華裔媽媽的種族難題 我兒子是華人嗎

I never realized how little I understood race until I tried to explain it to my 5-year-old son. Our family story doesn’t seem too complicated: I’m Chinese-American and my husband is white, an American of English-Dutch-Irish descent; we have two children. My 5-year-old knows my parents were born in China, and that I speak Cantonese sometimes. He has been to Hong Kong and Guangzhou to visit his gung-gung, my father. But when I asked him the other day if he was Chinese, he said no.

直到試着給五歲的兒子解釋什麼是種族，我才意識到自己對種族的瞭解原來如此之少。我們的家庭背景似乎也不算太複雜：我是華裔美國人，我丈夫是白人，一個有英格蘭、荷蘭和愛爾蘭血統的美國人；我們有兩個孩子。五歲的兒子知道我父母出生在中國，知道我有時會說廣東話。他曾經去過香港和廣州，見過他的公公，也就是我父親。但那天我問他是不是華人，他說不是。

“You’re Chinese, but I’m not,” he told me, with certainty. “But I eat Chinese food.” This gave me pause. How could I tell him that I wasn’t talking about food or cultural heritage or where we were born? (Me, I’m from Queens.) I had no basis to describe race to him other than the one I’d taken pains to avoid: how we look and how other people treat us as a result.

“你是華人，但我不是，”他很確定地告訴我。“不過，我吃中餐。”我不得不停下來想了一會。怎麼才能讓他明白，我談論的東西和飲食、文化遺產或者我們在哪裏出生沒關係？（我本人來自紐約皇后區。）我幾乎沒什麼可以拿來對他描述種族的依據，除了我竭力避免談及的一點：我們的長相，以及其他人因此如何對待我們。

My son probably doesn’t need me to tell him we look different. He’s a whir-in-a-blender mix of my husband and me; he has been called Croatian and Italian. More than once in his life, he will be asked, “What are you?” But in that moment when he confidently asserted himself as “not Chinese,” I felt a selfish urge for him to claim a way of describing himself that included my side of his genetic code. And yet I knew that I had no business telling him what his racial identity was. Today, he might feel white; tomorrow he might feel more Chinese. The next day, more, well, both. Who’s to say but him?

不用我講，兒子很可能也知道，我們長得不一樣。我和丈夫的基因在他那裏得到充分混雜；他曾被認作克羅地亞人和意大利人。在他的一生裏，他將不止一次被問道，“你是什麼人？”但是在他自信地斷言自己“不是華人”的時候，我有一種自私的慾望，想讓他用一種涵蓋我這邊基因的方式描述他自己。然而，我知道輪不到我來告訴他，他是什麼種族身份。今天他可能覺得自己是白人；明天可能覺得自己更像華人。再以後，可能會覺得，嗯，兩者皆有。這事除了他，還有誰能說了算？

Racial identity can be fluid. More and more, it will have to be: Multiracial Americans are on the rise, growing at a rate three times as fast as the country’s population as a whole, according to a new Pew Research Center study released in June. Nearly half of mixed-race Americans today are younger than 18, and about 7 percent of the U.S. adult population could be considered multiracial, though they might not call themselves that. The need to categorize people into specific race groups will never feel entirely relevant to this population, whose perceptions of who they are can change by the day, depending on the people they’re with.

種族身份可能是變化的。情況必將越來越如此。皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)於6月發佈的一項新研究顯示，多種族美國人的人數在增加，速度是全國人口增幅的三倍。如今，近一半的美國混血兒不滿18歲，大約7%的美國成年人可以被認定爲多種族，儘管他們可能不會自稱混血兒。這個羣體永遠不會覺得需要把人劃歸到具體種族這一點和自己有很大的關係。他們對自己是誰的看法可能每天都在變，具體要看他們和誰在一起。

Besides, the American definition of race has always been in flux. For one thing, context mattered: In 1870, mixed-race American Indians living on reservations were counted as Indians, but if they lived in white communities they were counted as whites. Who was “white” evolved over time: From the 1870s to 1930s, a parade of court rulings pondered the “whiteness” of Asian immigrants from China, Japan and India, often changing definitions by the ruling in order to exclude yet another group from citizenship. When mixed-race people became more prevalent, things got murkier still. Who the U.S. Census Bureau designated “colored” or “black” varied, too, before and after slavery, and at times including subcategories for people of mixed race, all details often left up to the whims of the census taker. In 1930, nativist lobbyists succeeded in getting Mexicans officially labeled nonwhite on the census; up until then, they were considered white and allowed citizenship. By 1940, international political pressure had reversed the decision. It wasn’t until 2000 that the Census Bureau started letting people choose more than one race category to describe themselves, and it still only recognizes five standard racial categories: white, black/African-American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.

此外，美國對種族的定義也一直在變。首先，環境很重要：1870年，生活在保留地的混血美國印第安人被算成印第安人，但如果生活在白人社區，他們就會被算作白人。隨着時間的推移，誰是“白人”的定義不斷演變：從19世紀70年代到上世紀30年代，有一系列衡量來自中國、日本和印度的亞洲移民是否屬於“白人”的法庭裁決。它們常常用裁決的形式改變定義，爲的是拒絕承認另一個羣體有資格申領公民身份。當混血兒變得更多見時，情況也變得愈發模糊不清。在奴隸制廢除之前和之後，美國人口普查局(U.S. Census Bureau)認定的“有色人種”和“黑人”也各不相同，有些時期還包括針對混血兒的小類，所有細微之處往往是由人口普查員隨意決定的。1930年，本土主義說客成功地讓墨西哥人在人口普查表上正式被歸爲非白人。在那之前，他們一直被認爲是白人，能夠獲得國籍。到了1940年，國際政治壓力迫使這一決定被推翻。直到2000年，人口普查局纔開始允許人們在描述自己時選擇多個種族類別。但該機構依然只承認五個標準種族類別：白人、黑人/非裔美國人、美洲印第安人/阿拉斯加原住民、亞洲人和夏威夷原住民/太平洋島上居民。

Racial categories formed the historical basis for so many of America’s societal and political decisions, and yet even the Census Bureau has admitted that its categories are in flux, recognizing that race is not a fixed, “quantifiable” value but a fluid one. White or black or Asian America isn’t monolithic and never was. Everyone’s story can be parsed ever more minutely: Haitian-Hawaiian, Mexican-Salvadorean, Cuban-Chinese. And when you start mixing up stories, as my family has, much of the institutional meaning of race falls away; it becomes, instead, intensely individual. In a strange way, the renewed fluidity of racial identity is a homecoming of sorts, to a time before race — and racism — was institutionalized.

族裔構成了美國很多社會和政治決策的歷史基礎。但就連人口普查局自己也承認種族類別是會變化的，認識到種族不是一個固定的“量化”值，而是不穩定的。在美國，不管是白人、黑人還是亞洲人，其種族都不是單一的，而且從來如此。每個人的背景都可以進行更細微的拆分：海地-夏威夷、墨西哥-薩爾瓦多、古巴-中國。當開始像我家一樣，種族背景各異的人走到一起時，種族的很多制度意義消失了，反倒成了一件非常個人化的事情。種族身份重新表現出的不穩定性以一種奇怪的方式，讓一切回到了種族和種族主義被制度化之前的狀態。

In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, the once-derogatory term hapa — from the Hawaiian word for “half”; it’s a Hawaiian pidgin term long used to refer to people of mixed-race background — is now part of the everyday lexicon. In my sons’ preschool and kindergarten classes, hapa is fast becoming the norm because there are so many mixed-race children in attendance. There’s power in the word: a reclaiming of territory, a self-determination. To me, the idea of hapa as a racial definition is inclusive rather than exclusive and thus a step in the right direction. The term is mostly used to refer to people of part Asian heritage, but increasingly it’s used for anyone of mixed race. And it’s a term that tends to be a self-identifying choice, rather than an outside imposition.

在我生活的舊金山灣區，曾帶有貶義的詞hapa成了日常用語的一部分。這個詞來自夏威夷語中表示“一半”的詞，這個外來詞彙長期用來指有混血背景的人。在我兒子的學前班和幼兒園班級裏，hapa正在迅速地成爲常態，因爲學生中混血孩子太多了。這個詞含有一種力量：是對領土的收復，是一種自主決定。在我看來，把hapa作爲一種種族定義的想法體現的是包容而非排斥，因而是朝正確的方向邁出的一步。這個詞目前主要用來指有一部分亞洲血統的人，但也越來越多地被用來指代所有混血兒。而且這個詞往往是人們在界定自己的身份時可以使用的一個選擇，而不是外部強加的。

There’s a difference, you know. A critical element in the long-running Hapa Project, for which the artist and filmmaker Kip Fulbeck traveled the country and photographed thousands of multiracial people, is that photo subjects speak for themselves. One woman states to her observers: “I am a person of color. I am not half-‘white.’ I am not half-‘Asian.’ I am a whole ‘other.’” There is a resistance to fragmentation, a taking control of the narrative. Fulbeck, as a mixed-race person himself, came up with the idea as a kid in elementary school, when he struggled with what he calls the “check one box only” question. Here, we aren’t talking about getting rid of the boxes or just adding more boxes but creating more flexible ones that can hold more going forward.

大家知道，這其中是有差別的。爲了曠日持久的Hapa Project，藝術家兼電影製作人基普·富爾貝克(Kip Fulbeck)曾遊歷全國，給成千上萬名混血兒拍照。該項目的一個關鍵要素是，拍攝對象自己發聲。一名女子對觀察員說：“我是有色人種。但我不是半個‘白人’，也不是半個‘亞洲人’。我完全是‘其他種族’。”在這裏，種族細分受到了抵制，人們把敘事掌控在自己手裏。富爾貝克自己也是一名混血兒。還是個上小學的孩子時，他就有了這個想法。他說自己當時無法面對他口中那個“只在其中一個框裏打鉤”的問題。我們在這裏討論的不是去掉選項，或僅僅是增加更多的選項，而是創造更靈活的選項，能在未來承載更多含義。

There will be surprises in my own household when it comes to racial identity. According to the Pew study, biracial Asian-whites are more likely to identify with whites than they are with Asians. This line made me sit up: It never occurred to me that my sons could possibly identify only as white. I’m forced to think more carefully about what it is that actually makes me uncomfortable with that idea: It’s not that I want my sons to experience discrimination, but if they do choose to identify as white, there is something about being a racial minority in America that I would want them to know. As a child, I most wanted to fit in. As a young adult, I learned how I stood apart and to have pride in it. In the experience of being an “other,” there’s a valuable lesson in consciousness: You learn to listen harder, because you’ve heard what others have to say about you before you even have a chance to speak.

說到種族身份，我自己家將會出現讓我吃驚的情況。皮尤中心的研究顯示，有亞裔白人混血兒認同自己是白人的可能性，比認爲自己是亞裔的可能性大。這一發現讓我坐直了身子。我從沒想過兒子可能只會認爲自己是白人。我被迫更仔細地思考，真正讓我對此感到不舒服的是什麼：不是我想讓自己的兒子經歷歧視，但如果他們真的選擇認爲自己是白人，那麼我想讓他們知道，關於在美國作爲一個少數族裔的一些事情。還是個孩子時，我極想融入。年輕時，我學到了如何保持自己的不同身份並以此爲榮。在身爲“其他種族”的經歷中，珍貴的教訓是要有意識：要學會更認真地聽，因爲在有機會開口前，你已經聽到別人說了你什麼。

But the truth is, I can’t tell my sons what to feel: more white than Asian, more Asian than white, neither, both. Other. I can only tell them what I think about my own identity and listen hard to what they have to tell me in turn. If that isn’t practicing good race relations, what is? Much as I hate to admit it, what they choose to be won’t necessarily have to do with me. Because my sons are going to be the ones who say who — not what — they are.

但事實時，我沒法告訴孩子們怎麼去想：認爲自己更多的是白人而非亞洲人、更多的是亞洲人而非白人、兩者都不是、兩者都是，抑或是其他。我只能告訴他們我怎麼考慮自己的身份，並認真聽他們想要告訴我的話。如果這都不是在奉行良好的種族關係，什麼纔是？雖然我很討厭承認這一點，但他們選擇的身份不一定和我有關係。因爲我的兒子將會決定自己是誰，而不是自己是什麼。