When you're in the minority there's always going to be this moment when you realize "Oh shit, I'm different." Not "How cool! I'm unique! I'm different!" it's a stomach quenching "Oh shit, I'm different." It's not a celebration of your identity, of who you are and what you identify as, it's this moment of disappointment, of fear, of realizing that because of this one minute little difference you are going to be fitted into this little box. Expected to act a certain way, to look a certain way, to be a certain way. Or at least that's what it was for me.

My moment of realization came when I was seven. I used to play soccer on a team where a few of the girls had been adopted, and the parents were talking on the sidelines about what province in China their daughters had been adopted from. Then, they turned to my father and asked him where he had adopted me from. None of them had ever seen my mother before, so how were they to have known that my mother was Chinese and that he was my actual father. My dad laughed it off, and made a joke about our Norwegian heritage. They were a bit confused at first but caught on pretty fast. He told me about the incident as we were driving home, and I thought it was funny too at the time.

But bit by bit, piece by piece, the incident started to affect me. I started looking at myself in the mirror more, dissecting my features, trying to figure out which parts of me looked like my father, which parts looked like my mother. Which parts of me were Asian? Which parts of me were white? Up until that moment by race didn't really affect me. I grew up in a predominately white community and I was half white, I couldn't be that much different. But now, all of a sudden, here I was, I stared in the mirror and for the first time realized that I don't look white, and since white was all I ever knew, then I must be Asian.

So for the longest time, I let myself identify as Asian. It was the logical thing to do in my little 7-year old mind. I clearly, didn't look like my father if people thought that I was adopted, and other than my looks, there were some very "Asian" variables in my life. I was smart and good in math, like all Asian kids are supposed to be, and I could sing in Chinese. My house was different from my friend's houses, filled with scrolls and Chinese paintings. An alter to Buddha sits on our mantel piece instead of the usual decor, and shoes were never allowed inside the house. I remember being horrified the first time I went to my friend's house and the parents said I could keep my shoes on. Even the food my family ate was different than everyone else's. We had rice with every meal and Chinese food wasn't a fun takeout item, it was an every day occurrence.

When I finally reached high school though, I decided that all this was not enough to be considered Asian. High school was the first time I was ever exposed to a larger Asian community and it became clear that in order to be Asian both of your parents had to be Asian. Not just the one. So I returned to my mirror and went back to dissecting my face. I spent a whole four years trying to find the whiteness in me. Trying to find the Asian. My eyes weren't squinty, so those must be white. Then again neither were my mother's. My nose was small and my dad's wasn't so that must be Asian. Then again the shape was like his. So maybe it was white? The only part of myself that I felt comfortable with was my hair. My brown, silky hair. It was a color that neither of my parents had and uniquely mine and my siblings alone.

It didn't help either that I was finally starting to hear the conversations that went around behind my back. The whispers and stares in the Beijing subway. The questioning of whether or not I wanted my hair re-dyed when I went in to get it cut. Asians called me white, and everyone else called me Asian. Sitting there in a line with my siblings, not having people discuss if we looked more like our mother or our father like most people do, but rather who looks the most Asian? Who looks the most white? We were show dogs on display, being pulled apart by complete strangers because of our DNA.

I teared my looks apart again and again. I poked and prodded at my identity, at who I was and what my biracial status made me. It was exhausting. Every time some form asked me for my race I would always just leave it at other. My race was baggage I did not want to claim. Baggage that I did not want to think about. I couldn't stand looking at photos of myself because they looked so different from the hyper-asian and hyper-white views of myself that I held. I avoided my own reflection, sick and tired of the constant searching. And then, after a years of pulling myself apart and rebuilding to fit a certain race I decided that I didn't care anymore.

I don't care what my race is, and I care even less about what other people see my race to be. My mother may be from China, but that doesn't subtract from what makes me American. I have brown eyes, brown hair, and I have no words to describe the color of my skin, but those are all characteristics that aren't unique to any one race. Race is not culture. It does not define how one acts or how one should live their life. It is a category, a compartment, a box, that society tries to cram us into Breaking bones and crushing souls along the way.

Race is something that shouldn't matter. It is something that shouldn't contribute to our identity or how we are treated. I don't care what my race is, and I don't care about yours. We're all human beings, and the last thing anyone should have to deal with is being given a pre-made identity based off of their race.