{"id":22022,"date":"2012-03-28T23:11:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T23:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22022"},"modified":"2014-09-19T20:50:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T20:50:10","slug":"half-and-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22022","title":{"rendered":"Half and Half"},"content":{"rendered":"

Half and Half<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cornell Daily Sun<\/a>
\nIthaca, New York
\n2012-03-28<\/p>\n

Rebecca Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just about the only thing I am looking forward to about graduation is finally being able to meet all of my best friends\u2019 parents.\u00a0 In high school, we knew our friends\u2019 parents almost as well as our own, calling them by their first names, even dropping a playful \u201cMom\u201d now and then.\u00a0\u00a0 Au contraire, we go through college barely having met the creators of the people with whom we share everything, from our rooms to our nights to our secrets.\u00a0 Meeting a friend\u2019s parents is an \u201caha\u201d moment in which you are almost in awe of the physical representation of genetics in front of you.<\/p>\n

Ah, genetics.\u00a0 It\u2019s where I get my mom\u2019s smile and idealism, my dad\u2019s olive skin and innate quietude.\u00a0 It\u2019s why I can both wear a \u201cKiss Me I\u2019m Irish\u201d shirt on St. Patrick\u2019s Day and send out Chinese New Year cards when my family misses the traditional holiday season.\u00a0 It\u2019s why some people think I\u2019m adopted.\u00a0 It\u2019s why I proudly refer to myself as a halfie.<\/p>\n

In all honesty, my Chinese dad grew up in Great Neck and I am not even that good at using chopsticks.\u00a0\u00a0 But even though I am thoroughly Americanized, I still feel close to my distinct Chinese heritage.\u00a0 For one, I am perceptibly Asian, whereas the other half of my genes are a little more, well, recessive. I even spent the first seven years of my life in Chinatown, at a public kindergarten where I was the only kid who didn\u2019t know how to speak Chinese. But I have to wonder whether I would feel as close a connection to my Asian heritage if my last name wasn\u2019t Lee, if my hair wasn\u2019t naturally dark and stick straight, if I didn\u2019t grow up knowing my Chinese grandparents…<\/p>\n

…When people say that they only want to be with someone of their same race or religion, I take it as somewhat of a personal offense, since my own mixed-race existence was in such clear defiance of those beliefs.<\/strong>\u00a0 I used to think it was closed minded of my Catholic friends to only follow up on Catholic advances.\u00a0 I used to think it was cruel and unusual for my Indian friends to have to only date other Indians.\u00a0\u00a0 I used to see it as a kind of discrimination, even.\u00a0 I used to protest, caught up by a combination of romantic whimsy and defensiveness \u2014 Give everyone a fair chance! You can\u2019t help who you fall in love with! People are people!<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s true, people are people, but people are also products of their cultures and beliefs.\u00a0 Is it really discrimination to prefer to be with people who share those things with you?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Half and Half The Cornell Daily Sun Ithaca, New York 2012-03-28 Rebecca Lee Just about the only thing I am looking forward to about graduation is finally being able to meet all of my best friends\u2019 parents.\u00a0 In high school, we knew our friends\u2019 parents almost as well as our own, calling them by their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,2895,125,8,20],"tags":[10225,10226,10224],"class_list":["post-22022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-campus-life","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-cornell-daily-sun","tag-rebecca-lee","tag-the-cornell-daily-sun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}