Kristen & Josiah

​Dream Hotel, Chelsea, New York

10/22/2015
My recorded interview with Kristen & Josiah lasted 35 minutes and 1 second.

Josiah: "I'm black, chamorro, which is Guamanian from the island Guam, Native American and Spanish."

Kristen: "And I'm everything else. I'm Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, French, Italian..."

Kristen: "It just so happens that I fit the stereotype. We try to keep it real as best we can so if I happen to act like an Asian driver, then that's what I am."

Josiah: "Legit, my favorite foods are chicken and watermelon."

Josiah: "We actually traveled to this place called Whitley County in Indiana. The population was probably like 5, 000 or 3, 000, something like ridiculously small and they were almost entirely all white."

Kristen: "We saw one other black person."

Josiah: "They kind of like looked at us, maybe they didn't see her as white, but they didn't see her as black and they for sure saw me as black so they had their opinions and some people even made comments. One lady said, 'Oh we're here, it's Whitley county but there are so many white people that we call it White-ley county. And I'm in the car like do you not know I'm black, do you not know that I'm right here next to you? Those are just some of the small things we've encoutered being an interracial couple traveling through the United States alone."

Josiah: "He said something like 'I'm glad that you didn't turn out like those other thugs.' My own grandpa told me that."

Kristen: "One thing I recently learned--his family is from the South and we were talking about what I do as a job and it's not like we were talking about race but the issue of what I look like--well not the issue--but basically what I'm saying is his aunt considered me a white woman and I don't consider myself white... I thought that was interesting because no one's ever called me that before...I kind of just chuckled inside and when she left, I was like 'Do I look white?'"

Josiah: "In the South, if you're not black, you're white."

Josiah: "Even just going to see her family in Hawaii...her grandma was just like...what did she call me?"

Kristen: "So basically there's a word in Hawaii that means black, like you're black. But she called him: 'Oh, are you colored?' I was like oh my gosh. That's my grandma's sister. She literally said to his face, 'Oh, are you colored?' I was so embarrassed."

Josiah: "It's also that generation. The older generation, they don't sugarcoat anything. Whatever they feel, they're just gonna say it and they're at the age that where no one's gonna stop them or tell them anything different. It was just interesting to see that immediately, that side of her family was like 'Oh are you colored?' but then it's like well yeah, is it a problem that I am?"

Kristen: "We just laughed about it after... like did she really ask that?"