I grew up in Los Angeles, one of the most diverse cities in the world, but it was not uncommon for me to experience racism. From the overt (“Your parents made a mistake”) to the subtle (“Mixed children are so exotic looking”) to the ignorant (“I want to marry a white guy so I can have cute babies!”), much of that racism centered around my mixed background.

 

My mother is Korean and my father is Caucasian. When asked the ubiquitous question, “What are you?” I’ve always felt unprepared to answer, like I’d been singled out in class and had failed to do the reading the night before. “I’m half Korean and half white,” was the most common response. Or perhaps, “I’m Korean, English, Dutch and Scottish.” Or occasionally, when I was feeling particularly surly, “I’m human, and you?” It wasn’t just white folks who were asking. Other Asians, especially Koreans, seemed unceasingly curious. “Are you Mexican?” they’d ask. “Are you Hawaiian?”

 

Koreans are often visibly shocked to discover that I am one of them. Or not. Because still, I am often not accepted as Korean. There have been so many times when I have been referred to as “the white girl” by my Korean friends, Korean storekeepers, Korean relatives even. To them, it’s an easy way of pointing me out. They point out others with descriptions like short or tall or the girl with long hair or glasses. But me? I’m the white girl.

 

I have had to push and shove and plant my feet firmly in the quicksand of identity and shout, “I am Korean American!”

 

I think it was during high school when I first heard the term “hapa” used in a positive way to refer to mixed-race Asians. I had heard it before, in passing, and hadn’t known what it meant. My father informed me that it was a pejorative way of referring to someone like me. A no-no. Something akin to “chink” or “gook” or even the N-word. When I later told him, “No, Dad, it’s OK. It’s, like, the cool way of referring to a half-Asian person,” he just sort of shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Kids these days.”

 

I no longer had to stumble for an answer when asked, “What are you?” I was hapa and proud of it. The term satisfyingly indicated my identity as an Asian American while not denying my whiteness, it acknowledged my difference from other full-Korean KAs who didn’t have to grapple with their own calling them “white girls,” and, best of all, it meant that I belonged.

 

I belonged, completely and without qualification, to this identity and community. Hapa. It even sounded right. It rolled off the tongue like “biracial, multi-ethnic Asian American” never could. Just like everybody else in the world, I had my own secret handshake.