Racial Identity...What does it really mean?

Hello everyone, well, I'm quite embarrassed to say that this is my first entry in my blog. However, I am excited to see what I can come up with for the rest of the term.

Anyway, onwards to the topic at hand: Racial Identity.

The other day, I was being interviewed for a position as a Resident Assistant for the upcoming school year, of which included many questions about what I thought of diversity, seeing as it is one of the core beliefs of the Office of Residential Life. More specifically speaking, the question that was directed to me was, "How does, or did, your racial identity affect you?"

After the question was asked of me, I had to sit and pause for a moment. Forced to reflect on how my racial identity played a role in my life, I automatically thought about this class and what we discussed a few weeks ago about racial identity. Although I could not remember exactly what we talked about, I did remember Tatum talking about how colored people have earlier memories of race than whites, and that these identities reflected back on us and how we identify with ourselves.

So, I responded to the question with an experience I had when I was in elementary school, since that was the earliest I could remember having such an experience related to racial identity, and talked about how we discussed racial identity in class and that it had had a positive effect on my life thus far.

However, after the interview was finished, I kept thinking about that question, and what racial identity truly meant to me, and here is what I came up with:

In hindsight, I can honestly say that I was definitely racially confused. I grew up with stereotypically strict Korean parents who stressed the importance of learning and identifying with my Korean heritage. However, I also grew up surrounded by American values and traditions, which I had been exposed to through the media as well as through my education.

Now, up until I was in high school, racial identity never was a priority, per se, within my life. I was figuratively buried up to my head in schoolwork and the numerous extracurricular activities I was involved with. In other words, I frankly did not have the time to debate or wonder about my racial identity, I just took it for granted. Or maybe I was readily able to switch back and forth from my Korean identity and my American identity from home and school respectively. And then THAT got me thinking about how I could have been a spy leading two entirely separate lives, but that's a completely different story, which I won't get into here.

Like I said earlier, I was completely oblivious to my racial identity up until high school. It was then that I really began to realize that growing up on the North Shore of Chicago was no where near close to living in a racially diverse environment as I had thought. Once I noticed that the neighborhood I lived in was not very diverse, I realized that 1. I don't look like everyone else, and that separates me from them and 2. Even though I may not look like everyone else, I can use that as a source of pride.

Although I had begun to delve a little deeper in my understanding of my racial identity as a person, I came across a moral dilemma: Which identity to I associate myself with? As a Korean? Or as an American? For a while, I could not decide between the two, which inevitably made me even more racially confused than I was earlier.

I did not find the answer until I made it here to college.

Here in college, we (as newly considered young adults) are expected to "find ourselves," and grow into the people we are supposed to be for the rest of our lives. But how was I supposed to do that if I couldn't even associate myself with a specific racial identity? Finally, through the classes I took dealing with racism and racial identity, as well as my growth in maturation level, I was able to realize that I did not have to choose one racial identity to associate with, I could live with the two identities interwoven together, shaping myself as a unique individual.