{"id":36510,"date":"2014-05-26T06:04:46","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36510"},"modified":"2014-05-26T06:33:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T06:33:10","slug":"mixed-feelings-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36510","title":{"rendered":"Mixed Feelings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mixed Feelings<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

North by Northwestern<\/a>
\nNorthwestern University’s leading independent online publication<\/em>
\nEvanston, Illinois
\n2014-05-22<\/p>\n

Sarah Turbin<\/strong><\/a>, Class 0f 2016
\nMedill School of Journalism<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question quite like it. \u201cWhat are you?\u201d has trailed behind me my whole life, tapping me on the shoulder with a different lilt to its tone each time: curious, doubtful, complimentary, surprised, sympathetic.<\/p>\n

I used to respond with what I thought was simplest. \u201cI\u2019m half-Japanese and half-white.\u201d Still no good \u2013 that, too, is typically met with more curious inquiries about the nature of my whiteness (eastern European, mostly) and questions about which parent is the Asian one (hold on, I\u2019m getting to it).<\/p>\n

My class, the class of 2016, is listed on Northwestern\u2019s Office of Undergraduate Admission website<\/a> as 8 percent African-American, 1 percent American Indian\/Alaska Native, 20 percent Asian, 9 percent Hispanic, 7 percent international students and 55 percent white. This adds up to 100. Here, on one of the first pages that parents and high school students might look at when dancing with the idea of applying to our school, I am incorrectly listed. There\u2019s not even a meager \u201cother\u201d category to be found.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Samantha Yi, a Weinberg junior, isn\u2019t bothered by the question. \u201cAll growing up, people would ask me,\u201d Yi says.<\/p>\n

Yi\u2019s father is Korean, and her mother is Jewish, of Russian and Polish descent. She identifies as Jewish Asian-American. \u201cI think, recently, I\u2019ve been thinking about [the question], because it\u2019s been in the Northwestern discourse \u2013 \u2018Is that a microaggression<\/a>?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Yi attributes the question as an attempt to understand. \u201cI think it\u2019s linked to a curiosity about who I am \u2026 it just makes me realize that, oh, a lot of people didn\u2019t grow up like me, with mixed-race families,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

When I do answer to that curiosity, I stick to the barest of bones by describing my parents, though they weren\u2019t even in the question to begin with. It\u2019s almost down to a science. \u201cMy mom is Japanese, and my dad is a Jewish guy from Illinois.\u201d Yes, good. All of the bases are covered.<\/p>\n

For some, the question feels constraining. Weinberg senior Amrit Trewn identifies \u201cgenerally speaking, as just black.\u201d His mother is African-American, and his father is Indian. Strangers, peers and professors alike have asked him the question, and Trewn does not always oblige by giving an answer…<\/p>\n

…Nitasha Sharma<\/a>, a professor of African-American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern, has done research on mixed-race studies. She taught \u201cHapa Issues,\u201d a course that was previously offered at Northwestern and focused on the experience of people who are hapa \u2013 \u201chapa\u201d being a Hawaiian term meaning \u201chalf\u201d that has evolved into denoting a person who is partially of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.<\/p>\n

Sharma notes that the spectrum of reactions to the \u201cWhat are you?\u201d question is telling. \u201cLike black, Asian, white, middle-class, college student \u2013 like any category, you\u2019re going to have a huge diversity of views … and part of it is that people change how they feel about that question over the course of their lives.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Mixed Feelings North by Northwestern Northwestern University’s leading independent online publication Evanston, Illinois 2014-05-22 Sarah Turbin, Class 0f 2016 Medill School of Journalism There\u2019s no question quite like it. \u201cWhat are you?\u201d has trailed behind me my whole life, tapping me on the shoulder with a different lilt to its tone each time: curious, doubtful, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,2895,125,3601,8,820,20],"tags":[17386,5355,16009,17385,17384,17382,17383],"class_list":["post-36510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-campus-life","category-identitydevelopment","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-amrit-trewn","tag-nitasha-sharma","tag-north-by-northwestern","tag-samantha-yi","tag-sarah-m-turbin","tag-sarah-may-turbin","tag-sarah-turbin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36510","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=36510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}