Context: I am in a biracial (Asian-white) relationship and my partner wants to get married and have a baby.

I have quite some biracial friends (usually mother is Asian and father is white) and friends who have biracial kids (usually mother is white and father is Asian in this case) around me.

Interestingly, I noticed that the biracial kids usually resemble the white parent more in terms of facial features, regardless of the parent being the mom or dad. Looks like often they only got hair & eye colors from the Asian parent, but eyes and nose look like the white parent’s.

I am a little concerned that my future child might only resemble my partner lol. What is your case?

My mom is from China and my dad is Polish and from a very early age, my mom taught me and my brother (particularly me because I'm the daughter and I need to make my mom proud) to always keep our skin in tip-top shape. My mom grew up in a poor town in China so class was high on her priority and one of them is to look good. My mom was one of those Asian ladies who walked with an umbrella in the sun, wore a big floppy hat or/and a face mask so that her face doesn't get touched at all by the sun. And she made damn sure that I avoid the sun like the plague. I even remember my mom would yell at me if I was in the sun - whereas my dad was tanning - my mom was militant to keep me away from the sun.

With age, my mom (as hash as she was) was right - she's in her 60s and she looks great and has gorgeous skin. I'm in my late 20s and I do admit seeing my mom does continue encourage to avoid to sun so I can look good.

Just curious my fellow hapas (especially ladies), do you also avoid the sun - how in your skin care going?

If you could only be classified as Caucasian or East Asian, which one would you choose? You do not need to state your reasons for why, just giving a simple answer such as "I would choose Caucasian" is good enough. What do you see yourself as?

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I have noticed that some view r/hapas  as relating to a very broad group that may not share much in common. As such, I encourage others here to make related communities that are a little more specific to them, while r/hapas could be more of a broader meeting place, and r/mixedrace could be the broadest. I have noticed "blasians" and "wasians" of partial East Asian/Southeast Asian descent are quite common. Also, there is likely a significant difference between someone who is half Northeast Asian and half Sub-Saharan African when compared to someone who is half Pakistani and half Western European etc. (I am not half Pakistani).

Hello, I have created the following inclusive community relating to people of partial South Asian and partial West European descent: r/Westeuindids. Perhaps such people may be inclusively referred to as Westeuindids from now on, much like how Anglo-Indian often is used for the biracial group of people often descending from British soldiers etc. who married Indian women during the early days of British imperialism in India. I feel that while there are terms such as Mulatto and Mestizo, there is not one for people who are partially South Asian and partially West European ethnically (as distinguished from East European which is very common).

I have noticed that some view r/hapas as relating to a very broad group that may not share much in common. As such, I encourage others here to make communities that are a little more specific to them, while r/hapas could be more of a broader meeting place, and r/mixedrace could be the broadest. I have noticed "blasians" and "wasians" of partial East Asian/Southeast Asian descent are quite common. Also, there is likely a significant difference between someone who is half Northeast Asian and half Sub-Saharan African when compared to someone who is half Pakistani and half Western European etc. (I am not half Pakistani).

Hello!

My undergraduate Honors thesis is focused on studying the relationship between a teenager’s (ages 15-17) multiracial identity and its effect on their self-esteem and mental well-being. I would greatly appreciate parents/guardians of potentially interested participants to review the study’s information and consider allowing their multiracial teen to participate in a one-time survey. Since I’m looking for participants who are under the consenting age of 18, I would need parents/guardians to review the study and sign off on it before being able to work with the child. I'm still needing more participants, so please help a future researcher get their participants!

This initial survey shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to review and complete!

Informed Parent/Guardian Consent

Thank you so much for considering participating in my study! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or reach out to me through the email listed in the contact information portion of the survey.

I’m not really a Reddit user, so please forgive me if this is not the right subreddit for me or if I’m not articulating myself like you might normally see on this site. I just wanted to talk a little about my experience being partially Asian in a full-Asian seeming household and the feelings of confusion, loneliness, and depression I have trouble explaining to others. This might be too particular of an issue for others to relate to, but I hope maybe some people in this community would be willing to listen and perhaps share their own thoughts and experiences feeling like cultural outcasts or being perceived different to how you identify. Sorry in advance for the long post!

My mother was born in the U.S. to two Asian immigrant parents. She appears basically fully Asian and did not ever question her identity or parentage until I was born. My father, who I do not know, was a white man, so my mother knew I would come out mixed but was shocked at how very white I looked. When I was seven, she decided to get me genetically tested because I have no distinct Asian features and although she didn’t tell me this until I was older, she genuinely wondered if she somehow took the wrong child home from the hospital after I was born. She was shocked to find out that according to the genealogy report, she herself is only half Asian. The man who raised her is not her biological father, although she still views him that way of course, but my grandmother confirmed that both my grandparents knew and decided not to say anything.

I was a little kid so I wasn’t really aware of a lot of my mother’s feeling at the time and her own struggle with her identity, but she started to become more involved in the local Asian community shortly after and eventually met my brother’s dad. I’m trying to keep this post concise and relevant to just my own struggles within this context of my family dynamic so I’ll skip ahead in the timeline to my brother being born to his full Asian dad, and half from our Asian-presenting mother, to make one fully Asian looking baby.

We ended up moving to China for four years after my brother was born, then moved to Japan for two years, and came back to the U.S. to take care of our grandparents when COVID started becoming a real concern. I realized during our time abroad how different I looked compared to my family. It was rare for kids to even ask if I was half after seeing me with my mother, everyone just assumed I was a foreigner and didn’t believe my parents are my real parents, although of course my brother’s dad is not my real father but I was a kid and just thought of them all as my family and didn’t get why people thought it was so weird in the beginning.

I eventually learned how to navigate being a foreigner in an Asian country, but when we moved back to the U.S. I experienced the reverse culture shock. Everyone assuming I’m just another white American, expecting me to understand cultural norms and my brother now experiencing some similar things that I did for being different. It’s somehow worse being back with my grandparents because there are three generations living together and at times I feel like the odd one out. It’s difficult for me to reconcile my cultural identity and background with what I look like. I genuinely have considered looking into getting surgery to make myself less white looking but I also experience a level of white guilt and anxiety about presenting as something I’m not and about the fact that I am actually white, I’m only one quarter Asian by parentage, and therefore shouldn’t be trying to pass as Asian even though that’s what my whole family is and where my culture is.

It’s just all so weird, we’ve been in the U.S. for a few years now but I am less comfortable here with other people who look like me than I was living in Asia. I feel uncomfortable around other white people even though it’s probably unreasonable, I just feel like there’s expectations I can’t meet and I am unreasonably upset about them just looking at me and feeling like I am one of them. I know there’s nothing wrong with being white and that’s a bad way to think, but to me my identity is fully Asian in all ways except ethnicity and for some reason I’m bothered by others not seeing that.

I know I probably sound ridiculous and I’m not articulating myself well but I don’t know how else to explain my feelings. I have a lot to work through, but I wanted to check out this subreddit and see if anyone else has had similar experiences or may have any sort of insights or opinions. I think my mental health has gotten worse lately because I’ve been working full time and am starting to feel trapped here when I want desperately to move back to Asia where it feels so much more comfortable and familiar to me. My anxiety and depression is just making me spiral a bit and it’s dragging these sorts of feelings out more. I am talking to a therapist on a regular basis but she’s more focused on my feelings about work and social anxiety and isn’t able to offer much perspective on the identity disconnect I feel. Sorry if I sound like a crazy person, please let me know if I should move this post to a different subreddit since I am technically not half. I appreciate any feedback to not feel so trapped with my own thoughts.

It’s already a massive thing in Western and Eastern culture that half asian half white = attractive. Being a woman who is half asian and half white is an alienating experience for many reasons but one specific one is the insurmountable pressure to be beautiful. Not only are half asian women stereotyped to be beautiful but (in the racially ambiguous cases) we also lack the ‘benefits’ of those characteristic ‘Asian’ or ‘White’ features that people seem to love. I am not curvy nor tall. I don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes. At the same time, I don’t have straight, jet-black hair and a small, slim build. My shoulders are wide, I have a large ribcage and I am short and ‘top-heavy’. My hair is frizzy and dark brown, and so are my eyes. It seems like we have a beauty standard of our own, one that feels so much unreachable, like a mix of the dominant standards from both cultures. I get jealous of my fully Asian cousins who have such small builds, and though I am the same height as them I feel like a monster with linebacker shoulders. At the same time I’m jealous of my fully white family, who are taller and curvier than me and have that halo effect of blue eyes and blonde hair. But who I am the most jealous of are the few half asian women I see around me who seemingly have everything. Everyone thinks they’re stunningly beautiful, with their long straight hair and tall height and slim faces, and sometimes even coloured eyes. I know this sounds like such a toxic thing to say but I don’t know how to compete. My face is unique but not enough to stand out. My body is nothing special. I feel so ugly.

I know so many Asians that just want to be white or white adjacent and I'm curious what the end game is. Please don't gaslight me on this because my own family loves to pretend I look white and encourage me to act white and to only associate with whites and identify as whites. But 99% of people who don't know me look at me and see the Asian in me. I literally got the "where are you from originally" question last night.

My question is: what's the exact end goal here? To fully assimilate into whiteness? Because it doesn't really seem viable when you yourself seem to work against fostering proper self esteem in half Asians.

It just seems that half-Asians are meant to just advocate for and roleplay as full whites for some reason, or "improved" Asians, no matter how much we may disagree with or take displeasure in the idea of assimilating with them.

Is it more common with full Asians than let’s say white people?

For example, I’m half Filipino but every single Filipino abroad is convinced I look straight up like a full blown typical white guy with no trace of Asian. Yet If I post my pictures online the majority of people will automatically think I’m half Asian and never ever a white person, even most Filipinos will assume I’m definitely a mixed Filipino. Even in the Philippines I am assumed to be a mixed Filipino by a lot

For context, I am half African American, half Filipina. I am close friends with someone who is fully Filipina (she immigrated to the U.S. at 13), and she had a birthday dinner. Her sister happened to be there; she immediately asked me if I could speak Tagalog. I said, “konti lang” (just a bit). She then proceeded to talk about “Americans” versus “Filipinos” and essentially wanted me to prove that I was truly Filipino. In another conversation, my friend lightheartedly said “I love you” to me, so I responded “mahal din kita” or I love you too in Tagalog.

The sister says, “I’m side eyeing you because your grammar is wrong, you’re supposed to say mahal kita rin.” I laughed it off but in my head I was confused since the little Tagalog I do know is from my mother. I proceeded to tell her that my mom didn’t really teach me because she didn’t want me to be confused in America.

After the dinner I called my Filipina mom and she was like, “I don’t know why she corrected you. You said it correctly.”

I never feel like I’m enough of either of my ethnicities, but the feeling was extra strong today. I will still work on learning Tagalog but the whole proving I’m worthy of being deemed Filipino is strange to me when I’m constantly trying to respectfully learn more about both of my cultures.

TL;DR: Got corrected while trying to speak Tagalog and later learned I said it correctly, which kinda triggered my feelings of not feeling Filipino enough

I don't think so. The reasoning is that life will be much harder for a son compared to a daughter. As a result I'm almost positive most WMAF couples hope for daughters because 90% of the time it seems that WMAF couples only have daughters.

Let's face it:

1. You're 100% aware the relationship wouldn't exist if you were an Asian guy - so you ARE aware your son will be an Asian guy, right?

2. These people stipulate their future offspring on just being Keanu Reeves or a girl, but in the off chance that we just come out average or Asian looking, we're just basically persona non-grata in the same white supremacist daydream you have planned out in both of your heads.

My mother admitted in passing that she was upset she had two sons, but she claimed this was more for feminist reasons, rather than racial reasons, but it's hard to tell.

He Luli was a Chinese female politician who died in 2022.

She was the Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1998 to 2008, a role somewhat comparable to the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament in the West. However, as the National People's Congress is often seen as a rubber stamp legislature, her position carried limited real power, though nominally she was considered one of the country's top leaders.

Notably, she was not a member of the Chinese Communist Party. She was the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang from 1996 to 2007, one of the satellite parties under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Her father, He Siyuan, had served as Mayor of Beiping (now Beijing), and her mother was French. Her father met her mother while studying at the University of Paris.

Despite her mixed heritage, she did not exhibit distinctly Caucasian features, which is why many people, including myself, did not realize she was of mixed race until recently when I came across her Wikipedia page and learned that her mother was a white Frenchwoman.

I understand people are unhappy with their situation. For me it's how much I hate my boomer redneck ex military dad.

If anyone wants to have a blackpill, empathetic safe space for hapas, add spiralpisces on discord

I mean it's evident most hapas are the result of a mentally unstable military dad or a subhuman dad.

I’ve had some really interesting experiences from native and white people where they literally came up to me and asked if i was native american, or insisted i must be and that i am misinformed about my identity 😅. It’s fascinating. I am half chinese and half assyrian.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was divided, one half awarded to David Baker "for computational protein design", the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper "for protein structure prediction".

Demis Hassabis is the son of a Greek Cypriot father and a Chinese Singaporean mother.

Thank you! I am curious if there are any differences in hapas. Thanks!

Between half Asians and full Asians. As a half Asian man I think this is worth noting. It took me a LONG time to realize that people don't see me as biracial, but more monoracial. I've had Chinese people look me dead in my face and be shocked I didn't speak Chinese. Older Chinese people smile at me on the street and for some reason can even tell that I am Chinese rather than Korean or Japanese. I feel that racism has somehow gotten worse and more insidious recently. Obviously this doesn't apply to every biracial, but I think a good chunk of us can pass as monoracial Asian and it basically alters the entire life experience that comes with it. I just would hope people are somewhat aware of that and the difficulties with comes with that whole thing.

I'm a half Asian half White female. I grew up in a predominantly white, affluent neighborhood as a child. As I've gotten older, all of my childhood friends (who are White) have married White partners, have White babies and hangout with all White friends. I can't help but think that I've been left behind in life because I just don't fit in anywhere. I am neither here nor there. Men (of all races) constantly ask me "what I am", and I feel like I am often fetishized and exoticized but no one actually wants to seriously date/marry me. It makes me feel like people like me shouldn't even exist.

I am half irish and half filipino, when I was younger I had straight asian hair and looked so much better with it. As I got older, my hair turned into a frizzy afro, no matter what leave-in conditioner or product I used, it stayed an afro. I would love to grow out my hair, is there any way people with similar hair made it straight or managed it?

As WMAF I find people sometimes think I’m either full white or full Asian depending on things like lighting, hair style, clothing etc. Most of the times people do correctly establish I’m mixed though. Remember turning up for a date and the guy said “you’re mixed race right? From your photos I thought you were white”. Other times, people assume I’m like Korean or Japanese. Though have even had people say I resemble Ryan gosling! Weird because I look like a slightly westernised Asian person. My photos generally are always something between geeky white guy and like Korean boy band. Anyone else have similar experiences?

Both of my grandmothers married US soldiers during the Vietnam war. Then they were stationed on the same military base so my parents went to school together. And then they got married and had me and my siblings. All three of us look very different. My sister looks pretty half-and-half, my brother looks more Asian and I look more white.

I wonder if I took a DNA test would it show that I’m half Vietnamese or if it was show that I’m more white? It’s funny telling people I’m half Vietnamese when I don’t look at it all.

Many Filipinos outside the U.S think they are the only people that suit/can have having Spanish surnames. I’m half Filipino/white but I get comments all the time from Filipinos “shocked” that I have a Spanish surname (Dela Cruz) asking me why I have one when I look white then proceed as usual to tell me about how they were colonised and are all part Spanish

I tell them that their surnames are not real and was given to them. Spanish surnames originate from Europe (Spain) millions of people in Spain/latin America who are white or non Filipino looking have them and belongs to them by genealogy not Filipinos

If anything, I’ve always thought Filipinos are the odd anomaly of people that dont suit Spanish surnames, they are people that look Asian with exotic names like “Dela cruz” “Luchavez” “Gonzales” “Lopez” “Garcia” “Brillantes” yet look like someone that can completely pass straight out from China/Vietnam or most general SE Asia

Currently on a trip to Japan and been to China recently too. Noticed am getting spoken to mostly in English, so am assuming they don’t think I’m from their country or Asian? Though in Japan sometimes people I’ve encountered don’t speak English at all, so have had to speak to me in Japanese. Wondering what people think of me, am pretty half-presenting I think. Sometimes more Asian, sometimes more white. Like if someone in Asia speaks to you in a language that’s not theirs what does that mean?

One thing I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate to is how you're treated like "not one of us" when it comes to any of your mixed sides. I'm Chinese/European (with Native American ancestry), and I always found it slightly puzzling and annoying when my Asian friends would tell me I don't experience racism and shouldn't be considered part of their group because I'm apparently "white passing." I look very ethnic, but they see my pale skin and tall nose bridge (the only things I inherited from my dad) and say I shouldn't be considered in their POC discussion because I can apparently pass for white, even though I have experienced heaps of racism from white people. I look kinda similar to Aimee Cheng-Bradshaw (if you look her up she's mixed), and one of my Asian friends told me "she's white passing though," like seriously? Idk if its me but you can obviously see the ethnic features in her face.

White people can immediately clock the fact that I'm not part of their race, and I have gotten hostile comments whether they think I'm Latina who happens to have very white skin, Asian, or Native American. What's worse is that when I put on eyeliner or do makeup a specific way I'm accused by Asians of Asian fishing.

But my main gripe with the term "white passing" and how it's sometimes used is that I feel like its weaponized in a way that excludes us from discussing our very real experiences of being marginalized. "Oh, it doesn't matter, you're half white and have some white features." Yet in the eyes of white people, and a lot of the racists I encountered (small hometown, currently attending a PWI college) it's like an exclusive club--you're either fully white or you're "other" and treated like a foreigner. I have been called slurs, experienced microaggressions, etc by white people, but it doesn't matter to some people because I'm mixed with white.

Someone wrote this in a thread comment that resonated so much with me I feel like it had to put here: I said it before in the mixed subreddit and I'll say it again here, what POC consider "looking white" is completely irrelevant in any white (supremacist) society. Looking white in the eyes of an Asian does not make you "white passing". Looking white to the majority of actual white people in a society like that does. 

Hello!

My undergraduate Honors thesis is focused on studying the relationship between a teenager’s (ages 15-17) multiracial identity and its effect on their self-esteem and mental well-being. I would greatly appreciate parents/guardians of potentially interested participants to review the study’s information and consider allowing their multiracial teen to participate in a one-time survey. Since I’m looking for participants who are under the consenting age of 18, I would need parents/guardians to review the study and sign off on it before being able to work with the child. 

The linked survey is an electronic consent document for parents of minor children that goes over what the study is more specifically researching, what questionnaires the child will be asked to complete, and the rights of both the child and parents/guardians during this process. Then, parents will be asked to provide some demographic information and a way to reach out to interested families.

This initial survey shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to review and complete!

Informed Parent/Guardian Consent

Thank you so much for considering participating in my study! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or reach out to me through the email listed in the contact information portion of the survey.

Basically the title lmao. Idk if this is a hapa thing or just a general result of aging, but I'm currently 20 and I feel like I look completely different from even 3-4 years ago. My face has slimmed out significantly and my eyes are much rounder with a more defined eyelid crease. Overall I look a LOT more white than I did as a teen (definitely used to look more asian, now I just look 50/50), and am strangely looking more and more like my childhood self. I'm sure these changes aren't that noticeable to other people, and I'm not claiming that I look like a completely different person or anything, but when I compare my facial changes to my friends' I feel like mine are MUCH more noticeable. Has anyone else noticed this?