The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Abigail,
Forest Lake, MN
I grew up in the rural Midwest. Being a Korean adoptee in a Norwegian and Swedish area, I really stood out. I have felt the ugly racist, hateful remarks my entire life. I grew so I wouldn’t be consumed. Flower you say? I’m a mountain!
Lianna Thomas,
Congers, NY.
I am a Chinese adoptee. Ive lived in NY practically my entire life (since I was 7 months old). My family is entirely white and I was brought up in a western culture with western traditions. I celebrate my eastern culture as well through holidays like chinese new year, I study the language, and I have traveled back to china many times. But, to my friends I am not chinese. They tell me I don’t know how to cook chinese food, I’m bad at math, I cant speak the language, I do “white girl” things. So, even though I was literally born on chinese soil (while most of my chinese friends have never been to china, let alone been born in that country), my friends still see me as what they like to call “a banana”
Jeffrey Nolish,
Detroit, MI.
We all belong. Diversity is a gift.
Ting Goodfriend,
Austin, TX
Willamette University
Growing up in a white household and being told to be proud of my identity from a white narrative has made the journey of my personal identification extremely hard. I’m too white to feel comfortable with my Chinese identity, but too Chinese to feel at home in white society.
Riley,
Salem, OR
Being Chinese and the only POC in an entirely white family has been incredibly harmful to my self-worth and cultural and ethnic identity. In no way am I saying I am not grateful for what opportunities I have been given. However, in their efforts to make sure I never felt “different,” my parents unknowingly sent me through an identity crisis to say the least. When I was younger, I wanted so badly to be white and rejected anything related to Chinese culture because it seemed to “foreign” to me at the time. My internalized racism was strong, especially living in predominately white communities. There was so few BIPOC in my spaces growing up that it led me to make generalizations about all members of a particular race from a young age. I’ve had to unlearn so much and am still combating harmful ideologies, trying to actively become anti-racist.
Claire,
Salem, OR
Ever since I was a child I’ve always felt conflicted. As a Chinese adoptee with a white father and a Cuban mother, I’ve never felt myself to be much of anything. It’s like I’ve existed in this weird blob in between races and neither my Asian side nor my culturally white side could fully be satisfied for one reason or another. I used to try to change myself to fit one or the other. In fact, there was a time when I felt the need to shut the door entirely on my Asian side because I felt that I had no connection to it whatsoever regardless of what I looked like or not. But the thing is, as I grew older I realized that I have the power to determine who I am. The social world that I live in may try and mold or squish me into a box. But ultimately, I can be perfectly content in my own little niche in between. Yes, I am not your typical Chinese girl. Yes, I am not your typical white girl. But most importantly, I’m not your typical Chinese adoptee because I make the rules and I know now that everything I am is what I am. Regardless if it is good or bad.
Karin Kross Levenstein
Austin, TX
Korean adoptee, adopted as an infant by white parents. “Are you Chinese? Japanese? What are you then?” Always weighing out exactly what is meant when someone asks “where are you from?”, and then that sinking feeling (after you say “I’m from Austin” or “I grew up in DC”) when they add, “no, where are you really from?” Well-meaning comments along the lines of “but I don’t think of you as Korean”. Feeling inadequately Asian when meeting other Asian-Americans. But I have great parents and a great extended family who have given me more than enough resilience to handle all of this with some measure of grace.
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