Hello Hapa. Nice to meet you.

Half Asian, 100% Hapa by Kip Fulbeck

The Hapa Project

ha•pa (hä’pä) adj. 1. Slang. of mixed ethnic heritage with partial roots in Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry. n. 2. Slang. a person of such ancestry. [der./Hawaiian: hapa haole. (half white)]

I was walking by NYU’s Kimmel Center and I saw a few of these photos. One, in particular, changed my life. “I’m 100% Black and 100% Japanese.” Suddenly, I knew that I was in the midst of an identity rupture and restructuring. I have always answered the question “What are you?” with “I’m mixed. I’m half black/African American and half Colombian.” Reading that quote made me realize that no, I’m not half of anything. Part of the problem in my life with fitting in and identifying with black or African American communities and Colombian or Latino communities is that I always felt less than, not completely, only a little bit of what I was supposed to be. The other half of me fucked up the half I was trying to be. At this moment, I decided that I would never say that I was half and half. I might specify my mother is the one who is from Colombia, my father is a black American, or simply say I’m Black and Colombian. (I still get messed up with this because sometimes I need to make the point that my mother is from Colombia but has pale, white skin, and my father is from the states and is “Black” even though he is light-skinned or “high yellow,” especially during certain months of the year. It’s complicated.)

Since coming to this change of identity, I’ve been doing a lot of self work and community work around inclusion of a larger people of color ‘community’ which includes Asian (Americans) and Indigenous/First Nations people. Though I cannot in any way trace my lineage to Asian descent, I do know that I have Cherokee and Creek blood in me. I can’t say that I readily identify and I do not live the daily discrimination of indigenous peoples, but my ancestors have and that has most definitely shaped me and my family, even if we can’t specifically locate it. I’ve been loving the complexity of my mix. In one photo in Kip Fulbeck’s exhibit, someone described himself as being “blended.” I like that. Or, I’m harmonized.

They’re harmonized.