“What are you?”
Without fail, this question has rudely barged its way into every introduction for the entirety of my life. I am a 17-year-old senior. I’m in marching band, play lacrosse, am left-handed, have two cats and an older brother at UC Irvine. These trivial facts answer the question to some extent, but the questioner is almost always targeting a part of my identity that seems more important to others than all else: my racial background.
I am ambivalent about being half-Indian and half-white.
My father was born in the northern outskirts of India, and my mother is both German and Finnish. I have many of her features, but I have inherited my father’s brown skin, dark brown eyes and black hair. The ambiguity of my appearance leads to hilarious presumptions: Native American, Hawaiian, Jamaican, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Japanese, even.
On odd days I’ll clear up confusion and explain my heritage, but on even days I humor my curious peers. “Yeah, my mom’s from Japan. No, I don’t speak Japanese but maybe one day I’ll learn.”
I can’t help but wonder if there’s an underlying judgment correlating to the question, “What are you?” Why is my ethnic background significant? Does it alter how I’m viewed?
Being biracial can be disconcerting. Friends will point out that I’m more this side than that or that my “white side” is showing. Stereotyping and further implications don’t ease the struggle to balance two very different cultures.
But the epitome of biracial stress stems from the horrid Scantron scenario. Never have I ever experienced as much anxiety and stress as I did sitting in a chair in the McAfee Center last April during the session introducing AP testing. My eyes were fixated on the handout that asked me to bubble which ethnicity I am. I was limited to bubbling one ethnicity and no more.
How do I decide which ethnicity I want to identify with? Which parent do I cancel out?
Honestly, I don’t know which side I relate to more. Four years ago, eighth-grade Jade would have definitely chosen white. But ninth grade whisked me away into Indian Cultural Awareness club’s annual show, Bombay in the Bay.
Four years into it and I embrace what used to be my less significant half, borrowing ghagras and dupattas from friends and family members and going to festivals, Dandias and lively, colorful parties. I can pick out random words in Hindi (trust me, this is a significant improvement), and I can “sing” along to popular Indian songs with friends.
On the other hand, I grew up in the spirit of my mom’s American side. Baseball games at AT&T park, Petco Park and Angel Stadium. Camping in Lake Tahoe from ages 2 to 11, and Easter egg hunts up until my brother and I began to value money over chocolate. My childhood basks in the stereotypical image of an American family, and I treasure every moment of it.
There is a lot more to a person than where she comes from and what she identifies with. If scantrons reserve a row for choosing an ethnicity, then another should be reserved for a question resembling “are you introverted or extroverted?” or even “do you prefer reading or movie watching?”
I can’t pick between my two races. “What are you?” becomes an ethical and ethnic dilemma of not wanting to be judged by where I come from. I may be awkward and a little too tall for my liking, but these factors contribute to who I am, just as much as my ethnicity does.
There’s more to biracial students than which side they identify with. So please, keep this in mind before asking me what ethnicity I am, or I will most likely convince you that I am Japanese.
