{"id":54301,"date":"2017-06-27T13:35:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T13:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54301"},"modified":"2017-06-27T13:35:31","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T13:35:31","slug":"navigating-my-way-through-mixed-race-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54301","title":{"rendered":"Navigating my way through mixed race identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Navigating my way through mixed race identity<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

news.com.au<\/a>
\nSurry Hills, New South Wales, Australia
\n2017-06-27<\/p>\n

Carolyn Cage<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nCarolyn Cage<\/a> pictured as a newborn with her dad Ray and her mum Doreen. Picture: Carolyn Cage<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

IF THERE were an algorithm that could formulate a person\u2019s most asked question, mine would be \u201cwhat are you?\u201d Society has a habit of labelling people like soup cans in a kitchen and for as long as I can remember, one of the first questions people ask during initial conversation is usually in relation to my racial ambiguity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Replying with \u201cI am Australian\u201d only ever leads to \u201cbut what are you really?\u201d Learning how to tolerate ignorance and pass it off as curiosity, I take a deep breath and pull out the pie chart. I was born in Australia<\/a>, but my mother originates from Malaysia and is of Chinese heritage. My father is of Anglo background, mixed with German and Belgium descent but was born in Sydney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The responses tend to be generic ranging from how exotic that is, how adorable mixed babies are or how I am the spitting image of their other mixed raced friend. Accepting that it is intended as a compliment, at the same time it is dehumanising and reduces my identity to some sort of novelty. Most of the time it leaves me unscathed, but the more I am asked \u201cwhat am I\u201d, the more of a hindrance it becomes…<\/p>\n

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

IF THERE were an algorithm that could formulate a person\u2019s most asked question, mine would be \u201cwhat are you?\u201d Society has a habit of labelling people like soup cans in a kitchen and for as long as I can remember, one of the first questions people ask during initial conversation is usually in relation to my racial ambiguity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,8,4405],"tags":[986,27163,25772],"class_list":["post-54301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-oceania","tag-australia","tag-carolyn-cage","tag-news-com-au"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54301","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=54301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54302,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54301\/revisions\/54302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}