(piano music)
- I was born in the 1980s to an African-American father
and a Korean mother.
Growing up in my house,
I have to say that I'm very fortunate to have
the family that I have because my dad was always there.
Every time we had some sort of school function
or like a terrific kid ceremony or honor roll ceremony
or I had a football game,
he was the guy with the big old camcorder.
♪ Happy birthday dear Cedric ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
(group cheering) (group applauding)
My dad was in the Air Force at the time.
So the first couple of years of my life,
we lived in several different places.
But then at the age of five, we landed in Fayetteville,
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is a military town.
And that's where I would spend the majority of my life.
It wasn't uncommon for me to see Black families,
white families, Asian families.
So I think growing up as a kid,
I never really felt that I was different
when I was super young.
When I was in elementary school.
I just thought, you know, I was just a normal kid.
But it wasn't until I got the nickname
Black Chinaman that I started realizing
maybe my ethnic makeup being mixed,
maybe it's not the best thing in the world.
Maybe I am a little different.
And so I started to develop a little bit
of insecurities as a kid.
And so I went through different phases
where I would identify with a certain types of music
and certain styles,
and I would try to live that life.
And I would try to speak a certain way,
and impress certain people.
And then I would also just do a 180
and start to dress a different way
and speak a different way.
There were periods of times where I would
just hang out with Black friends.
I had a Black friend group.
And then there were periods of times
where I would hang out with a lot of Korean people,
and half Koreans 'cause there were a lot
of half Koreans in the town that I grew up in.
So I just, I just didn't have a good,
a good understanding of self
and a good understanding of identity.
My dad would always tell me,
"Don't worry about what people think.
"Don't let them look down on you,
"and ultimately, respect people," you know,
"even if they hate on you,
"even if they look down on you, call you names,
"always try to treat them with respect."
And those were the lessons, especially as a kid,
that had a very profound impact on how I view people,
especially people who may not share the same views
on race and respect that you do.
So I attribute that to my dad who was a man that lived
through the civil rights movement.
He lived through segregation,
and that has really helped me get through
those difficult times as a kid,
where I realized I was different
and people would treat me a little differently.
Again, I attribute that to my parents
because they really fostered love in our family.
And they really taught us well.
In my high school years is when I realized
the most important part of my identity
wasn't my race or culture, it was more my faith.
And so I started getting involved in church.
My mom went to Korean church
and she took me and my sister along.
And so naturally, like a lot of other Korean kids growing
up in the States whose moms went to Korean church,
you just get involved and that becomes your friend group,
you know, with the other kids.
I started to really not focus so much
on my cultural background,
but I started focusing more on my faith
and learning how to just walk as a Christian.
Now that I look back,
I realize that during that period of time,
there was a lot of missed opportunity
for me to really dive into both sides of what made me me.
Because I didn't want to necessarily identify
as a Black or a Korean first,
I think I missed opportunities to really look
into both cultures, to look into the culture of my father.
How did my family get to where they were on my dad's side?
My mom, I knew she came from Korea,
but I was like, well, she's in America.
So I didn't, I wasn't really super curious
about asking her questions
of how it was in her life growing up.
And that's something that I regret during that time
because that could have really impacted me
and my sense of self early on.
Discovering my identity,
that journey has led me to move to South Korea.
(laughing)
(speaking Korean)
When I was a kid, I remember my mom used to always go
to the Korean store and she would rent these VHS tapes.
That's where she would consume her dramas
because we didn't have the internet at the time.
She would always watch either Korean news shows
or she would watch Korean variety shows on these VHS tapes.
And I would just watch it with her
'cause she's watching in the living room.
And I always wondered what it would be like to live
in Korea because it was just such a different world
from what I knew and how I grew up.
And so even as a kid,
I've always had this little like curiosity of,
"What if I lived and grew up in Korea, how would that be?
"How would my life be different?"
And that little curiosity never left me.
And so when I lived throughout my 20s,
that curiosity never left.
And I'm like, "What would it be like to live in Korea?"
At the time in my late 20s,
I wasn't married and I wasn't in a serious relationship.
So I was just thinking if there's ever gonna be a time
for me to move to Korea to just
live it out for a little bit,
then now would be the time before I get settled
and meet someone, perhaps have a family.
And so I made a decision to find a way to move to Korea.
You know, being biracial,
especially when you're in between two different cultures,
you get this pressure and this expectation
to sort of be the representative of both sides,
and to really treat both sides exactly the same
and to approach both sides exactly the same.
And with me, internally,
I'm just so proud of being half Black.
I'm so proud of being half Korean.
Sometimes from the outside,
there's almost this expectation of,
"Well, if you're gonna go to Korea,
"you're gonna move to Korea to explore Korean culture,
"then why not move to Africa?
"Why are you in Korea and not Africa?"
You know, I've actually gotten these sorts
of comments from people on the outside.
And my answer to that is simple.
Because my dad passed away in 2010,
he's left with me an incredible legacy,
but my mom is still alive.
And I really want to continue to grow closer to her
and to understand more about who she is
and what makes up who she is,
and to be able to even just communicate
even better with her.
And so I felt like it was just the right choice
for me to choose to move to Korea.
That's my answer.
You know, I'm a Black and Korean man,
a half Black, half Korean,
but the longer that I live here in Korea, it's weird.
It's like on one hand,
my sense of self and identity
is validated even more
in that I am happy with who I am, totally happy.
But on the other hand, there's this other struggle of
I feel like I still don't fit in.
I felt that a little bit growing up
and I went through a period of,
"I'm happy with who I am here in America
"and take it or leave it, this is me."
But the thing is, moving to Korea,
I oftentimes, and this is just me being honest,
I oftentimes struggle with feeling like I am Korean.
As a lot of people who live in Korea
who are either half Korean,
or they're foreigners,
or they're Korean adoptees,
we always feel like we are on the outside.
We're not totally, we'll never totally be Korean.
It doesn't matter if I'm half Korean or if my mom's Korean.
But there's this sense of you're still different.
You're still "waegukin",
you're still an outside person.
I think that that's something
that I have to just wrestle with.
That is something that I have to discover
and I have to go through this.
I have to go through these feelings
to be able to really redefine
what it means to be me.
So my time here in Korea, it's only been a couple of years,
and I do plan on staying here even longer to explore more.
Even though I'm a man in my thirties, you know,
I gone through different periods
of being confident in who I am
versus being a little insecure.
I think all of that makes up the journey
of where I'm heading.
And so I'm not done with this journey.
I still feel like there's still a lot for me to explore,
still a lot for me to understand,
to hopefully develop a more empathetic approach to people
and to love people more and to respect people more.
That's where I hope this journey will take me.
My name is Cedric Stout,
and this is my Korean American story.
(inspirational piano music)