These two aspects of my identity and upbringing play a critical role in feeding my anxiety around identifying as a person of color.
For the first 18 years of my life, I didn’t even know the term ‘people of color’ existed. I primarily identified as Chinese, Burmese, and sometimes Asian. I only learned of the term and started adopting it in college when I became active in social justice movements on campus and learned about white supremacy and the racialization of non-white people in America. These days, as a social justice educator and facilitator, I have acclimated to the term simply because it is the currently accepted term for describing non-white people. But deep in my psyche, I have long had my issues with the term and a palpable discomfort with identifying as a person of color.