When I was eight months old, my parents flew across the Pacific Ocean to get me. From then on, I was raised “American." When I went to preschool, only one other girl looked like me. In grade school and in high school, two girls. I was aware of my race from a very young age because I grew up in a small town where almost everyone was white.

However, I didn’t see myself as different, because I didn’t think it mattered. All my friends were white, my family was white, and I didn’t really know anyone who was not white.

Fast forward to my first year in college, and I still question what race really is. This past semester, I took intro to sociology. In this class, we discussed what race really is. And this got me thinking: to what extent am I really Chinese? I get it, anyone who “looks” stereotypically Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Nepalese, Malay, or any other East Asian countries check the box “Asian” when a survey asks their race. But what does that really mean? I feel inferior and “less Chinese” than even children who only have one Asian parent, because they are still connected to their culture and speak the language. So, even though my bloodline is completely Chinese, somehow I don’t feel like I fit into that category.

When I was younger, my parents tried to keep me in touch with “my own” culture. I was sent to Chinese school when I was in elementary school with the hope that I would connect with others like me, either adoptees or second generation Chinese. I was even tutored privately in Mandarin, albeit now I only remember how to say “I like strawberries." I get that they thought it would be cool for me to know others in a similar predicament. But honestly, these “culture schools” take children and group them together like throwing apples, cherries, and dragonfruit together and saying they’re all the same because they’re of similar color.

This topic is of such importance to me because ultimately, I don’t think that the color of my skin or my physical features really does define my race. I know that’s how we think of it in terms of its definition, but if we really examine what race is, it’s a social construction.

We group people based on physical features when in reality, two people from South Africa and China could look exactly alike and have very similar features. Race, to me, is a category that is outdated. I shouldn’t have to choose between being Chinese and being American. My own physical features are a result of my birth parents, and my habits, a result of my American family.

Everyone speaks a different story with regards to their family. Even the term ‘adopted’ isn’t an unambiguous term; some kids know their birth parents, and others, like myself, don’t. I’ll never know China like a home, it’s simply where I was born. What I do know is the United States. I grew up playing ball, eating ice cream, and skipping rocks into the ocean like any other kid would do on the shorelines of Maine.

Just because my skin color is slightly darker, at times I have only one eyelid, and I have jet black hair doesn’t make me any less of a United States citizen. I may not have been born here, but it’s all I’ve ever known. We’re products of our own upbringing and culture, and racial categories do not give an adequate representation of this.