Wednesday, March 30, 2022 — 7
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
“I want the tall Mexican kid!”
Nobody moved from the pickup bas-
ketball line. Every player’s eyes were
suddenly searching for this elusive,
presumably Hispanic guy so the game
could start.
“You, dude, YOU” an impatient fin-
ger points directly at me, the exaspera-
tion clear in my temporary teammate’s
voice.
“Uh… I’m not Mexican,” I awkwardly
reply.
“Yeah, yeah no hablo Español moth-
erfucker. Just get on my team.”
Uncomfortable laughter erupts. I
trot over to my temporary team.
As hilariously offensive as this
exchange was, it may be familiar to
many ethnically ambiguous Ameri-
cans like me. I have learned repeat-
edly throughout my life that if someone
doesn’t know what “group” you belong
to, they’ll be sure to put you in one.
I am not entirely sure when I first
became aware of my “race”, or even
when I realized that race was some-
thing that mattered. Perhaps it was one
of the times some random white per-
son thought it was a good idea to ask
if I was adopted when I was out with
my dad. Truly crucial information for
her to go about her day. Maybe it was
the hundreds of times I got the “Where
are you really from?” question. That
one is always a favorite. An even better
rendition is the “Is it ok if I ask what
your race is?” … Uh, I guess so dude?
Or maybe it was getting called racial
slurs at summer camp. Sailing camp in
North Carolina turned out to be a dubi-
ous idea at best.
If you’re even slightly melanated, you
may also have a number of awkward,
hilarious and/or offensive exchang-
es imprinted in your memory. There
comes a point, whether it be middle
school, elementary or even Pre-K, that
the white majority of the U.S. stamps
you with an otherness that is seem-
ingly impossible to escape. There is
something undeniably American about
a knee-jerk desire to compartmentalize
racial and ethnic groups. A desire that
is not born from curiosity or genuine
interest in other cultures or histories,
but from a need to organize. An atti-
tude that says, “once I find out your
‘group’ I’ll know how I can treat you.”
Throughout a life full of “Which one
of your parents is white?” and “Are
you allowed to say the N-word?” and
“Where did you get your tan?”, I’ve
learned that it’s some combination of
unsettling and intriguing for many to
see me and not be able to immediately
allocate me to some region of heritage.
I could be Latinx, European, African,
Middle Eastern, you name it! I’m a nosy
white lady’s worst nightmare.
An interesting social phenomenon
I’ve noticed is the hesitation in the
questions — the faux uneasiness in ask-
ing. It’s as though it’s polite to be on the
fence before asking an inherently rude
question. Look, I know you don’t real-
ly care about my comfort, so you may
as well just ask away. The truth is — I
don’t really mind when people ask any-
more. I have no problem simply shrug-
ging or walking away from rude or
inconsiderate people, or even making
up an outlandish answer to cue them in
on their own weirdness. “Oh yeah I’m
from Sweden, I just tan really easily.”
As I have gotten older, I have come to
learn that I don’t owe anyone answers
about my personal life or identity. A
valuable lesson I’ve learned from my
mom is that if someone takes offense
to my indifference, then they’re sim-
ply not a person worth talking to in the
first place.
What I do mind is the fact that I
don’t even completely know my heri-
tage. Imagine how frustrating it can
be sometimes. “Hey man, where you
from from?” I’m not really sure. If nosy
people at the grocery store are curious,
just think about what it’s like to look in
the mirror every day. Where am I from?
I have a vague idea, of course. My
dad’s side is the simple part, a blend
of white European immigrants. Along
with his last name, I inherited a
healthy dose of Irish-Italian blood,
thick curly hair and an inability to
dance. My mom’s side is where things
get complicated, a mixed bag if ever
there was one. She has seven siblings
and each one looks to be from differ-
ent area codes, longitudes, latitudes
and continents. Every family member
is essentially a surprise. Uncle Doug
is undoubtedly a Black man, but Aunt
Tony-Girl is a pale amber and everyone
thinks my mom looks like Jeanie Boulet
from “ER.” My sister and I carried on
that legacy, it would seem. She’s fairer
than me, with blonde hair and blue eyes
no less. One family, same genes, just a
cocktail of phenotypic expressions and
confused nosy neighbors.
Don’t get me wrong, curiosity has
gotten the better of me many times. It’s
frustrating that I couldn’t fully escape
the culture of ascription that sur-
rounds me, but my identity is important
for more reasons than being able to tell
people about it when they ask. Identi-
ty is as personal as a name or a laugh.
While it’s annoying and disheartening
that a made-up construct like race is
intrinsic to its construction, as long as
it is I will always wonder exactly who,
what and where I am composed of.
There is comfort in racial and eth-
nic identity. Pride. There is a fond-
ness and security I see others have
that I wish I could in many ways. I’m
proud to be a member of my family,
and I’m proud to call myself a person
of Color, but the tension that comes
with my ambiguity extends beyond
my interactions with white people.
What struggles am I allowed to par-
ticipate in — allowed to feel as though
they apply to me? I’ve been discrimi-
nated against and suffered both micro
and macro-aggressions because of my
skin, but I’ve also had people of Color
tell me that they consider me white. It
seems that no matter what, ascriptive
culture has me at a loss. I know that I
have African American heritage, but I
am by no means a Black man. I know
that I am related by blood to members
of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, but
nothing of my upbringing or famil-
ial culture was by any means Native
American. The Ramapough Lenape
themselves are a wonderful combina-
tion of Native, Dutch and Freed people,
so no luck there if I wanted a concrete
group of origin. What a headache! The
more I learn about my history, the more
blended it becomes. I wish it was as
simple as just asking my mom, but that
always got me some version of the same
disappointing answer.
“You’re an American Stephen, who
cares!”
The first time I had that conversa-
tion with my mom, I was endlessly
frustrated. I know I’m an American.
Culturally and physically, I fit right
into the romanticized melting pot that
this country so often fails to live up
to. Although I wish it wasn’t the case
that the closest identity marker I’d get
would be so inherently problematic, it
is evident that being an American isn’t
even something to be proud of. I was
born in Long Island, raised in Mary-
land (though I claim D.C.) and deeply
appreciate the art, food, music and
culture I grew up with. However, this
country’s history is full of targeted
violence and systemic oppression that
directly brought about this “melting
pot” that many revere and praise. Hav-
ing an already tainted image of this
country given its oppressive history,
it was disheartening to be the physical
manifestation of a rhetoric that’s sim-
ply tokenizing. Being an “American”
felt trivial and at odds with my person-
al values. I wanted to know where the
melanin was from, my non-whiteness.
So much of American culture tells me
that due to my skin tone, being “Ameri-
can” must only be part of the story.
Everyone and their racist grandma
wants to know, so I figured I ought to
figure it out.
I routinely had this conversation
with my mom several years in a row
around Christmas time. I would ask for
an Ancestry.com or 23andMe test and
each time I was met with reluctance
or chiding rebuttal. “It’s not like you
as a person will change in any way. It
doesn’t matter as much as you think it
does.” How could it not matter? How
could I exist in this ambiguous space
without grounding, without a broader
community? If I’m going to be bothered
so often, at least let me know who the
“others” I can relate to are! I’ve often
been envious of people who are able
to call a group their own, who belong
somewhere in a way I often feel as
though I don’t.
However, with each passing year, I
believe that I see more nuances to my
mom’s philosophy. I think I am slowly
learning that her answer isn’t just her
being dismissive or flippant, and isn’t
necessarily to say that my racial or eth-
nic identity doesn’t matter. It is in part
a rejection of this culture of ascription
that detracts from meaningful inter-
action, and in larger part an explana-
tion that the nuances of my identity are
truly as American as it gets. I believe
that my mom’s interpretation is her
protecting my peace, and I will for-
ever appreciate that. The idea of a
hodgepodge person born from genera-
tions of cultural and ethnic plurality
is a noble one. As I get older, I notice I
take more and more pride in that idea
of my identity. I think that I still have
more capacity for appreciation of my
existence and am interested in seeing
how that appreciation grows in five or
ten years. While feelings of insecurity
and curiosity are sure to reappear from
time to time, I feel blessed to be in such
a unique position.
I’m an American in the sense that I’m
just some guy. To my mom’s chagrin,
I’m sure I’ll do some ancestry program
at some point to get the percentages
in my head because I’m obsessive like
that, but my initial reasoning for get-
ting the statistics has evolved. I no
longer care about changing my life or
attitude to fit those numbers as I once
did. A naive and immature perspective
of social readjustment has grown into
a more three-dimensional appreciation
of my specific heritage. I’m not going to
take on new dimensions of my identity
or ~get in touch with my roots~. I don’t
intend to adjust my self-perception
based on newly discovered pieces of my
history. I’ll still shrug off nosy people
and continue to make up answers for
my amusement when I get asked about
my skin. I’ll simply have the privilege of
knowing a little bit more about myself
and move on trying to be the best per-
son I can be. I’ll continue to take pride
as a hodgepodge person because that’s
how I identify.
“Why do you treat me so horren-
dously?” a voice called out. Upon hear-
ing this, the young girl froze motionless
on the pavement. She stood facing away
from a woman more than 20 years her
senior several feet behind her, who
held tightly onto a stroller — having
just cathartically confronted the young
girl on her passive-aggressive actions
over the past year. The young girl was
shocked as the woman almost always
met her dismissive attitudes and snark-
iness with gracious tolerance. The two
stood in utter silence until the girl’s
baby sister cooed for their attention,
blissfully unaware of the atmosphere of
brewing anger and conflict or the long-
standing discord between her sister and
the woman.
That young girl was 11-year-old me,
and the woman was Pei, our live-in
maid who was employed by my family
a decade ago, back when we were liv-
ing in Beijing. Due to its acute intensity,
that confrontation is but a distant and
blurred memory of mine. However, the
profound conflict we had and the naive
cruelty I had demonstrated during the
year she inhabited our home still occu-
pies a dark corner of my brain, tucked
away in a vast library of my memories,
and still haunts me to this day. The
dimmed details and incentives behind
this ingenuous cruelty of mine had
grown lucid as I became increasingly
aware of China’s policies; ones that sus-
tained wealth inequality and inequity
that dictate the lives of women like Pei
over the course of modern Chinese his-
tory.
Pei was in her mid-30s when she was
hired to help my mother with house-
hold duties after my sister’s birth in
Beijing, far away from her husband who
still resided in her hometown in the
country. My family stood in a position
of privilege from the get-go: my mother
was a part of the diminutive percent-
age of women who were able to afford
a maid to aid with chores and child care
and my father was among the smidgen
of men who could afford never learn-
ing to drive, instead opting for drivers
to take him to work and airports. Pei’s
work consisted of shopping for grocer-
ies, cooking, cleaning, taking care of my
baby sister and any other miscellaneous
tasks around the house.
I can’t quite recall when I started see-
ing her signature old, pilling red sweat-
er float by as she cooked, scrubbed and
swept all over the house every day. Pei
was a tall woman with broad shoulders.
She had freckles and tan skin, and con-
stantly wore her hair in a simple pony-
tail that I always assumed was for the
purposes of her labor-intensive work. I
don’t ever recall seeing her hands rest-
ing: they were either submerged in salt
water, purging sand out of clams that
would eventually end up as our din-
ner, or squeezing the cleaning solu-
tion out of a terry cloth to deep-clean
a variety of surfaces around the house.
As a result, her hands were wrinkled
with dry patches. Juxtaposed with my
mother’s pale and supple hands, nour-
ished in L’Occitane hand cream and
La Roche-Posay sunscreen, her hands
invoked a slight sense of disgust in me.
As an 11-year-old, I was just beginning
to comprehend the fact that I was far
more financially privileged than a lot
of my peers who stood in awe at my
mother’s pampered beauty and fashion,
which I took great pride in. Therefore,
I gradually began associating the pol-
ished feminine stillness demonstrated
by my mother, who was scouted as an
actress and model in her younger years,
with desirability and associating rug-
ged appearances with Pei’s infelici-
tous physical labor, which I had looked
down upon. Unbeknownst to me at the
time, despite being a full-fledged indi-
vidual of her own, Pei’s upbringing, her
socioeconomic status and work were all
influenced by China’s history of misog-
yny and classist policies that prevented
upward mobility. Based on this history,
I try, now, to piece together parts of
Pei’s life.
My mother and Pei perfectly exem-
plified the clash between newly import-
ed “white” femininity coinciding with
the economic boom at the end of the
20th century that ushered in a new age
of capitalism and traditional rural Chi-
nese femininity. In the 80’s, during Pei’s
childhood and adolescence, billboards
of double-eyelidded models with ghost-
ly white skin and dyed chocolate brown
hair gradually emerged in cityscapes,
and the ancient gender role of women as
the sole conductor of exhaustive house-
hold chores who needed to give birth to
as many farm hands as possible persist-
ed in the countryside.
The ever-popular folktale of the
cowherd and the weaver girl perfectly
illustrates the gender roles mapped out
by thousands of years of Chinese his-
tory characterized by the division of
work in an agricultural setting. For one,
sex had always been a taboo subject,
with feminine modesty being a much-
praised virtue: according to this out-
dated cultural framework, the weaver
girl was forced to accept the cowherd’s
marriage proposal as he had seen her
naked body as she bathed in the river.
The weaver girl, despite her status as a
literal goddess, took on domestic work,
consisting of weaving, cooking, clean-
ing and, of course, child-rearing, birth-
ing the cowherd, a mere mortal, two
children. Unsurprisingly, regardless of
the picture-perfect domestic bliss of
the farmhand household, the weaver
girl was punished for marrying a mor-
tal and neglecting her divine tasks of
cloud-weaving, forever destined to be
separated from the rest of her family in
heaven. To me, the folktale illustrates a
concealed culturally misogynistic urge
to punish women for men’s wrongdo-
ings and an inability to balance domes-
tic and work duties that translates in
both urban and rural settings.
This cultural misogyny reflected in
the folktale was certainly exacerbated
by poverty and a population boom. Pei is
but a grain of sand in a sea of hundreds
of millions of women falling victim to
the national ailment of women’s ambi-
tions being suppressed due to misogyny
and poverty. Unbeknownst to most,
before the one-child policy was imple-
mented in 1980, Chinese women were
actually encouraged by Mao to have as
many children as possible in an effort
to expand the workforce and military.
In fact, my four grandparents who were
born in the 40’s shortly before Mao was
elected into office had two, five, seven
and eight siblings, respectively. There-
fore, we can reasonably infer that as a
result of Mao’s encouragement and a
long-running cultural norm of birthing
as many children as possible, Pei likely
had several siblings.
Despite decades of unrest and cul-
tural change that preceded the 80’s,
the sentiment depicted in the folktale
retained its cultural imprint; its misog-
yny passed through the stagnant pov-
erty that still plagued Chinese society
despite the rampant urbanization and
economic boom that stemmed from a
growing workforce from China’s sky-
rocketing population. This misogyny
was especially prevalent in rural areas
as agricultural work still overwhelm-
ingly required physical labor desig-
nated for men. Thus, rural women were
relegated to tasks akin to those of the
weaver girl’s, without financial com-
pensation and within the confines of
the house or nearby areas.
In cities, by contrast women such as
my mother were more likely to receive
a high-quality education. They discov-
ered newfound opportunities such as
retail, factory and even corporate work
that provided them some level of finan-
cial independence. By the late 1980s,
the ratio of the average income of Chi-
na’s richest 20% to poorest 80% had
more than doubled since the late 1970s,
from 2.5:1 to almost 6:1. In 1980, China’s
rural per capita net income was a mea-
ger 191.33 yuan, which is around $161 in
today’s USD. Assuming Pei’s family had
a yearly income somewhere near that,
there was certainly not enough money
to finance all of her siblings’ educa-
tions. If her family did have enough
money, it is not so farfetched to assume
Pei’s parents had spent it on her broth-
ers, as they were the designated “cow-
herds” of the family.
To make matters worse, even if Pei
did receive an education, it would not
have been enough to lay the foundation
for her success later in life. In the early
1980s, just 60 to 70% of Chinese chil-
dren made it through elementary school
and continued onto middle school, and
the figure was likely much lower in
rural areas. Even more dishearteningly,
education was few and far between back
then, requiring children to hike great
distances across China’s mountainous
rural regions to enter a school house
with little food, school supplies or other
resources that facilitated learning. It
was far more likely that a young girl like
Pei would stay home to help her mother
with household chores, instead of going
through hell 250 days a year to pursue a
relatively poor education if she was des-
tined to be married off to a “cowherd”
later on in life anyway.
Even if by some miracle Pei had made
it to high school, the rigged rules of the
Gaokao, China’s college entrance exam,
would have likely prevented her from
escaping poverty. Perhaps Pei, by some
blessed silver lining, may have pushed
through unimaginable difficulties to
make it to college in another city. How-
ever, I know that in reality, this is highly
unlikely due to the many inequities fac-
ing rural students. There is, of course,
the obvious lack of high-quality edu-
cation, poverty and pressures brought
upon by Gaokao. As if rural students
weren’t already at a disadvantage, the
cutoff score to enter into universities
is often higher for them than it is for
local urban students in a gruesome act
of institutionalized oppression. This is
because, according to journalist Yiqin
Fu, “universities located in Beijing will
reserve more spots for students with
Beijing hukou (residency);” thus, the
lowest qualifying score for a Beijing-
based test-taker may be vastly lower
than the score required from a student
taking the examination in rural areas.
When you consider that wealthier
Chinese families with more resources
are better positioned to enlist tutor-
ing assistance, preparation courses
and a whole host of other investments
designed to increase a student’s score,
’80s and present-day students residing
in rural areas barely even had a fight-
ing chance at achieving the same level
of success as their urban counterparts.
Regardless of Pei’s educational sta-
tus, China’s aforementioned Hukou pol-
icy restricts population flow from rural
to urban areas. Workers like Pei, who
look to move to larger cities like Beijing
while being registered as residents in
a rural area, need to meet educational
and wealth requirements that many
cannot meet. As a result, many like Pei
are restricted to the status of “tempo-
rary” or “transitory” migrants by these
discriminatory Hukou policies, forever
forbidden from permanently moving
themselves and their families to cities
like Beijing and Shanghai with higher
pay and better living conditions. Even if
the migrants’ children obtain the same
status as their parents and move to cit-
ies along with their parents, local gov-
ernments have set up these barriers to
prevent the children of migrant parents
from accessing quality public educa-
tion, continuing the generational curse
bestowed upon their rural parents.
I’m just some guy: navigating my ethnically ambiguous “American” identity
Between my childhood and me: the tale of a women left behind by
China’s “economic miracle”
S TEPHEN BUCKLEY
MiC Columnist
ZOE ZHANG
MiC Columnist
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