Korean, Without Qualifications

Source: Anna Shvets/Pexels

Like many football fans around the world, I watched with great interest and appreciation for the historic moment: 16-year-old Casey Phair just became the youngest player ever to play in a Women’s World Cup match, entering the game as a substitute for South Korea during their group match against Columbia. Truly, a historic moment.

As a cross-cultural psychologist, and as a Korean American straddling two heritage cultures, I was also curious to peruse the media coverage of this event. I observed that while ample coverage focused on Casey’s youth (“What were you doing when you were 16?” was a rhetorical question asked by an awestruck commentator on my American broadcast), others were quick to name Casey’s biracial Korean American identity in their coverage. Among reports focused on the latter, many were positive or neutral in their tone. But in reading them, I could not shake off the feeling that some of the coverage still came across as not fully embracing the Korean identity of multiracial individuals, or uncomfortably elevating the biracial identity in a tokenizing manner. This type of societal struggle is not constrained to one culture; multiracial folks around the world can experience marginalization and otherization by those in more privileged social locations. But in a context like South Korea, which is still largely homogeneous in its ethnic and racial make-up, societal understanding about and acceptance of multiracial folks especially need continued reform.

As such, I wanted to share a few ways to positively alter individual and collective attitudes toward multiracial individuals. These are just a few initial thoughts triggered by the current event of seeing Casey Phair play for South Korea. Although I am not a biracial individual myself, I have appreciated the opportunities to learn from multiracial scholars and practitioners who are actively involved in telling their stories. For one powerful example, see Becky White’s creative online work titled The Halfie Project.

Here are some ideas:

Honor the process. That is, recognize that identity development is dynamic, and that no two biracial individuals sharing the same combination of cultural heritages are going to emphasize the same identity or identities. Some might be “further along” in committing to a particular identity; others might be exploring still; yet others might not particularly care to explore their multiple identities.

Watch your language. That is, reform the descriptors that you might have internalized along the way to refer to biracial and multiracial folks. I recently heard from a colleague that they have decided not to use the term “half ____” or “quarter ____” to refer to their own multiracial and multiethnic identities but to instead fully identify as they desired, without any kind of qualification or tempering.

In many of the articles that I read about Casey Phair, the Korean term 혼혈 [hohn-hyeol; literally translated as “mixed blood”] was used to describe Casey’s racial identity. Although this is a still widely used term in the Korean language, with increased globalization in South Korea reflecting the rapid growth in multiracial families, the need for a more inclusive Korean term to refer to biracial and multiracial folks seems pressing. Again, see Becky's The Halfie Project for more in-depth coverage of this Korean term.

A compliment does not always feel good. That is, microaggressions directed at multiracial individuals are not always negative in content – indeed, sometimes they are intended to flatter – but they can be hurtful in their impact. A common example of microaggression experienced by multiracial individuals is the exoticization of their multiracial background (Nadal et al., 2011).

I hope that as the global community engages in the Women’s World Cup and reflects upon the intersection of various cultures among the participants, we will continue to honor and respect people’s journey in their identities, adapt language that is inclusive and not degrading or dehumanizing, and examine the potential unfavorable impact of our well-intended actions and comments toward folks from minoritized cultures.