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 Design by Rita Sayegh Read more at MichiganDaily.com