Lily+M’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

I want you to imagine a younger version of me, but with a twist: She has bleach blonde hair, tan skin, dark eyes eyes, and some awful neon green crocs. As a 5 year old I’m pretty sure most people thought I was adopted as I looked nothing like my parents, or like anyone in general. But at this time I wasn’t even aware of the things that divided me from the rest of my friends. Elementary school was a time of ignorant bliss for me, but as soon as middle school came around, the differences became apparent. I was now beginning to see the parts of the world that I had been hidden from for so long. I now acquired an interest in world topics that I used to not care about, and ideas about interracial marriage and racism now came into the picture. Social media exposed me to things and people that I didn’t ever really know existed. This new world was suddenly starting to open up as I grew older, and it was definitely not as pleasant as the one I used to live in. The first time I realized my family was different, was in a restaurant in Montana. We walked in, but instead of being served pancakes, I was served looks. At the time I didn’t understand why the family in the corner stared as I sat down, but now things were becoming clearer. The things my parents had shielded me from for so long were now apparent. This sense of belonging that I had felt up until middle school was slowly starting to fade. I turned into a chameleon, trying to blend into wherever I was. I stopped embracing one side of myself to fit in. I felt like I couldn’t completely fit in with my dad’s side of the family during christmas, and I ran into the same issue with my mom’s side during New Year’s. I felt like I had to be more this or that depending on who I was with.This feeling of never completely fitting in seemed to haunt me as no one really knew what I was either. “What are you?” Sometimes their tone makes me wonder if they think I am from another planet. I am half Japanese, half white, but I’ve been called Brazilian, Polynesian, Indian, Mexican, Caucasian, Native American, but no matter what they thought, they wanted me to choose one. “But you look more Asian, so I’ll just say you’re Japanese” “Well, since you don’t really celebrate Japanese traditions, i’ll just say you’re white.” Even the government wanted me to choose one when they said “check one box” for the census. Normally I would switch up which box I marked, but in the act I felt like I was hiding a part of me that was just as prevalent as the other. Not only that but when people try to figure out what I am, it ends up being a guessing game. And once they think they’ve got it they tell me I’m this or that. And yes I said tell me. Even, when they do guess that I am half Asian, they immediately jump to the conclusion that I am Chinese, ignoring the 50+ countries that make up the continent of Asia. For some reason, we want to label everyone, but now I didn't even know what to label myself as. Because the thing is, I am exactly half and half, and because I am half and half I don’t look like either one. For example, a simple makeup tutorial on Youtube doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for me it was, because my eyes didn’t match that of either tutorial. One was for monolids the other for double eyelids, but not one for my eyes. No one else ran into this problem except me, and it was a moment where I realized one of the things that divided me from others. I remember asking myself, “why couldn’t I have normal eyes?” because for me normal eyes meant one or the other. And all anyone else seemed to want was for me to fill both ethnic stereotypes. If I came up short, they deemed me less of whatever it was they wanted me to be. “You’re too tan to be white” or “your eyes aren’t Asian enough to be Japanese”. But you can’t act a color that you are not. Instead I felt as if I were stuck right in this awkward category, with a population of only me. An America that doesn’t feel the need to categorize is the America I want. An America where they don’t want you to be one or the other, and instead you can embrace every part of you. People want to deny me of who I am because I am not 100% of whatever they want me to be. They think it discredits me, or that I don’t feel both things that come with being what I am. They see only one part of me while completely disregarding the other. The label that we crave to give ourselves is the very thing that divides us. Not our skin color, not our cultural background, but what we’ve given ourselves. But in a world that categorizes, I've created my own category. I don’t need to be this or that. I am what I am.