I'm a little anxious contributing to this node. That is because I am entirely
white. Three fourths French-canadian and one fourth English. I am a white male at an
engineering school in New England. I have never been on the receiving end (or, I pray, delivering end) of
racism. But I feel it is appropriate to present some opinions from the other side, as to provide some balance for our fellow
noders.
I briefly dated a, as you say,
hybrid. (I hope to again in the near future, but that is an
aside.) She is half
Taiwanese, a quarter
Irish, and a quarter
German. She has beautiful soft, black, straight hair. When I first met her I couldn't decide if she was Asian or not. She has black hair, after all, but I thought it was pretty much racist to assume on hair alone that her ancestors hailed from the
Far East. The fact that she sometimes looks whiter, sometimes more Eastern, does in fact set her apart from the rest, and I
love it.
When she takes off her glasses, a wonderful thing happens. She has very poor eyesight, and without corrective lenses, she has to
squint to see anything at all. Furthermore, the frames of her glasses no longer block the light peppering of
freckles underneath each eye and bridging her adorable round little nose.
These subtle reminders of her mixed ancestry make me
weak in the knees.
Because of her, and her family, I now know how to properly eat with chopsticks and have sampled
sushi. Granted it
was merely a California roll, but I'm working my way up to actual raw ocean-creature-flesh. Her mother showed us some beautiful pictures of Taiwan. I have been good-naturedly called
"So American!" I am a slightly less ethnocentric person.
I know these little things are probably laughable to someone who has grown up immersed in dual cultures. I'm not trying to say I
understand what it is like to be you. I just want you to know that as someone who looks just like everybody else, I find the combination of two very different histories/appearances/philosophies to be a very good and appealing thing. There are people out there who do in fact view you as a member, not an outsider, of both groups. Maybe that's only true here in my little slice of
New England, but I'd like to hope not.
I hope this an appropriate place for this writeup. And if I have made a grievous error through my own ignorance,
please correct me. It is, after all, the only way I will become less ignorant.