Faith Roman ’20, on Life as a Biracial, Asian-American Student

 

 

“The weird thing about being biracial is that I often don’t feel comfortable at Asian cultural things because I feel like they see me as ‘too white,’ but sometimes white people only see me as Asian. So it’s hard living in an in-between state.

But I do feel more comfortable being biracial here at Arcadia, for sure. It’s kind of interesting because I went from being the only Asian in my high school class— and I’m only half— and now here there are so many other Asian-American students or study-abroad students that I don’t have to deal with racist quips or being the only one anymore.

I did struggle with taking Korean here because I was the only ethnic Korean in my class, yet everyone else knew more Korean than me. It’s hard! I’m still really glad that I took it, because now I understand Korean from my family. It feels good. It’s a nice thing to be able to talk to my grandma in her native language.”