Passing and Proving

Mixed Asian Media - November 22, 2022

By K.M. Gang

As I sit here in my college's dining hall, I wonder how many people think I look Chinese.

How many people, having no "ethnic" or "white" sounding name to go off of, would look at me and see this 25% of me so often overlooked and unacknowledged?

But is it 25%?

DNA and family tree wise, yes, I am 1/4 Chinese, specifically Cantonese. Internally, I am 100% me, 100% of all that I am. Externally, I am 99% white appearing and 1% "Oh, you're Chinese? I couldn't tell until you told me!"

My Americanized last name doesn't help either. I often wonder if I surprise people either way, whether they see me first and assume that I am white or see my last name first and expect me to "look more Chinese" than I do. But I wouldn't trade my last name for the world. That name, though received through misinterpretation, symbolizes that I am and always will be connected to my ancestors. It is also an odd kind of symbolic irony I think, that my last name being misheard and Americanized reflects how I am perceived to most people I meet.

Being Chinese has always been one of my favorite things about me. I always loved sharing it as the "fun fact about yourself" in school, and loved getting to "show off" that I was something most people were not. I was never ashamed of it, largely because of my passing privilege. I think I have experienced only one or two microaggressions in my life (I say “only” very loosely as it should be zero) and have been extremely lucky to have never had a racist comment or slur hurled at me. In no way do I overlook the privilege my pale skin and brown curly hair gives me, nor do I wish I received the same racism and oppression my more "Chinese appearing" peers do, but I often feel as though my lack of experience invalidates the Chinese part of me, because unfortunately racism has become a normalized part of the Asian and POC experience. It is quite heartbreaking and ironic that I feel as though I need to experience oppression for who I am to feel more connected to my culture and validated for being who I am.

I even questioned writing "my 'Chinese appearing' peers," because I, like so many other mixed POC, feel like I am not and never will be white, but my "white appearance" makes me not Chinese enough to be "allowed" to connect to the culture.

I know all of these thoughts are caused by systems built to support white supremacy and pit POC against each other, but that knowledge doesn't make having these thoughts any easier.

Being Chinese is something that I never really thought about deeply until recently. I just existed as a mixed Chinese person and took pride in celebrating parts of the culture. I never doubted my Chinese-ness until I heard more and more people’s surprised reactions that I'm Chinese or just anything other than white. Then I began feeling disappointed when people weren’t able to tell right away, and now I assume no one is able to tell by looking at me, and I feel like no one sees me for who I am. I know this feeds into the white supremacy based belief that one has to "look" a certain way to be the part, but nevertheless it is invalidating to not feel seen.

If I’ve existed this long as a mixed Chinese person, why now do I feel the sudden need to prove my right to my own identity?

Maybe these thoughts are nothing new. Maybe every mixed POC has them and my experience isn't original at all. But I never realized the lack of representation I had in my life until I got to college and met my chorus teacher who is also mixed Chinese/white, and I realized I've only had maybe one Asian teacher in my 15 years of schooling, let alone a Chinese teacher, let alone a mixed Chinese/white teacher who looks like me, teaching in the same major I am studying.

Meeting my chorus teacher has been an amazing and validating experience, but, yet again, my brain was so quick to think, "She's 50/50, even she's more Chinese than you." Therefore her experiences are more valid than mine. I am an only child so I don't even have siblings to relate to, and I have never met another 75% white 25% Chinese person (that I know of, of course the recurring theme of this piece is that you cannot tell what nationalities someone is just based off of looking at them).

The concept of finding people who "look like me" is complicated as well, because often times I do not feel like I look Chinese (at all or "enough") and don't look as Chinese as the very few other mixed Chinese/white people I've met. My brain likes to invalidate my existence further by thinking that because I'm 75% white and 25% Chinese, I am more white than I am Chinese and therefore barely qualify as mixed to begin with, thus convincing myself even more that I am not Chinese enough to "earn" the part Chinese/mixed title. And while I experience this thought in a negative way, because I do wish to be perceived as Chinese, I know that this thought process also stems from the “pure” concept of white supremacy, where the goal was, is, to look as close to “pure white” as possible in order to achieve acceptable status.

But that isn’t my goal. Not at all. 

A slightly humorous side of this is a conversation I had with my chorus teacher. We were discussing the concept of "looking Chinese" and "looking white," and she said she didn't think she looks very Chinese. I was shocked. When I met her I immediately thought she was some kind of Asian (and I could have been wrong, so maybe that was a stereotypical assumption on my part) and to me she looks obviously Chinese (at least obviously Asian). We then joked that mixed people tend to be able to "find each other," and maybe there is some truth to that. I feel this is why the concept of "looking the part" is so confusing to me. It is quite a contradictory experience, because I immediately thought she was Asian whereas I don't think I look very Asian at all. Here she is feeling as though she doesn't look very Chinese, and I see her and wish I could look like her because she is my idea of what a mixed Chinese/white person looks like. Maybe I appear as an obviously mixed Chinese/white person to someone else.

I am a walking contradiction. I am not ashamed to be white, but it's hard to be part Chinese and also part white, the very people that oppress and kill the other part of me. I feel as though I am betraying the Chinese part of me by appearing "more white" and being able to avoid oppression and hate because most people perceive me as white. I never want to come across as only recognizing my Chinese-ness when it is convenient and safe, yet it comes across that way because I obviously would not advertise my Chinese-ness if it would put me in harm's way. That is a privilege many mixed and fully Chinese people do not have, and I don't take it for granted.

So where does that leave me then? With the ability to only experience the fun parts of Chinese culture and avoid the ugly parts if I wanted to, yet also wishing I wasn't misperceived as white so often. I suppose the term "imposter syndrome" can be used. I will never be fully Chinese, which feels almost like a disappointing realization to accept at times, and I will never be fully white, which is honestly a bit of a comfort. I am still not ashamed to be Chinese, nor will I ever be. But I feel as though I am disappointing my Chinese family and ancestors by looking less like them and more like the people who oppress us. When I look at myself, I don't see a white person nor do I see a Chinese one. I see myself differently depending on who I'm with. When I'm with white people I don't feel like one of them, when I'm with Asian and/or Chinese people I feel like an imposter, a "fake" Chinese person, and when I'm with mixed non white POC I feel relatable but almost like I have a piece of "the oppressors" with me. (All of this, for the record, is going with the presumption that I know these peoples' nationalities for the sake of argument.)

I think the difference for me is being perceived as mixed race and Chinese passively, actively, or not at all. When I talk to my white friends, I feel that, even though they don’t do it purposely, they take the knowledge of me being Chinese as another fact about me to be stored in their information about me. It is more them acknowledging me saying it, usually being surprised, and encountering the knowledge passively. Even when I talk to other POC people, I feel as though they still don’t see me as one of them. It is only when I talk to other mixed white/POC, an experience that is very rare for me, that I feel as though I am seen as me, someone who is a mixed race Chinese individual. I feel like I am seen that way regardless of whether or not the conversation we are having is centered around me being Chinese. While neither party means any harm, and both see me for who I am, they see me in two different ways.

My experience as a mixed race Chinese/white individual — as I have had to remind myself, I am mixed race and am in fact allowed to speak of such experiences — is one full of nuances, complexities, and frequent self doubt. Questioning the validity of my identity and my right to speak on topics involving the mixed race, POC, and Chinese experience.

Like I said, I’m mixed.

So is it 25%?

No.

It’s more than any percentage could ever encapsulate.

K.M. Gang is a mixed Chinese college student, trumpeter, and musician studying music education. She hopes to become a music teacher to inspire younger generations with the gift of music and to be a face for mixed Asian representation in the music world.