Thanks for sharing everyone, really love reading all the stories.
EDIT: tl;dr -- yes, all the time, and it leaves the biggest hole in my identity that I can think of
Biracial white and Korean.
Yes.
I voted that we need more polling options. If there's any identity issue I struggle with -- it's this. It's my racial and cultural heritage, or rather, the neverending question of it and whether or not I have any claim to it at all... If I have a "culture" at all. If there's any one thing I feel like people should know about me more importantly than this, it's this particular issue, laid out most simply as the following:
I do think about my biracial status a whole lot and how it's pretty much denied me full access to any sort of cultural heritage, save perhaps for "collective American," though that in itself does suggest whiteness IMO.
Here's the thing, I used to present pretty obviously more my Korean features when I was very young and much smaller. After I hit growth spurt, I tend to present far more white than Korean and I lost a lot of easy claim when it happened. When I meet white people, they usually assume I am also white (I have had a few ask the awkward question of "what ethnicity are you?" to which I've answered truthfully), and when I answer my biracial status honestly, I am automatically placed into "Korean" to them. When I meet full Koreans, they don't even recognize me as one of them -- I'm just "white" to them no matter what. I don't speak Korean, I have never actually been to Korea, and I've sadly just not traveled a ton... I had a pretty conservative upbringing so "worldliness" was not a part of the way my parents raised me. Still, my mother was born and raised in Korea and didn't meet my white dad until he was stationed in Korea for the US Air Force. She learned to speak English only because of that meeting. I don't actually know the dynamics for how that relationship evolved and progressed but there you have it. She became a US citizen solely by marriage to my dad, not necessarily out of a long-term yearning to become an American citizen and immigrate. So, I grew up with Korean TV in the house and homemade Korean food, and where I mostly grew up (after my dad retired from the Air Force, which happened at a very young age), there were enough Korean businesses to sort of semi-immerse in Korean-American life -- Korean grocery markets, a choice of like 5 or 6 quality Korean restaurants, Korean imported goods shops, etc... Not a full "Koreatown" experience, just a bit of the military-related Korean diaspora. I've met and befriended many other part-white, part-Koreans that have similar life experience to me, but they generally seem far more able to blend in with and identify with their Korean heritage because they didn't "outgrow" their Korean looks and I guess their parents raised them far more openly about embracing Korean because they seem more in tune with the actual Korean-American experience than I am, so it just further feels isolating, despite them being the closest I feel I can relate to.
I don't know how to define myself racially and culturally and it's weird and isolating. I think about it all the time.
I've said it on this site and others before, but I feel like the most accurate representation of how I feel as an individual in culture is Spock in the Abrams Star Trek (I'm not a huge Star Trek fan so I don't know how much it was explored in the original series), but there's no sense of ultimate self-realization that's occurred yet and I'm in my early 30's now.
I kind of struggle with it to be honest, and I often try to handwave it away with thoughts like "well you'll just feel this lonely and isolated culturally the rest of your life so stop struggling with it and stop thinking about it." I can't deny that Korean food in particular feels like a huge comfort thing to me but I never feel "at home" in a Korean establishment because my part-Korean heritage is so relatively unknown and limited, and it's no longer obviously visible in my physical presentation.
Thanks for this in particular, as it so accurately reflects my experience as well and made me kinda emotional tbh.
I'm a uhh "full-blooded" Iranian, who was born and raised in a Western European country. My father emigrated shortly after the Iranian revolution to come and study, but never thought that those Islamists would stay in power for so long and well, as such he stayed here ever since - even though he originally had no intention to do so. He married my mum, whom he met on a trip back to Iran, and I was born here.
I'm in my mid-20s now, and I'd like to think that it really doesn't define me, as in I don't make it really part of my personality per se, but it affects me heavily on a daily basis. Seeing that both my parents are Iranian, naturally I look quite Iranian, too. I'm not white (though I don't think I'm brown, either? I always go with caramel lol), I have some lush black hair, and also sport a beard. I speak Farsi, I am able to read and write Persian script (though admittedly not as good as I'd like). I grew up with Persian cuisine, and also try to keep up with Persian culture.
...and yet I always feel somewhat out of place when I go visit my relatives in Iran. I'm being told that I have foreign accent, or I notice how I don't understand some of the jokes and stuff. I'm also, even among my family or others in a similar situation, when compared to my sister for instance, a bit of a black sheep, as I don't care for contemporary Iranian pop music, or Iranian cinema (outside their great art house movies). I love rock music, I like to go on techno raves, I'm overall a bit more alternative, I drink etc. Not that my parents condemn those things, they're really open about all this, it's just that I sometimes feel we've got a lack of overlap.
At the same time, I also don't feel completely at home in German circles, which I got to especially experience with my German ex. I'm not familiar with German etiquette for instance, and feel a bit weird when I then apply my rather overly polite Iranian manners. Which also made things a bit awkward for my ex and I sometimes.
Anyway. I've since moved to a melting pot of a city and I struggle to answer the question "Where are you from?". Living in a different country now, things got easier and harder at the same time. I'm surrounded by people in a similar situation, but now I speak English all the time in a country which is not part of the UK, so I'm kinda dealing with an additional two cultures, making for a total of four lol
I'm proud of my Iranian heritage. We've got a lot of history and are literally one of the oldest cultures around. Yet I could never imagine living there, I literally couldn't even if I wanted to. But I don't look German and frankly don't feel 100% German either. And tbh this makes me anxious about my future as well.