Hi, my name is Desmond Suen Carpenter. I also go by the name 柯宜庭 (ke yiting).
I’m a 22 year old senior at Dickinson College, majoring in East Asian Studies. Last year I spent two semesters (all in all totaling just over 10 months) studying abroad in China.
A bit of family history to put my blog into context: My dad is American, and his ethnic lineage traces back to 3 main European countries, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland. My mother came to the United States when she was 24. Her parents are from Taiwan, although racially they are of Manchurian decent.
So I’m mixed.
My mom passed away when I was five, an experience that has and probably will continue to shape many various aspects of my life and my identity. Along with this, what I would call the other major “shapers” of who I am today are my father, younger sister, and grandma on my father’s side; my love of Chinese kung fu and Chinese culture, my passion for dancing, and the friends who I grew up with and are like family to me.
The topic for this blog is race and racial identity. It would probably be fair to say that it is also about stereotyping, racism, personal identity, and culture, just to name a few. Though a lot of these words may ring in your head as sensitive or heavy topics, I have chosen to approach them through something more humorous (to me at least). Not often a first thought when on one of the topics listed above, being bi- or multiracial is in itself a category of thought that is becoming more and more relevant as the people of the world continue to breed outside of their race.
Now that is not to say that I find all things in this category to be funny, but by introducing my content in the form of/ under the name Mixed Kid Problems, I hope to create a space for ideas and thoughts about important issues to be opened in a semi-casual, possibly dry-humored, manner.
TheTaipeiCup 
Des, this intro was amazingly exhaustive (in a very positive way)! 😉 I love the way you write and the way you want to cover such a complicated topic in a such smart way! Also, because we usually talk about “stereotyping, racism, personal identity, and culture” and so just related to “pure-blood” ethnic diverse or minority people but not about “half-bloods” or using not Harry Potter metaphors, mixed kids! I struggled in writing that sentence both because of my English and because of the topic lol Anyway, one last thing I really appreciated the way you opened up about your family and about your own personal feelings and struggles ( that you will also write more about in the next posts)! Great Job! 🙂
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