I have been visiting various forums for Eurasian or “hapa” people for years. It has always been difficult for me to find anything that I identified with amongst the various “Hot Eurasian Celebrity” and “what race do I look like?” threads. There might be a post I’d identify with here and there, but usually the author would be considered “too negative” or “nuts” . Most forums seemed like a self fetishizing orgy and I felt I had nothing in common with anybody.. It seemed that any honest discourse about the eurasian experience was shut down. My experience was that I had been raised under Asian culture ; the food, the language, Japanese Saturday school, Japanese tutors etc but that I had been raised to be “white”. I had always been taught that my Asian- ness was supposed to be some sort of “cool” parlour trick I brought out to show off at parties. I was expected to marry white and I was expected to see myself as white. I was supposed to belong to and fit neatly into western culture.I was supposed to be one of the girls that were talked about when some politician talked about “our daughters”, “our daughters need to be protected”…..and so on. I was supposed to believe it all unquestionably. I looked quite western as a young child but as puberty drew closer and closer I began to look more ambiguous. I never felt white. I was always “different”. everything I did was wrong and everything I stood for was wrong. My parents marriage represented something that made me squirm. I felt at odds with myself.I remember visiting my aunt in California at about the age of 10 or 11. My parents were furious that I was being mistaken for a Mexican child.Now I understand why. Being raised to be white did not work out for me, and my parents seemed crushed as a result. It has not only been a source of grave disappointment for them, but also a cause for them to constantly diagnose me with “mental problems” . I had felt broken all of my life.

It was not until I found “mixed race problems, Tumblr” as well as the blog “stuffeurasianmaleslike” that I came across other eurasians with similar experiences to mine and who “felt” like I did. It was the first time I heard other Eurasians talk about how it felt to be Eurasian in the context of colonialism and fetishization;people who spoke about self hating mothers, parents who couldn’t communicate with each other,about Asian women who ran off with racist bullies and partook in bullying Asian men, about not looking like our parents,about not looking white enough, or not looking Asian enough.I was not crazy. I was not a racist. So many experiences seemed to mirror my own.

I am not a victim, and I am not broken….but I wish that more discourse about mixed race experience as being something other than a “hot, sexy party” or an expression of “Love is colorblind” were allowed.

I have been branded a racist many times for not writing about being mixed as if it were a party. But what will this person condemning me and others like me say when their own son or daughter speaks of the same thing.What will happen when a white father has an extremely Asian looking daughter who is assumed by default to be his prostitute and not his daughter. What will happen when the Asian mother who thinks white features are superior gives birth to an extremely Asian looking son.

I am not against mixed race marriages,and mixed raced marriages are definitely not the only problematic type of sexual relationship. However, what I am against is the intellectually dishonest treatment of mixed race experiences.

I have been filled with rage, with suicidal thoughts, with blame, and worst of all, with the desire to snap at work (when I worked as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant) and proclaim to Asian female/white male couples that their child would end up broken like me.On one shameful occasion at a grocery store, I almost did so. But instead I ended up throwing a clamshell container of blueberries in the parking lot and collapsed in a heap, crying.

….I was deeply ashamed by what I had almost done and what I had done..by what I was becoming.

I have been trying to come to terms with myself and with my parents: Trying to learn to be merciful,and to mend everything while still being aware, while not having to pretend everything is okay. To know that my mother may be self hating as a result of the environment she was raised in, and that my father may fetishize Asian women as a result of the environment he was raised in.I also must consider that what they have between each other may not all be bad. I must love despite everything, It will be difficult, but it can be done.