Questioning mixed race identity in the DMV

I am at a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Plano, Texas. I am 15 years old and eager to get my learner’s permit. I am filling out one of the millions of forms in front of me, sitting next to my dad in a stuffy waiting room. The grumpy government workers at the nearby counters sort through the masses of people, forms and questions. 

I wait for my turn, knowing my number will be called eventually. There is a television screen above my head announcing the next number but I can’t look at it. Instead, my eyes are glued to the paper in front of me, the pen clutched nervously in my hand, hovering over the text. In cold wording on an unsympathetic sheet of paper, the form asks me to choose my race. The options seem simple: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic, White or Other. I am given black-and-white options for an entirely gray question.

I am given only eight options yet there are a million more questions in my head. I am having the first of many identity crises. 

My mother immigrated from Jakarta, Indonesia to our Dallas suburb when she was 9 years old. When I ask her about growing up there, she jokes that her family was the only Asian one around. My dad, who grew up on the opposite side of town, always reminds her of the singular Asian family who went to his high school. Although they grew up within 30 minutes of each other – frequenting the same ice cream shops, grocery stores and Blockbuster Videos – they would not meet until college when they took the same bowling class for a required gym credit. 

My dad moved from Schaumburg, Illinois to Plano, Texas when he was 11 years old. When I ask him about his parents’ identities, he tells me his mother is Polish and his father is Scottish. When my dad is asked what race he is, he simply says white.

My parents would later move from their college town back home to start careers, buy a house, and raise a family. I went to the same high school as my mother and I can’t begin to fathom being the only Asian family around. I can’t even imagine being the only mixed family around. Most of my classes in grade school were predominantly Asian with at least one or two other mixed-race kids on the roster as well. Sitting in that DMV, my identity hit me so hard because I had never been confronted with it before. Why would I, when everyone looked like me? When my friends’ parents looked like mine? When race meant something more than a black-and-white form?

When my mother was 9 years old, she had already moved across the globe, learned a new language and assimilated to a new culture. I still remember being 15 years old at the DMV and freaking out over a single, seemingly insignificant question while I waited for my number to be called.

I do not speak my mother’s native language. Though to be fair, she doesn’t either anymore after decades of assimilation. She no longer understands her own mother in her own childhood home. I wonder if that will be me and my children one day. If one day I’ll tell them my stories of Indonesian church parties, the smell of soto ayam bubbling on the stove, the sound of my Oma teaching me children’s words in her native language: “clown,” “dog,” “food” and “mother.” Will these parts of me be foreign to my children? Will they share my skin tone? My Oma’s eye shape? My mother’s cupids bow? My Opa’s hereditary crooked front tooth? 

Will my identity continue to be a mystery, even to those I create? Will their identity be even more muddled by generations of Other?

Sometimes when the Other becomes too much to keep to myself, I ask my friends how they perceive me. Do I look Asian? Do I look White? Do I look like a mysterious third option? Most will say I look Asian – but not fully. I’ve only had a few instances where someone says I look white. My favorite answer is when someone cautiously says “Well, you definitely don’t look full Asian…?” Their response is always trailed by a hesitant question mark, like they are not sure if my question is meant to trick them. I don’t know if it’s meant to trick them or not. Maybe it’s meant to trick me. 

I am stuck on this one question when my number is finally called. My dad gently nudges me to get up and as I approach the desk with an incomplete form, I decide to ask the disgruntled government worker a question of my own. 

“Can I check more than one box?”

She says no. She stands behind the desk and watches me stare at my options. With so little time to choose, my hand instinctively checks the box that says Asian. Later, when I am asked by my younger brother and my friends why I chose that, I will half-jokingly reply: “Well, if I’m called the slurs then I get to claim the race.”

In truth, it was the only option I had. I couldn’t choose white since I’m not just white, nor am I comfortable being perceived as such. Other feels like a dirty word, like the government’s way of saying I am not quite whole. Asian is simply the lesser of all evils. While I consciously make that choice, it feels like I have left half of myself outside in the pouring rain. I look at the white half of myself through the window while the Asian part sits warm and dry inside.  

When my dad drives us home, my new temporary learner’s permit in front of me, he jokingly asks how my DMV experience was. I don’t have the heart to tell him how overwhelmed I was by the people, forms and questions. 

Afterward, I stand in front of my bathroom mirror and stare at my reflection while trying to compartmentalize the features on my face that make me white, Asian and Other. I never figured out how. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Header by Julia Hester