It’s odd and sweetly ironic that the one time in my education when learning about colors was such a large part of the curriculum was also the small chunk of my life when I did not think to consider the colors in my own family.

We learned the spectrum in kindergarten: red, blue, green, black, white. We learned to mix two shades to get another. We learned that mixing too many would create a brownish mess. We were taught to identify the color of everything we saw, except, of course, one another.

The board could be black. My Roos-brand tennis shoes could be white. But no one, to my recollection, ever looked at Chuck or Shawna and said, “Mrs. Clausen! They’re black too!” People were not colors.

But that was grade school, and my ignorance did not last long, though I think I enjoyed the bliss of it longer than most biracial children. I remember learning of my own ethnicity mainly through the taunts of other children.

I was called the normal curse words, but more than once there was an added zing: chinky or gook or Jap. Sad that I understood the expletives more than why they thought I was Chinese or Japanese. I am neither.

My mother is Taiwanese and my father is white. Any child must look upon his own family as the most normal of situations until they learn otherwise, and this was the case for me. My vocabulary did not include the words bi-racial, mixed or interracial marriage until recent years, and even now I do not use the terms to refer to myself or my family. My classmates knew before I did that we were not the typical white American family.

Living among two cultures is difficult. The remarks about bi-racial children not being white enough for the white kids and not colored enough for the colored kids are clich‚ but true. If I say I am Asian, I am told either nobody could “tell” I was Asian, or that I am not “really an Asian, just part.” If I say nothing about my ethnicity it’s ultimately questioned, and people are quick to remark they knew I was not white because of my “slanted eyes,” but they couldn’t tell what I was.

I am not a what. I am a person. I am a left-handed, vegetarian, biracial college student studying English and journalism who was raised in Los Angeles, England and the Midwest and is now attending a state university literally in the middle of Iowa. I am unique. I have a weird name. I am a mutt.

But I am not a what.

I have been under the microscope for years, placed on a slide as a prime example of a half-breed. I like fried rice and spring rolls. I like martial arts movies, too. Yes, I own “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” But many non-Asian people can say the same thing.

I do not know karate or Mr. Miyagi. I don’t have “one of those big hats like Rayden from `Mortal Kombat'” and I cannot do complicated calculus equations in my head. And nowhere in my room can you find a gong or kimono or other icons Americans have come to identify with Asian culture.

People assume because only one of my parents is Asian I will be okay with rude comments. “You’re not really Asian,” a friend told me. “Just half.” Does that nullify half of me? Why not omit the white part of my heritage? I do not look at my friends and say “Well, you’re only half fat. Let’s make fun of really fat people!” or “I’m confused about this part of who you are. Let’s pretend it does not exist, except perhaps when you are drunk and more jovial.”

It’s humiliating when someone I am dating tells me how intrigued their friends and family are about the “new Asian boyfriend.” After meeting the parents, there are comments about me not being nearly as Asian as expected (a sigh of relief from the old-fashioned grandmother, a sigh of disappointment from the younger brother who expected Jackie Chan). I am, instead, demoted to being only part Asian, and therefore only part interesting and exotic. I am the exhibit at the zoo only the stupid children will stop at.

“This colorful breed of human is the result of an experiment conducted on an Air Force base in California. He’s not good at math, but loves to read and enjoys odd foods that you do not.” This is as far as anybody would read on my plaque before realizing a full-blown Asian was in the next cage. And there I would sit, half on a straw mat meditating, half on a Lazy Boy recliner watching football.

This is how I live to many people – there is no medium between the two bizarre cultures. East met West and Cavan appeared. Then both parties rushed back to their own hemisphere and never spoke again, leaving the boy to straddle the globe in a constant state of confusion.

I am still a person. Not a culture clash, zoo exhibit or science experiment. Being biracial affected my childhood in a way in which I was not even aware, and I am just now starting to recognize how my cultural background influences my decisions, views and personal identity.

Maybe I do fit certain stereotypes, especially as I clamor to identify with my Asian heritage. And while I wish it weren’t stretching the truth to say that everybody else is as comfortable with my cultural identity as I now am, that’s an idyllic world still in the making.

Until that day comes, I’m just fine chowing down on fried rice and apple pie.

Cavan Reagan is a junior in journalism and mass communication and English from Bellevue, Neb. He is the research assistant for the Daily.