Hapa, Hapa, Joy, Joy.

I wait longingly for the day when, upon meeting someone new, I will not have the opposite party stare at my face questioningly for several awkward moments before uttering some semblance of the question, "What are you?" As the third child of my Chinese mother and my Caucasian father, my ethnicity is constantly in question by the public eye. People act as though they cannot truly get to know who I am if they don't first decipher the origin of my heritage.

Most Whasian (white + asian = whasian, duh) kids find themselves often in a state of uncertainty as to what categories in which we belong. Our appearances span the gamut from almost fully Asian looking to almost fully White, with just a smidgen of something exotic thrown in the mix. So, our hair might be long and shiny, or our eyes might have a hint of widescreen going on, but it's 14:9, not 16:9, and if you didn't explicitly know the nature of our origin, you would have no idea. So people stare at you for a while and expect you to come right out with an explanation about why you look just a little bit unfamiliar, always answering, "Ohhhh, I thought there was something..."

It's difficult for all people of mixed ethnicities to find themselves in a world where cultural identity plays such a huge role. Society has come a long way since Angel Island, but stereotypes still exist in spades, and we halfies are no exception. "Whasian Pride" doesn't help cut down on the stereotypes that exist for Asian people in general, because with such a longing to belong to the group as a whole, we play up our "Asianness" more than we might realize a lot of the time. My go-to "excuse" for why I do a lot of things, as well as the reason why I might do them tends to be, "Well, I'm Asian." I play video games: I'm Asian, but I'm bad at math: I'm not really Asian. Think of this what you will, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Hapa out there playing up one of their traits or another for various reasons. And it's because we aren't always quite sure of what we're "allowed" to do with our identities that these kind of excuses crop up.

There is hope for us all, yet, though. Blurring the lines between Asian and Caucasian opens yourself up to being able to connect with a wider demographic of people. The mixed-features of Eurasians no longer carry the stigma of Vietnam G.I.s and Asian prostitutes like they once did, but are being considered the face of global progress. Channel V, East Asia's equivalent of MTV, has veejays who are almost exclusively mixed, and Asian modeling agencies are actively fishing in Europe and the U.S. for Whasian models to bring back and propel into stardom. Whasian actors and actresses are no longer pigeonholed in roles where they play stereotypical Asian people (or worse, when White actors are cast in Asian roles), but are becoming leading players in the celebrity world. Keanu Reeves, Kristin Kreuk, Maggie Q, and many more talented individuals have been shining as of the last few years.

I know that my racial identity is by no means the only thing that defines me. I am many things that are in no way affected by my ethnicity: funny, smart, sensitive, and the like. Even knowing this, though, it is so difficult not to always equate those qualities that I see in myself to my Asianness or my Americanness, or what have you. So for the meantime, I suppose I just have to continue to dissuade myself from labeling myself as a "banana" or an "egg", and what it would to be either one. I'm Whasian, and that's the end of that.