San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
THE WORLD’S VOICES ARE DIFFERENT
I’m not going to pretend my experience is inherently one of struggle. I grew up lucky enough to be attuned to all parts of my heritage and familial identity, and I’m confident that quite a few of those who will read this piece can say that as well. It’s something that many of us can take for granted, being able to trace your legacy and identity to something tangible, something recognizable. Even being conscious of the bubble that you’ve built for
Roden is 20 and an incoming freshman at UC San Diego and lives in Chula Vista. yourself, and the people who you “know” is a limited frame of mind for many, simply because of an inherent fault of capacity. I’m Korean and Sicilian. I have a legacy that comes from participating in our cultural ceremonies — such as the celebration of the Korean New Year where we dress in traditional hanbok and bow to our familial elders — and still being treated like the outsider in my larger family because of how much different I looked than my cousins. And still, even in this, my experiences as a mixed person will never be the same as any others. When you are mixed, your identity becomes something that poses deviant challenges and opportunities based upon your heritage, and no one voice can ever encompass an experience that changes for every individual. What I do understand is how people still can’t wrap their heads around this concept of inherent, undeniable diversity of identity.
When you grow up, you traditionally do so in an environment of people like you. This is different from sharing opinions or beliefs, as you, in any scenario, can choose to not engage, or inherently, hold resentment of engagement to them. But they will still be more like you than people from other
countries, states or even counties. Their experiences, growing up in similar towns, economic levels and social environments, are ingrained into differences people rarely think about when nobody around you holds any difference. If everyone grows up with the same cultural and social environments, it becomes easy to see how much is simply not understood when a different environment is key to someone’s development. This new legacy of communication changes that, and for me, it did so for my identity.
I grew up in San Diego, and while it isn’t perfect here, me being mixed, in the communities I grew up in, was never a topic of contention. I’m privileged to be able to say this, since this experience isn’t universal in this city. The experiences of being mixed in San Ysidro, National City and Bonita will be drastically different from those in Del Mar, Hillcrest and Eastlake. Our identities, even with proximity, differ upon conflicting expectations of faith and family, on ideas of what success means for a career path, or an expectation to act as a co-parent to your siblings.
The way that I was approached about my sexuality, about openness of mental health, about how I can talk to my parents, is something that isn’t shared with my Korean friends, or my Italian friends, or even many of my mixed friends. Instead, small snippets of familiarity weave in and out with discussions of how much we can see in one another, and how much changes based upon expectations ingrained in worlds we don’t wholly belong to.
The identity of youth, our priorities and our identity of community comes from a level of experience and heritage that many, inherently, didn’t ever need to question. This does not mean that these problems developed with us, or are fabricated by our voice, but inherently that the extent of these lines of dialogue, of the inherent struggles that come with racial identity, economic environment and social stigma, are more easily understood and translated when we stop trying to compartmentalize identities into certain trends and expectations.
When you are asked to listen to a mixed voice, when you are told to look at their perspective, understand that it does come from an inherent position of unique individuality. Understand that a story you have heard from your Korean-mexican friend will not ever be the same as that of a Filipino-pakistani individual who is speaking about their own struggles of identity that come from their heritage. Understand that the factors of identity, both in the self and the larger social sphere, are set in the development of the world as far, and to be a part of it, one must learn to accept that the voices of the world will always be different, always be a story that must be heard and understood. Then, we can grow.