks from teachers.
Yet on this particular day we were just learning about the Civil Rights Movement as part of our history unit. Our teacher taught us about Rosa Parks, a black woman who valiantly stood up for her beliefs and refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus.
To demonstrate the effects of segregation, our teacher told all the students to stand up. She asked all the white students to walk to one side of the classroom and all the black students to congregate at the other end. Eager to move, all the students squirmed out of their seats; half of the class walked to one end of the classroom while the other half shuffled to the opposite end.
I hesitated in my seat, confused as to where I should go and to which group I belonged.
Surely I must go where my white friends are because my skin is not dark like my black friends, I reasoned.
But then I remembered a few white classmates teasing me in a previous class about how my eyes looked "different" than theirs did.
So I guess I don't belong with them either, I surmised.
Just as I was getting red in the face from the curious stares of classmates already segregated, I remembered my mom telling me I was Chinese because I was born in China before she adopted me and brought me to America.
Teacher, where do I go? I'm Chinese. Which side should I go on?
I will never forget my teacher's response.
Well, um, you can just stay where you are for now, dear.
And so I did just sit there, in the middle of the classroom, with no one by my side. I sat there feeling as if I had done something wrong, having no idea who I was or where I belonged. Everyone else in the room was staring at me in an uncomfortable moment of silence before my teacher hesitantly moved on with the next portion of the Civil Rights Movement. I walked home that day with more questions and doubts than I ever had before. That simple, yet inconsequential, experience was the origin of my "race identity crisis" which I struggled to deal with for much of my childhood and adolescent years.
Now I'm 22 years old, married to the whitest guy I know (haha, sorry Sam!), and taking a race and ethnicity college course that is helping me confront and understand the workings of race, racism, and its effects on my sense of identity and past experiences. In the rest of this blog post, I share my personal thoughts and beliefs on how I identify myself today, to what extent I have faced racism in the past, and how my race both privileges and disadvantages me in American society today.
Feel free to comment and add perspective. I welcome all comments and opinions on my personal collection of long-held thoughts and beliefs.
I identify racially as Asian, more specifically, Chinese, and ethnically as white Chinese American. Identifying myself ethnically has always been challenging for me because many people presumably think my ethnicity is Asian American, but that didn’t ever seem to fit the culture or social group I grew up in. Therefore, I have chosen to identify myself as a white Asian American, because I feel as if I have grown up as any other middle class white kid does. I was adopted as a baby from China by a single white mother who grew up in a typical middle-class family. Throughout my whole life, I have lived in a predominantly white community, with very few Asian or colored friends. My family has always celebrated Christmas, Easter, Halloween, the Fourth of July, and other various Christian and American holidays just as ardently as any other American family. I had very little experience with Chinese culture, and I didn't know anything about Chinese New Year, Chinese food, or the Chinese language. Because I was content with where I was and felt that I had all the same privileges as everyone else around me, I had no desire to learn more about my Chinese heritage or culture.
After I returned back home to my white community, I began more fully critically examining how my race both helped and hindered me in context of living in America. For example, because I am Chinese, many people automatically assume I am an intelligent being, with superior genius capabilities regarding my academic studies. This has played as both an advantage and a disadvantage at times in daily living. When I was little, I was often the teacher’s pet. This had perks of its own because I gained the teacher’s trust and was favored above others. Teachers would ensure I was put in advanced classes and assumed I would excel in them. Yet, despite my peers and teachers thinking I was super smart at math because of my race, I thought there must be something wrong with me because I struggled with math. Their assumptions proved erroneous when I began to falter behind other students who were far better at math and science than I was. Consequently, I spent much of my elementary education grappling with two jarring ideas—one that I was smart and special as evidenced by so much attention my teachers gave me, and two that I was struggling in these advanced classes while all my white peers seemed to understand the material much quicker than I.
More recently, I have also faced both advantages and disadvantages as a Chinese woman living in America. I have always been attracted to and dated white men because of the environment in which I grew up, and my husband is no exception. He is as white as can be (though I sometimes think he is secretly black trapped in a white man’s body), and he loves and appreciates all different cultures and races. Being an interracial couple has its advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that I seem to be more accepted by society as an individual. If I had married a minority race, for example another Chinese man, I might not be as integrated with the mainstream culture of my community. If I am to critically examine every implication my race has on my daily living, then I must acknowledge that being married to a white man gives me more acceptance as a whole into society. However, I have seen several disadvantages well in these past few months since getting married. While Sam sees me for who I am—and not just my race—many people looking from the outside see only our interracial-ness. One striking example is a recording of my husband and I kissing on campus. Unbeknownst to us at the time, someone secretly recorded us kissing and posted it online for all to see. After the initial embarrassment wore off, I began to look at all the online comments posted under the video, a few of which pointed out that we were interracial. Though I certainly don’t take offense for people recognizing and acknowledging we are an interracial couple, the comments people posted mirror what I have been going through my whole life which is that I am recognized and judged by my race first before any other humanizing factors; furthermore, these comments reflect and reaffirm the attitude of society at large—whenever there is a mixing of races, it’s worth mentioning and commenting on. Thus, the biggest irony about being an interracial couple is that people simultaneously accept me for marrying a white man yet judge me for being an Asian woman married to a white man.
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