living the mixed life: growing up as a black chinese muslim in america
by laylaa abdul-khabirAre we defined by our ethnicity?
As a young girl, I thought my ethnic identity was the same as everyone else’s. At five-years old, I had just returned to the United States from China after living with my grandparents in Beijing for two years. Starting elementary school in America, I thought all the kids in my class were the same ‘color’ as me and it didn’t occur to me that anyone had different ethnic or cultural backgrounds. I didn’t think at the time that my mom is Chinese, and my dad is African-American; to me, they were just my mom and dad and we were no different from the typical American family. Being raised in a Muslim home, I wore a scarf on my head to school to cover my hair, and when my classmates asked me why, I said, “It’s because of my religion.” I had a vague sense of being different from the other kids because of this, but otherwise, I was a kid caught up in my own world. In class, I fit my shapes together, organized my Crayolas, and usually finished first in the mini-Math problem set. (Should I have known I was Asian then?) Of course, I counted my numbers in Chinese when learning addition and subtraction, but this didn‘t bother me; I just did it naturally. I didn’t perceive myself to be distinctively different from the standard first-grader.
It was only later, during the last few years of elementary school, when I noticed I had to start defining myself. Since I look more Asian than Black, kids would approach me and ask me things like, “Are you Japanese?” or “What are you?” and, the question that would follow me throughout my middle and high school years, “Why do you wear that thing on your head?” That’s when I began identifying myself as “Chinese,” in response to those first questions. I did so mainly because it seemed to satisfy others’ queries as to my Asian appearance. I’m not sure if I felt entirely Chinese then; for the most part, I still felt like everybody else because I didn’t distinguish people primarily by ethnicity. As to the headscarf, I was still part of some vague ‘other’ religion that identified me as a Muslim, but it was an identity that I myself did not yet quite understand or identify with.
In my family, my mother has always been the one who has emphasized education for me and my sisters, while my father places the focus on religion. My mother is a first-generation Chinese immigrant. She met my father when she went to college in Ohio, where he grew up and became the first in his family to go beyond a high school education. My parents are both converts to Islam. Growing up in our household wasn’t easy; both parents had high standards for my sisters and I, in terms of our personal behavior and academics, and this is a mentality that we've carried with us even after leaving home.
In starting community college after high school, I became more connected to my ethnic roots, and more accurately defined myself as “half-Chinese, half-Black.” In doing so, I’ve become accustomed to getting the ‘mixed stare’, the stare people give after learning someone is biracial in an attempt to figure out how all their physical features fit together. However, when I began defining myself in this broader way, my thinking and my perspective changed as well. Instead of seeing myself as a member of one ethnic group out of the many that exist in this country, I became more cosmopolitan in thinking. I began to feel like I had a little of everyone in me; being Black, Chinese, Muslim, and American all at once, nearly anyone I came across could relate to me in some way after learning my background. Encompassing so many identities allowed many people of various backgrounds to feel an affinity for me. My close friends in community college were of various ethnic stripes; some were Jordanian, Chinese, Korean, Black, Caucasian, and Mexican. I realized the great potential of race, and my racial identity in particular, to serve as a bridge between people of different backgrounds.
On the other hand, however, things weren’t always straightforward. I have so many identities that sometimes, growing up, it was difficult deciding who I was. Society tends to propagate certain sets of stereotypes or myths associated with each ethnic group, and although we sometimes write these off, I feel as if they subconsciously affect us, seeping into us when we aren’t paying attention. From casual racial jokes to associating qualities with people based on their ethnicity, I feel that we have, perhaps inadvertently, created sets of expectations that are associated with each ethnic identity. For a while as I was growing up, I felt increased pressure, mostly self-inflicted, to succeed in academics in a misguided effort to ‘embrace’ my Asian identity. Being one of the few Asians at my school, I especially felt I had to prove myself in my math and science courses. I was trying to find my ‘niche’ and I did so by attempting to live up to a general stereotype of Asians, which in my mind had turned into an expectation. Most of us would agree that race inherently, by itself, does not make anyone smarter, kinder, or more righteous than anyone else. However, associating standards or expectations with certain racial groups can create an environment of stereotypes, even casual ones. While most of us wouldn’t outrightly agree with general race stereotypes like, for instance, that Asians are inherently better at the sciences or that African-Americans have innate athletic prowess, the subliminal influence of these messages is often underestimated.
I’ve grown out of living up to stereotypes now. Since leaving the home of my parents and coming to Berkeley, I’ve had to forge my own path and identity. I feel that there are many people who go through their lives trying to live up to expectations that they perceive their family, friends, or the larger community to hold for them. Also, I feel that many people take their identity almost as a given, not as something either they themselves have constructed, or that others have constructed for them. I believe in constructing my own identity, based on the values and belief system I hold. My ethnicity speaks to where I come from, the cultures of my parents and grandparents, and also the cultural environment in which I was raised. However, my ethnicity says little about the person that I am, because it does not speak to the morals or beliefs I hold, or even to my personality. My ethnicity, in essence, does not define me; it is simply an ornament to my identity. I love my biracial heritage, and it is interesting and unconventional, but it doesn’t enrich my life with deeper meaning. Despite how unique my racial background is, it was not something I had a choice in.
Because I have decided that I don’t want my ethnicity to be my primary level of identifying myself, I’ve had to go on a deeper search in the construction of my identity. In earlier times, my Islamic faith had simply been something I inherited from my parents, not something I found for myself and embraced. Today, I identify myself first as a Muslim, because my faith directs my value system, and gives my life greater purpose and meaning. Faith gives a person an explanation for why they are here in this world, and what they must do with their lives until they inevitably die, something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Since starting community college and later coming to Berkeley, I’ve learned a lot about other religions and belief systems. I choose my faith, Islam, because it gives me a level of clarity and peace that I don’t see anywhere else. My cultural heritage gives me a history, a backdrop upon which to paint the person I choose to be, and the values, beliefs and actions that define me.
Today, I still get asked the same questions about ethnicity as I did when I was a kid, only in a slightly more sophisticated manner. I still grapple with issues of race and identity, and where I fit into this complex puzzle that is American society. When I first came to Berkeley, the great diversity in its people and the range of social and political expressions I observed intrigued me. My initial and lasting impression of Berkeley is that it is a place in which people have great freedom in expression, as evidenced by its history, and it’s a place where people are free to define themselves. I’ve tried to hold on to this sentiment as I struggle to define and give voice to my identity.