Cultural Identity?

I never really thought about my cultural identity until I came to college and was kind of forced to think about it in class. It's interesting, I suppose--fairly unique, in a way. I was born in Korea. Lived with a foster family until I was adopted at four months old by a white middle class couple living in suburban New Jersey. Same for my sister, who is three and a half years younger than I am. She was seven months when she arrived.

We grew up in a predominantly white town. Culturally, we are white. Alec Baldwin's character on 30 Rock tells a white man on the show that, "Socioeconomically speaking, you're more like an inner city Latina." Well, socioeconomically speaking, my sister and I are white. White-washed, Twinkies, what have you. I mentioned this in a rant about a year ago, actually. I never really thought about this until college though.

Here, I do meet other Asians who have this presupposition that I can identify with them as an Asian girl. Except, only on the surface am I an Asian girl. Nearly all of my friends in elementary and secondary school were white. I can think of maybe six or seven total that weren't. Most of them came from Asian families that still held some of their cultural values beyond assimilation. I have no Asian cultural background at all. This doesn't bother me. I am what I am. But what I am is not what people assume. Which I enjoy, on some level. But on others, it's frustrating. It's another inherent contradiction. Just last night, I stopped by my friend's apartment. Before I'd gotten there, she'd told a friend of hers who didn't know me that I was coming. Later, he told me that he'd been surprised to see that I'm Asian because my name is so Irish.

I'll get back to this later. I for real need to sleep.