The U.S. Census wants me to pick a side, but I refuse

The first time I was asked to pick sides, I was 12. I had just done the hardest thing of my young life: enrolled at a new middle school. Walking in on that first day, I felt weighed down, not by the textbooks in my backpack, but by the dilemma of how I should present myself to my new peers. As a mixed-race person, I'd learned to feel misfit and never enough early on.

Both my parents worked late through my childhood, so my sister and I were taken care of by my Chinese grandparents. My Shanghainese grandmother (Po Po) did not speak a lick of English but ensured we were fed a steady diet of red bean buns and thoughtfully scissor-cut noodles. She taught me how to knit and ask for things politely in Cantonese. When I was 6, she died. And when my Gong Gong followed, I felt a profound cultural loss. 

By the time I was a pre-teen, Gong Gong and Po Po’s lessons had faded. Without them, my father's culture filled the gaps. Marked by protracted Italian dinners and occasional outbursts of (insert emotion here) in Neapolitan dialect, my father's side of the family was deeply entrenched in Italian American traditions. Their dining room table was virtually the only place I felt a sense of community. Where my Chinese grandparents taught me love through acts of service, my Italian American family taught me toughness, dignity, and respect. But this mixedness only served to create confusion in my peers; as their sense of cultural identity became more pronounced with age, I didn't fit neatly into any of their boxes.

So, as I entered my new (70 percent white) middle school, I felt like the odd kid out. But when a young Asian boy asked me to join his Asian friend group and assured me I belonged, I felt seen. It was the first time someone recognized that part of myself as “enough,” and I felt honored to represent the side of me that had been hidden for so long. I was ready to finally be the me my Po Po had cared for.

After several weeks of library study sessions and lunchroom card games, my new Asian clique gave me a nickname—a Cantonese word they uttered with smiles and affectionate hugs. When they bestowed it upon me, I felt loved and recognized. But, rusty in my Cantonese, I didn't know its meaning.

One morning before school, as my mother dressed in her pastel-colored bedroom for work, I asked her:

"Mommy, what does gwei lo mean?"

Even after marrying outside her culture, living in the United States for the majority of her life, and raising mixed children, I don't think my mother ever expected to have to explain why my friends had named me gwei lo.

In Cantonese, gwei lo (鬼佬) is a colloquial term used to refer to white people. Gwei means “ghost,” “demon,” or ominous entity, and lo means “fellow” or “man.” Together, the “ghost man” first referred to the presence of Caucasians in Hong Kong. As the South China Morning Post explains, gwei lo means “white devil,” “foreign invader.” My new “friends” had been calling me this to my face.

It was at that moment that I realized I wasn’t just Chinese or Asian. Nor was I just Italian or white. I was something else entirely. And questions of identity would follow me for the rest of my life.

For a long time, I struggled to find a community where I felt enough, where my existence was the only explanation needed. Not where I'm really from. Not which parent is the “Asian one.”

For a long time, I struggled to find a community where I felt enough, where my existence was the only explanation needed. Not where I'm really from. Not which parent is the “Asian one.”

Today, I've found my mixed-Asian community, where there's no need to choose sides—where no one must halve themselves and being mixed is an opportunity to be greater than the sum of our parts. Embracing my mixed identity has expanded my sense of self. It's enabled me to support representation and move beyond the questions that kept me in a box for so long. So when surveys like the U.S. Census Bureau started to include an option for two or more races, it felt like a whole world opened up. It recognized the reality of today's world, undefined by rigid classifications of belonging.

That's why the U.S. Census Bureau's March 2025 decision to quietly reassign those who identify as "Some Other Race" (SOR) in the 2020 Census to the five race categories defined in 1997 (White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) is so irksome—and harmful.

Reassignment could be determined based on the head of household, where the individual inherits their demographic data. And if no such data exists, they can be reassigned based on the majority race statistics of their neighborhood. As a result, EthniFacts reports that the number of individuals identifying as multiracial has already decreased by 14.6 million, with the majority reclassified as white. This will undoubtedly have ripple effects. Policy decisions, social science research, and resource allocation for community funding and support programs will be affected. The erasure of the largest growing demographic in the United States—mixed-race individuals—is already underway. 

By reassigning millions of Americans who identify as SOR to outdated racial categories, this administration is forcing them to choose which side they will cleave to. To limit themselves.

Looking back, I've spent my life navigating what it means to belong—to be both and neither. And now, after learning to embrace who I am, the 2020 Modified Age and Race Census reduces me and many other Americans to something singular. I am not singular. I am the sum of every language spoken to me in love. And I urge fellow mixed people to hold onto all the parts of themselves that don't fit neatly into any Census category. Being mixed was never the problem. Erasing parts of ourselves to keep our communities divided is.