What Box Do I Check?

By Natalie Nguyen

I

grew up in Houston: a city lovingly referred to as a cultural melting pot, so it’s only fitting that I would be a melty-mix myself! My mom is White and my dad is Vietnamese making me Mixed, or what I would typically lovingly refer to as a “wasian” or “halfsie.” At 24 years old, I can confidently say that I am proud of my Mixed heritage, and it only took several identity crises for me to get there (yay).

My struggle to grasp my racial identity can be thematically captured by one question that I’m forced to answer regularly: “What box do I check?” If you’re of Mixed descent, you might intuitively know what I’m talking about. If not, I’m referring to the little boxes you have to check when a website or organization is asking you to identify your race. We all know the standard options: White, Black/African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic or non-hispanic latino, other pacific islander, and occasionally we’ll see the catch-all “other.” 

Well! To this day, I struggle making a selection when I’m only allowed one answer. Do I represent myself to this organization as White, Asian, or other?! The way I see it, choosing “White” is only half true, choosing “Asian” is only half true, and choosing “other” frustratingly accounts for both and yet neither at the same time. I am both. I am not one without the other. Though I’m faced with a system that so often wants to reduce me to one. In my younger years, there was a time where I wanted to reduce myself to one too. 

Somewhere along the way, I subconsciously internalized that “Whiteness” was superior. Nobody around me told me that, so where did I get that from? I have a suspicion. It-girls like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera to name a few dominated 2000’s pop culture. Beautiful, blonde, and White. My school, nestled in an upper-middle class West Houston suburb, proved to be a corresponding microcosm: The school as a whole was diverse, true, but the popular girls were beautiful, blonde, and White. I remember looking in the mirror—for weirdly long amounts of time—resenting my Asian features. 

By the time I was 10, I had fully adopted the belief that because I wasn’t White, I was never going to be the most beautiful girl in the room. Not if there were White girls around. This type of defeated mindset was further ingrained into my psyche when the boys I liked at school would say I was “cute for an Asian girl.” For an Asian girl. Got it. I’m not even in the same league. Not once did it occur to me that maybe there was nothing wrong with my Asianness, but rather maybe that there was something wrong with society. 

Fortunately though, society is finally beginning to shift. Thank God! The concept of representation (in media & entertainment, politics, etc.) is at the forefront of our current cultural conversation and we’re seeing it manifest in big ways. In recent years, industry-leading brands like Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch were brought to their knees by modern society’s demand for inclusivity and diversity. And let me tell you…I used to worship these brands as a teenager. I desperately consumed what they were selling: the clothes, of course, but more importantly their image. Any appearance-related insecurity I had could be traced to not looking like the thin, hot, White models in their ad campaigns. To think that young kids today might be spared some of that shame and insecurity as a function of increased representation is powerful.

Representation for Mixed folk is limited at best, but is slowly improving. When the concepts of diversity, inclusion, and representation were relatively new to the cultural conversation, sometimes brands’ efforts at representing diversity (in general) felt forced or disingenuine. However, with time it’s starting to feel more natural and commonplace, as it should. Representation is meant to be just that: a representation of the world around us, where Mixed race people with diverse cultural identities are commonplace. 

I can’t help but feel giddy when I see Asians in the limelight; I’m admittedly even more giddy when they’re halfsies like me. Take Rebel Wilson’s new Netflix Original, Senior Year, that came out this May: In it, the “woke” high school’s popular, mean girl is half White and half Asian. Forget that she’s mean! She looks like me! 2000’s casting directors would never! On the surface it might seem silly of me to get excited, but it is coming from a deeper place of validation.

Someone who looks like me can make it big. Someone who looks like me can be beautiful. Ideas like these are simple, yet their impact is profound. Everyone of all races, genders, disabilities, ages,  sexual orientations, etc. deserves to feel this way. These beliefs sow seeds that grow and ultimately change the trajectory of people’s lives. Someone who looks like me can be ______. You deserve whatever that blank is to you. 

The world simply doesn’t know what to do with us yet, but they will. According to the US Census, the multiracial population has increased by a whopping 276% since 2010. In fact, the “in combination” multiracial populations for all race groups accounted for most of the overall changes in each racial category. With larger numbers comes increased visibility and from there we can advocate for ourselves and achieve increased representation in media, entertainment, politics, and perhaps if we’re really lucky, the little boxes for the race question. Jokes aside, saying that feels wildly hopeful and optimistic, but I think we could benefit from some of that these days.

My own personal hope and vision is this: As more and more multiracial people join our little planet, the harsh lines of race as we know it become blurred. That the answer to “What race are you?” becomes so convoluted that people just stop asking. Or better yet, stop caring (a girl can dream, ok?).

Until then, I will continue to be stumped by which box to check.

Photo by Tara Winstead

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Natalie is a Mixed Vietnamese/White graduate student attending the University of Texas Medical Branch and will be completing her doctorate degree in Physical Therapy in August of 2023. She completed her bachelors of exercise & sports science with a minor in psychology at Texas State in 2019. When she’s not cramming for her next exam, she can be found sweating at her local CrossFit box, meandering around local thrift stores, or petting her two kitties.