r/hapas

I’m 30F, Wasian, and my boyfriend (30M) is Indian (Tamil) and grew up in India before moving to the US. We’ve been together for about 2.5 years and have a genuinely good relationship. We’re at the age where marriage and eventually children are becoming real considerations.

For some additional context about my background, my bio parents are AMWF, but my biological mom passed away when I was very young, so I was raised by my Korean stepmom starting at the age of 6. I consider my stepmom my mom, so when I say “my mom” throughout this post, I’m talking about her.

Although I’m Wasian, I’m mostly/full Asian-passing. I’d say people sometimes assume I might be part Latina, but usually people think I’m a Southern Chinese girl with light big brown eyes who dyes her hair brown. However, I’ve never strongly identified with Korean culture despite being raised by two Korean parents, especially since my mom was extremely pro-Korean culturally to the point where she embodies some of the worst stereotypes of a Korean woman. She was very superficial, would plan with me which plastic surgeries she’d get me when I turned 13, powdered her skin white despite being naturally tan, only wanted me around Koreans, was obsessively into K-pop, etc. She was also pretty emotionally abusive but that's another story for another day.

Thankfully, I grew up in a very integrated part of Seattle where my schools were racially diverse and friend groups weren’t segregated by race. People tended to group themselves around sports, classes, theater, interests, personality, etc. My friends were mostly white and different types of Asian (East Asian, Southeast Asian, Wasian, Indian and even a couple of Asian/Indian mixes), but I also had a very close Hispanic best friend.

Race just wasn’t something I thought about very much. Most of my friends in college also happened to be white because I went to school in a predominantly white environment. Because of how I grew up, I always had a very strong individual identity and didn’t see myself as belonging to any particular “culture,” but rather as my own person.

In terms of my dating life, I’ve dated a Wasian guy and a white guy, who my parents didn’t really like because they weren’t very driven, wealthy, or well-educated. My parents were NOT accepting of my Mexican ex because of “culture reasons,” which I understood better later on. So I truly thought they’d be okay with my Indian partner because his culture aligns enough with East Asian culture in certain ways, and also because he’s ambitious, successful, comes from a well-off family, is well-educated, and treats me really well.

It’s been 2.5 years and my mom is still praying to God that we will break up, while my partner and I are planning our next steps together soon.

I’m repeatedly told that our kids will be “too dark,” unattractive, that they’ll have identity problems even in places like Seattle, NYC, or the Bay Area because they’re Korean/white/Indian, that they won’t fully belong anywhere, that they’ll experience discrimination, and that I’ve unnecessarily limited where we could live because I chose an Indian partner. They said Trump has made the country more anti-Asian and also anti-Indian, and I'm doing my future children a huge disservice by being with an Indian man.

My mom also has repeatedly told me I'm "wasting my beauty" and not giving it to my future children if I marry my partner, and that is messing with my head too. Especially since most of her Korean friends' children are either with Asian American men or white men, and that makes her feel really jealous from what she tells me.

They’ve also repeatedly told me that my boyfriend will suddenly become controlling or aggressive after marriage despite there being no behavior in our actual 2.5-year relationship supporting that prediction. Their reasoning is based on stereotypes they have about Indian men.

Now I catch myself obsessively thinking about hypothetical children who don’t even exist yet, such as whether they’ll be discriminated against and whether they’ll be able to feel like individuals rather than constantly being categorized by their ancestry. I truly grew up in such a wonderful, diverse environment where people rarely made race a big deal or used it to define each other.

The part that makes me particularly sad is that one of the things I valued most about my own upbringing was having the freedom to develop a strong individual identity. Being mixed and having Korean ancestry were facts about me, but they weren’t the organizing principles of my personality or social life. I want my children to have that same freedom.

For people who have watched attitudes toward race change over the past 10 to 20 years, do you think things are genuinely becoming more accepting for multiracial children and interracial families? By the time children we have several years from now are actually old enough to attend school, do you think having East Asian/white/Indian ancestry will be relatively unremarkable in diverse American cities? I’m especially interested in hearing from East Asian/South Asian mixed people, other multiracial people, parents of mixed kids, teachers, younger Gen Z people who recently went through school, or anyone raising children in places like Seattle or the Bay Area.

I think what I’m hoping for is that they can grow up in the kind of environment I mostly had, where their classmates may know they’re mixed/Asian, but it doesn’t have to be the defining thing about them. They can just be individual kids with their own personalities, interests, friends, hobbies, and identities.

My wife and I heard a story today that was so unintentionally funny I had to share it.
We have a family friend—let’s call her Lily—who is Chinese and has been dating a Black man, Marcus, for several years. Marcus is genuinely a sweet, kind, thoughtful guy. The issue is that Lily’s mother has strongly disapproved of her daughter dating a Black man for years.
To be fair, there are also some legitimate, completely race-independent concerns about Marcus. He’s bounced between several jobs, hasn’t really established himself financially or professionally, and has said he’d rather focus on pursuing music than prioritize a stable career. But Lily’s mom’s opposition predates most of that, and race has very clearly been part of it.
Anyway, my wife was talking to her own Chinese mother today. Their families are friends, so Lily’s relationship came up.
Her mom suddenly says she wants to share a “success story about an interracial couple.”
Great. Maybe this is going somewhere positive.
She tells my wife about another Chinese family she knows. Their son, who was in his mid-30s, had been dating a Black woman for several years.
Eventually the girlfriend spent a few days with his family on the East Coast. The dad came away feeling that something was “off.” According to him, she wasn’t particularly warm or cordial, mostly kept to herself, didn’t offer to help with dishes, and didn’t make much effort to engage with the family.
There were also some things that made the parents question how prepared she was for adult life. At one point it came up that she didn’t really understand what a mortgage was. They also discovered she didn’t have a credit card after the dad took her shopping and bought her some dresses.
Later she spent time with the son’s mother, who independently came away with basically the same impression: distant, not very engaged with the family, didn’t help around the house, etc.
So the mom eventually sat her son down. Her message was essentially:
You’re in your mid-30s. You need to decide what you’re doing. If this is the woman you want to spend your life with, commit to it. If she isn’t, stop wasting both of your time.
The girlfriend heard about the conversation, got very upset, and wanted to talk directly to his mother. The mother suggested they wait a week so everyone could cool down first.
A week later, the son called his mom and told her the conversation wouldn’t be necessary.
He had broken up with his girlfriend.
And that was the end of the story.
My wife sat there for a second waiting for the part where the parents accepted the interracial relationship, or the couple got married, or everyone learned something.
Nope.
Apparently, in Chinese-mom terms, the interracial relationship was a success because they successfully ended the interracial relationship.

I linked part 1 and 2 of the Video from an Influencer explaining the situation.

I can't say I am surprised, this happens far more often than people would like to admit, I feel for all of these children. Imagine finding out your father abandoned you and your mother and told your mother to just abort you.

There seriously needs to be a change in mindset in Asia, people need to stop enabling these scumbags.

I am honestly at a loss for words, I know for a fact this guy is not the only one doing stuff like this. The white supremacy mindset is set deep into a lot of Asian countries culturally, with equating Success, Money and influence with European/White people.

I had to have a talk with a cousin of mine as well, to tell her to not blindly date some guy just because he is white. Her reasoning was literally "Wouldn't it be cool to have a white Husband". Seriously getting headaches from bullshit like this.

Especially normal White-Asian couples would profit from shit like this stopping, fetish relationships of any kind do no good and usually end up harming the children who have to navigate the fucking mess their parents left behind.

God help these children, they will need it.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db_F3AKPqQh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==&igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db_GbCvPhgW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==&igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Just curious about how well the average hapa person ages compared to the average Asian person. Asians are known for having great skin and aging very slowly, whereas white people are known for the opposite, so I'm wondering if hapas also inherit the aging genes from their Asian side, or if they usually age like their white/non-Asian side, or is it somewhere in the middle?

Anyone feel a sense of awkwardness being caught up in Asian peoples' obsession with white people? It's like seeing this perpetual online fetishization of white men and women and this obsession with mixed babies and in real life nobody cares because I look too Asian or at least Central Asian / low status.

I feel like when people imagine a half Asian they just imagine a brown haired white guy with Mediterranean features.

On top of that I feel like other half Asians out there always look at me like "hey another product of whatever my parents dynamic was" and I want them to just leave me alone.

I did time having to deal with open racism against Asians and I genuinely do not want to be involved in any of this.

The worst part is that people just look for what they want to see. Asian people look at me and say "oh wow another Asian person," but self hating Asians always seem disappointed that I look more on the Asian side, and then on top of that not once in my entire life was I called a cute mixed baby or gotten a tiny fraction of the glaze people throw on 'Wasians' online.

Please help. I’m out of my depth on this one.

My five year old started kindergarten this week.

His father is first generation Korean with a Korean passport. His dad, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins are all full Korean and speak Korean fluently.

His mother’s side is Appalachian Scots-Irish. They’re all blonde hair, blue eyed, thick Appalachian accents. They are farmers, carpenters, and eat liver mush regularly.

Our son spends half his time in the Korean community: Korean church, Hangeul school, Korean family.

The other half is spent traveling to very rural Appalachia. Think homesteading, blue ridge mountains, redneck culture etc

As naive as this sounds - we have never racialized anything. He speaks Korean, yes. He also can understand a thick Appalachian accent. He eats kimchi and cornbread. He listens to k-pop and country music in the same playlist. It’s not a big deal.

Today, after his first week of kindergarten, he started crying in the hallway. He told his mother that “white mommies should have white babies” and that he was the “ugliest boy.” He went on to say that he didn’t look like his Korean cousin or friends… and that he didn’t look like his white cousin either. So therefore, he was ugly.

I am shaken to my core over this. I don’t notice race. We treat people as individuals. Yes, the Appalachian and Korean communities don’t mix - BUT he spends equal time in both.

I tried to comfort him but he didn’t seem to accept it. I have NO clue where a FIVE year old is getting this.

What do we do? Are we over reacting? Is he being bullied at school? How do I make him feel like he belongs in both communities and is handsome & loved in both? Do we ignore it and move on? Where does a small child get these ideas??

I found out recently from my grandpa that my mom wanted to marry a white man since she was in middle school. He said that she wanted to have a mixed kid and that's why she dated white men. She always wished to be mixed.

Now I am the product of that wish and I hate it. I don't feel asian enough and my mom has never made the effort to help me embrace my culture. Instead she made sure to ridicule me for acting "too white". Her and my grandma almost exclusively speak another language to each other and I feel so isolated (they refuse to teach me the language). She never believes that I struggle with being mixed. She always tells me how fantastic it is to be mixed.

I don't feel human. I feel like a placeholder for what she wanted. None of the other hapas that I have met IRL feel this way so it is truly an agonizing experience.

Sometimes (oftentimes) I wish I was mono racial so this pain would go away.

My dad is Filipino, mom is white. I didn’t grow up with my dad, though we’ve grown closer since I turned 18. My mom comes from a big Mormon family and I stopped believing in that religion when I was like 15. I’m fluent in Spanish because I went to dual immersion school since I was in Kindergarten (my mom was hoping I could go to Latin America someday to be a missionary 🤣). Instead, I studied abroad in Spain last semester and absolutely loved it.

And a crazy thing I found out is that my dad is actually a Spanish citizen. He worked there before I was born and gained Spanish citizenship because they give Filipinos and Latinos citizenship after 2 years of working there. I can get Spanish citizenship through my dad, and I plan on doing that, moving to Spain and starting my life there. I’ve been to the Philippines too and I enjoyed it but I can’t see a future for myself there. I don’t know the language, so I don’t think I’ll ever truly fit in. Plus I don’t know my family over there very well. And I definitely don’t fit in with my mom’s family at all. They’re weird

At this point, I just want to go through life as a Hispanic person. People already think I’m Hispanic because of my last name and my appearance. If people ask, I will always tell them I’m Filipino/white. But otherwise, they can just assume I’m Hispanic like they already do. Is that a problem? Hispanic is more of a cultural label rather than genetic

I HATE when people tell me this. I’ve even been told this by hapa men who were trying to hit on me & I was immediately turned off. You know how irksome it is to be called “unique” so don’t call a hapa woman you’re crushing on “unique”!

My father's people are very few in number and there aren't many resources for learning it.

I've made on and off attempts at learning it for the past decade, beginning age 15, now 26.

I've tried using what little online resources there are. I wasn't able to get very far and I believe I am responsible for that as I could have kept going but always stopped after starting.

Less my fault is the fact all the Kayah speakers I reach out to are busy or uninterested. Now, they have the right to be, and I take responsibility for not pressing people as much as I could have. I don't want to irritate people, so I don't want to push too much. I think that's reasonable but it leaves me in a position where I have no one to help me.

Recently I was in conversation with a woman who is admin on a Facebook page dedicated to teaching people Kayah. We spoke and she invited me to online Kayah practice she held with another non-native speaker. These meetings were meant to start this month. I checked Facebook and saw she has blocked me. I don't know why.

I then asked my sister - the same racial makeup as me - if she wanted to learn it together with me. She's also uninterested.

New plan is to just hit the online resources consistently and to listen to Kayah music when I work.

Mark this post I will have proficiency by this time next year.