If you ask me what I am
Mixed Feelings
Maybe the problem is that people are concerned with finding out which specific racial category I fall under. In reality, there’s not necessarily one right answer.
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Navigating communities of culture
Mixed Feelings
For once I just wanted to feel like someone, or some group, understood my experience on a deeper level because it resonated with their own.
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Redefining diversity
Mixed Feelings
After being in this environment for so long and having countless discussions about diversity and inclusion, I began to question my definition of diversity. I wondered if, when I was looking for diverse campuses, I was really just looking for the most multicultural ones.
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The personal statement I never wrote
Mixed Feelings
The late-night talks, the restaurant outings, and the student orgs all strengthened my understanding of all other identities at this university but my own.
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This (mixed) American life
Mixed Feelings
I noticed that the similarities between all of those perfect American families were not always present in my own. The differences that distinguished me would occasionally show up in side conversations at school, in silent judgment from friends or even in my own head at home.
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Stories from Minidoka
Mixed Feelings
As we stood there, in the museum, I thought about my grandparents, who went to high school while living in barracks on the other side of a barbed wire fence.
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The anatomy of a name
Mixed Feelings
And while my dad couldn’t control the balance of my facial features, he did give me the one concrete thing he could — his mother’s name, Hafsa, and his family name, Tatah. He gave them to me so I was always aware of the family I was a part of and had something to show for it.
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Finding the cherry blossoms inside me
Mixed Feelings
I feel an obligation to engage in Japanese culture, and regardless of how others see me, I tell myself I belong within it.
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Finding home in Bejaia
When people stare, I’m reminded that no matter how desperately I want to be a part of this culture, I will always be a mixed-race American.
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Between the labels
Mixed Feelings
By now, we should have eliminated all race-related terms from our vocabulary, deleted all racial inquiries from surveys and begun to undo centuries of injustices. And yet, because social change will always advance slower than science, race still means everything in our society.
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