JC
The Seattle Times interviews Matt Kelley of the Mavin Foundation and one of the Generation Mix Tour participants about this trip around the country to raise awareness of mixed race identity and issues.

The Mavin Foundation in Seattle has picked five 20-somethings to travel around the country stirring up conversations about mixed-race people, raising awareness of a mixed-race baby boom and connecting people with resources relevant to mixed-race people and anyone who has contact with them.

Of course, it isn’t as if there were no mixed-race people in America before these young people were born, but there is more freedom now to make that mean something positive.

Yesuwan, the Seattle crew member, was picked partly because he isn’t what people expect. He looks (hey, looks is nine-tenths of this race thing) 100 percent Asian, and, in fact, his mother is Chinese American and his father is Thai American, and both are immigrants from Thailand. At home, they spoke Thai to Charles, but he responded in English. He didn’t feel Thai or Chinese.

He said non-Asians just took him as some variety of Asian, but other Asians were always asking him what he was. They wanted to know which sub-category he fit. He attended Japanese nursery school as a kid. “I was constantly teased for having big eyes. I would go home staring at mirror, pulling the creases of my eyes up. Why aren’t my eyes like this.”

Nothing about race is simple.