One Year After My First Article--And My Loving Mixed Messages To You By Prairwaa Madden
I wrote this article, "Does Being Asian Enough Matter?" sometime in early March of 2020. I’ll touch upon my thoughts on that piece later, but after some waking up and leaning in, here are some lessons about mixed identity that I am internalizing everyday.
I AM FULLY MIXED
I learned in school that it was most appropriate to explain my identity as “half-Asian.” Why should there be a problem with this? If you have one Asian parent and another non-Asian parent, then you are “half-Asian.” Here’s my issue: when you say that you are only half of something, half of a culture, half of a race, you demean yourself. You reaffirm that you are not fully anything. If you are mixed, you are not damaged goods of your cultures. You are a mix, and in a mix, there is no deficit.
I identify my race as mixed, and when asked about my ethnicities, I simply say Anglo-Irish-Thai. The more I reaffirm to myself that I’m not just halves, the more empowered I am to claim my space.
My closest mixed friend taught me to say I AM FULLY MIXED in the mirror as an affirmation. Language has power.
2. The only reason why I questioned my Asianness was because I thought I had to be East Asian.
For most of my childhood, maybe until middle school, I do not think I could pass for white in the way that I can now. I looked distinctly ethnic.
I PWI-hopped schools as a child. Kindergarten: befriending eccentric white kids when no one seemed to vibe otherwise. Elementary school: tapping relentlessly on the shoulders of groups of white girls. Middle school: finally meeting more Asians and trying to fit in with the East Asians (didn’t work out, but alas). Another middle school: adhering to the identity of the fawning, studious Asian girl who played violin and piano because that seemed to get me by. And high school! High school: meeting mixed folk who changed my life and rethinking the nonsense.
Pan-Asian erasure is a real thing. In America, the general understanding of Asia includes some countries in East Asia. And even with this rudimentary understanding of Asia, people forget that there are more than two or three countries in East Asia.
I didn’t know I was Asian until elementary school. I always knew I was Thai, but Thailand isn’t China or Japan or Korea, so I couldn’t be Asian. (Also, side note, Thailand is not Taiwan!) However, once I got to public school, it became clear to me that I was perceived as East Asian, and my studying classical piano and classical violin didn’t help, because I was the embodiment of that stereotype.
I did this little dance for a few years of being that stereotype. It’s what got me by in PWIs.
The first piece I wrote for MixedLife, entitled “Does Being Asian Enough Matter?” I can’t bear to read anymore. Partly because I remember how nervous I was for other people to have this intimate knowledge of my processing, but moreso because that article was written from this perspective: THE WAY INTO MIXED IDENTITY IS TO FEEL BAD FOR NOT BEING EAST ASIAN.
To me, it’s pretty obvious that I wrote it from a place of disempowerment. I also felt all this pressure to lean into my Asianness, but did my idea of Asianness really include my Thainess? I don’t know. I really don’t.
Here’s what I learned: I don’t have to adhere to East Asian American stereotypes because I’m not even East Asian. And if you are East Asian American, you still don’t have to adhere to East Asian American stereotypes.
My struggle right now, even though it isn’t peachy, is questioning how Thai I am. At the very least, this is an authentic struggle because it came from my roots within: it was not as nearly impressed upon me by the model minority myth and PWIs as so forth and so forth.
3. It’s not an oppression contest: let mixed people have their space.
Here’s a meme you’re probably familiar with: mixed kids have to bring up the fact that they’re mixed every five minutes.
Let’s unpack this. Firstly, if you have met a mixed person who does this in real life, did you ever ask yourself why? Could it possibly be because of mixed erasure? That people dilute mixed identity into a fetish of phenotype and babies, and of racial ambiguity, and of colorism? Could it possibly be because monoracism causes us POC rejection and white rejection? How about the case of someone with so much internalized racism that they are trying to push away their minority race or minority races?
To my monoracial POC: many of us mixed folk understand that there may or may not be significant privileges depending on our appearance, our language, our culture, etc.
But when you push us away and when you reject that mixed people should have space, you are playing the same game and using those same tools of white supremacy.
It is internalized racism that monoracial POC use to gatekeep. I promise that there is something to learn from mixed folk, and I promise that I will decenter myself because I have so much to learn and to unlearn.
4. Choose how you allow yourself to be treated: not as a fetish, not as a phenotype
I wrote a poem about some things that happen in romantic partnership when you’re mixed Asian. I want you guys to demand basic respect. When you hear exoticizing language toward you, don’t accept that “affection.” Set boundaries because you are not a half of an identity that deserves half of the respect from a partner. You are an abundant mixed person, so don’t settle for the people who tokenize you. Please.
Secondly! Mixedness is an identity with nuance, with depth. It is not just phenotypes. I have met some mixed folk who have tokenized themselves so that their mixedness is just about having a certain “look.” You don’t have to subscribe to this. You really don’t. And I’m so sorry that’s how you learned about your races.
5. I’m afraid for the next generation of mixed folk
Beyond the mixed baby fetish, monoracial POC and white folk largely disregard that mixed identity is its separate identity. I fear that many interracial couples won’t feel the need to educate themselves on the mixed experience. If you are monoracial and end up with a mixed child, your child is not your race. Your child might have one of your races, but their walk is different than yours. Respect that. Be humbled by it.
Please lean into mixed discussion and respect that our struggles make up that iceberg of systemic racism. It really does.
6. If at all possible, befriend mixed folk who might not be of your racial makeup
This has changed my life. Befriending mixed folk outside of your ethnicities is powerful because you both have some similarities in your walk as mixed people, however, if they are other races as well, you must lean in and listen.
Since we mixed people are often rejected in monoracial spaces, we tend to be very
accepting of each other. I love my mixed folk so deeply--you guys mean the world to me.
This way, when you want to unpack mixed issues or struggles, you have someone who
will hold earnest space for you.