I am a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian 17-year-old bound for college next fall. My struggle to categorize myself ethnically has been similar to that of many other mixed-race people.
Every day, we are constantly reminded of being different- whether it’s by the not-so-subtle double-takes on the train, or by those little boxes on applications that ask for your racial background, which rarely have “mixed.”
Our scarcity makes it difficult to connect to ethnic groups, and our surroundings more or less determine our cultural identification.
Yet as hard as it is to identify with both heritages, and as hard as it is to reach a feeling of ‘belonging,’ I’ve recently understood that being a part of America’s smallest and overlooked minorities is, for lack of better words, special.
I’m glad to finally understand that even though I belong to two radically different cultures, I’m not alone.
Hapa Voice 