“What Are You?”

By Dorry Guerra

Jaisey* Image source: author’s own. 

 

“What Are You?” This is a question with which many multiracial individuals are familiar. When I ask Jaisey* how she feels when she herself is asked this, she tells me that it depends on the context. It means something different to be asked this question in the States versus in Korea. In the States, her response to the question is something along the lines of “What do you mean ‘What am I?’ You hear me talking; I’m American!” In Korea though, Jaisey considers the question more of a compliment. She feels that it is an expression of Koreans’ “picking up on” or acknowledging (and accepting) her part-Korean heritage, and this is especially significant because while she is indeed half-Korean (her mother is Korean), most Koreans assume she is just “American” (or “Caucasian”). 

When she is able to share with Korean people that she, too, is Korean (such as with taxi-drivers, who turn around to get a second look at her when they hear her speaking Korean, and when they look at her yet again when she receives change with not one but two hands outstretched), Jaisey realizes that she is more than just claiming a racial identity; she is claiming a cultural one, too. And for Jaisey, now that she has been in Korea for two years, now that she has learned about Korea and “Koreanness” in a first-hand and “real” way, she feels she has more of legitimate claim to that identity.

Learning Korean and about Korean culture, though, is not only for reasons that stem from her heritage. Yes, she may be especially eager to learn for this reason, but she also feels that it is important to learn these things simply because she is in Korea. Indeed, times are changing, and while Koreans themselves may have once felt it more proper, appropriate, and/or polite to speak English to foreigners, they are now beginning to ask why. The question becomes “This is Korea: shouldn’t we speak Korean?”, and for Jaisey and others, the answer is “Yes.”

Though the above point warrants another discussion on its own, for now, suffice it to say that for various reasons, including personal as well as more broadly social and political ones, Jaisey is indeed learning to speak Korean and is pronouncing (claiming) her mixed/part-Korean heritage. This, though, is no simple feat; it is an admittedly—and can be an incredibly—difficult thing to do, namely given certain social pressures and expectations that prevail in Korea. As has been her experience, as well as others’ (especially that of foreign-born-and-raised, but racially “full,” Koreans), many Koreans expect her (or the more general “you”) to speak Korean well (fluently) and to know about the various customs and traditions (including how to show signs of deference and respect via verbal- and body-language). Not knowing these things often leads to the blame being placed on her (your) parents (“Didn’t your parent(s) teach you these things?!”).

Needless to say, this is a tricky “thing” (situation, identity, existence) for many multiracial individuals to negotiate. There is a complex web of relations that exists between what one looks like; the cultural context one navigates; what sort of identity one is willing and wanting to claim; and what sort of norms and expectations abound socially and politically. So, often, the matter is not simply or solely about “you,” but the broader socio-cultural and political environment, and even your parents and other members of your family, your upbringing, education, and the like quickly factor into the equation. The point is that identity rarely is as simple as a label for one’s racial makeup (and even this in itself can be a very complex issue), but it is more often than not an inscription of history, heritage, society, politics, and economics (in the personal, national, and otherwise more expansive senses), and how one forms and frames this identity is, again, usually tricky and rarely simple.

“I am 100% Black and 100% Japanese.”
“I am a Person.” Image source: http://seaweedproductions.com/the-hapa-project/ 

 

Nevertheless, in a determined attempt to address this dilemma and question, the artist Kip Fulbeck presents the ongoing (and undoubtedly visually striking and profound) Hapa Poject. “Hapa” is a term that refers to a person of mixed ethnic heritage and comes from the Hawaiian word for “mixed” or “part.” Fulbeck’s project includes a series of portraits of “hapas” along with their handwritten answers to that charged question “What are you?” Some individuals give what is often considered the “expected” answer—the racial one (“I am half German, half Japanese,” for instance)—but there are others who interpret the question in different, nuanced ways. One child, for example, writes “I am a human,” and yet another hapa writes “I am 100% Black and 100% Japanese,” suggesting, perhaps, that we do not have to choose between one or the other, but that we can be both (or all) of whatever “parts” constitute our identity.

*Name has been changed to protect interviewee’s identity.