I Had to Deal with Societal Stereotyping and Discrimination Within My Own Community

I was simply born into this body; I didn’t get to select how I looked, as if I were in a game. This is my real-life avatar.

Photo by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash

My mother, who also looks out of place as others have stereotyped us, has a Chinese father and her mother is Peranakan Chinese — a mix from an interracial marriage.

Almost everyone on my father’s side appears Eurasian. On their tomb pictures, my grandparents look more Eurasian than Chinese. Perhaps a DNA test could give me an answer. Officially, we are all registered as Chinese, and however unpure we may be perceived by others, we are still Chinese.

He was secretive and reluctant to say much about his background, and I didn’t truly want to press further, yet it only made me even more curious.

My father once almost got arrested, suspected of kidnapping because he, a person perceived as being of a different race, was carrying a child (me!) who was fairer than both my parents. Wrongful racial profiling.

There’s this outdated cultural aspect here that often regards people of different races with a perceived inferior status, as half-caste, or even inhuman, as I’ve experienced in…