Remember back in high school, when there were different "groups"? You may have called them cliques or crowds. Some were preps, some were jocks (many were both). To my memory, hipsters were not a thing then, but goths were. I think emo, too? And at a magnet school I always felt that nerds got a lot more respect than Hollywood ever depicted. There were studious Asians and lots of gangbanging Asians, too. That was K-12 life. In adult life, we still have crowds, and I see a ton of confusion on an almost daily basis that surrounds the usage of which group someone belongs to. But set aside the groups themselves, even the nomenclature gives us trouble.
Nationality, Ethnicity, and Race
I often see forms asking about nationality. If someone wants to know my nationality, as in, the passport I hold, and in whose institutions I'm vested as a citizen? It's American, as in the United States of America. It's a perfectly legitimate question, especially if you're applying for a visa to enter a foreign country. It is not, however, the question you should be asking, say, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, if you're yet unfamiliar with his... let's say "background", for now.
Now, my ethnicity? As in, a socio-cultural construct that can be easily separated from blood and genetics? I would still say Chinese, in the most generic sense. Among Chinese, I'm a Northeasterner. Among Northeasterners, I'm a Shenyanger, and so on so forth. But let's say, if you are Korean (let us accept for the purpose of this example that a genetic definition of "Korean" exists), born in post-war Korea but put up for international adoption and raised by a white family in Kansas, yet not otherwise knowing much of anything about Korean language, customs, cuisine, institutions, or other cultural norms. Leave it to anyone in such case to decide for themselves, but I'd argue that ethnicity could well define this person as "American" just as much as others might want to label them as "Asian" or "Korean". It would be wrong to call them "white American" (even though ample pejoratives like "twinkie" or "banana" exist to describe such cases), since they are definitively not white. But if that were no other cultural distinction? In my opinion, ethnicity fails to capture such nuances.
The toughest of all these is race. To be clear, race is a also a social construct, but one that advertises itself on the basis of genetics. It's something that apparently cannot be changed according to mainstream public opinion (Rachel Dolezal's story is case in point). The definition of race, beyond the above, is unfortunately ill-defined and poorly implemented worldwide (but I'm specifically looking at you, US government census forms). Especially when they're really asking for something akin to national origin or ethnicity instead of race. And generally, where national origin is equivalent to your ethnicity, full stop, it's easy to just say something like, I'm such and such (Chinese, in my case). But there are ample examples where that also fails. The oldest and arguably least sensitive definitions coming out of Western anthropological circles classified all humans as one of three groups: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid (see what I mean about least sensitive?). I think we've moved on a bit further from that. If you ask most people today how many races there are, I'd expect they'd answer more than three (word to the rare friend who insists that we're all a part of a singular human race). But what is the answer? Or really, can there ever be an answer?
I've seen some recent census forms in the US that try to capture additional subtleties, but only to a limited extent, and I wouldn't consider the outcome to be positive. For example, some forms have added MENA (Middle East North African) to the traditional supergroups like "Asian" and "White not Hispanic", etc. Unfortunately, as well-intended as these types of groupings are, they risk magnifying distinctions that may not have been as stark previously, such as grouping Iranians into MENA and Pakistanis into Asian, such that Pakistanis would thus have a closer statistical grouping with Japanese than with far more proximate peoples (by geographic origin). And while they've included European Spaniards in the Hispanic supergroup, Portuguese are excluded. I think we generally understand the gist of what forms are trying to ask, but there's no elegant way to just plainly say: "we only want to count those of European descent as white, but we can't really separate out Hispanic from Americas without grouping European Spaniards too. Also all Asians please kindly gather yourselves in the same bucket."
What are you really asking?
Let's get real: no one is actually asking about social constructs wants to hear the above brainspill when they innocently ask something like, "Where are you from?".
In 2011's Captain America, the First Avenger, there's a scene where a bunch of POWs are being freed by Steve Rogers and his cadre. Neil McDonough's character approaches an obviously East Asian prisoner and asks, "What are we, taking everybody??", implying that prisoner is Japanese/IJA and thus not Allied/American. That prisoner, later titled Jim Morita as credited to actor Kenneth Choi (yeap, iykyk)* quickly responds with a justified sass and unaccented English, "I'm from Fresno, ace."
I LOLed at this scene my first time watching, and it continues to be a scene of mine, not just because I'm also from Fresno, but because it perfectly captures a crucial history of attitudes toward Asians in America, not to mention give a nod to the Going for Broke 442nd unit.
I don't have too much of an aversion to answering, "Where are you from?". I have so many answers to give and it's kind of fun to match my response to what someone is actually asking. If I'm chatting with a fellow parent here in Portland while our kids are playing on the jungle gym, the answer is usually Bay Area, which is where we moved from most recently. If I'm back in San Francisco sitting in an Uber, I usually tell them I'm from Portland (and proceed to tell them how kick ass moving from San Francisco to Portland has been). If I have any additional time for conversation, I will usually say I'm from China and came to the US over 30 years ago.
Where I really have fun is abroad, because when someone asks me where I'm from, it's never a question of where I'm from. If I responded with "I'm American", they'd just be disappointed. For better or worse, no one looking at my face when I'm traveling abroad in nearly every part of the world outside East Asia will ever assume I'm American (In East Asia I suppose I just blend in most times). Some gentleman asking me in a Turkish hamam? Some hawker asking me at a Cambodian tourist trap? They're asking if I'm Japanese, Korean, or Chinese. And in the bulk of my travels, it's usually in that order.** I just straight-up say I'm Chinese, because that's what is most easily understood, and the answer to the question most people were asking in the first place. The world can be beautifully simple if we allow it to be.
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* Kenneth Choi is not a household name in acting, but I've seen him in a few different roles and he's been great every time. What gives me (and I can only assume him, as well) some grief and eyeroll is that despite his obviously (obvious to me, sorry) Korean background, he consistently lands some decently high profile roles that are not Korean. Jim Morita (Japanese background) in Captain America, Judge Lance Ito (Japanese background) in The People v. O.J. Simpson, Chester Ming (Chinese background) in The Wolf of Wall Street. You get the idea. Similar story with Randall Park, but I don't like his acting as much.
** In my early travel, I kept on wondering why so many people asked me if I was Japanese first. Was it my overpriced haircut by Junya in SF Japan Center? Apparently it wasn't anything appearance-based. I finally asked a street peddler in Istanbul why he was speaking to me in Japanese (I mean, I do speak it, after all) as opposed to other languages and he said, because Japanese tourists travel alone, while Chinese and Koreans to a lesser extent travel in group tours. Great insight, and pretty spot on for that time.
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