“I looked a little more minority, and she looked a little more white.”

Season 1 Episode 6 — October 28, 2024

This episode is supported by Pacific Mercantile Company.

For Alyssa Nilemo, growing up mixed race in Colorado was akin to what Unaffiliated voters experience. She was connected to two opposing worlds but fully at home in neither. Her brother Chris reflects on how their upbringing forced them to mediate conflicting feelings about their identities, ultimately shaping their distinct paths. While Chris leaned into Japanese culture, Alyssa chose a life dedicated to caring for others.

Featured Guests

Alyssa Nilemo

Donna Inouye

Chris Holland

Rob Preuhs

References

Denver Taiko — denvertaiko.org

Douglas County Voter Registration Statistics — douglas.co.us/elections/voter-statistics

Transcript

[Advertisement] This episode of Middleweight is supported by Pacific Mercantile Company. For 80 years, Pacific has provided essential goods and services for Coloradans. Pacific Mercantile Company: Finest Asian Foods and Gifts.

Toshiki Nakashige: Could you describe your physical appearance?

Alyssa Nilemo: Um, I think that might be the hardest question you’ve ever asked me and not where I thought we were going at all. Um, so I am the tallest woman in my family at 5’6”. And so when I think of myself, I think I’m, like, a very tall human. In Colorado, not so much. In the family I married into, not so much. That’s how I see myself though, as like, I’m a giant. I mean, in my family, I am a giant.

When Alyssa and I record interviews, I typically give her a heads up about what I’ll ask. But even if I surprise her with a new question, she’s great at thinking on her feet. I think this was the only time that I truly stumped her.

Alyssa Nilemo: What do I look like? What do I look like? I am 50% Japanese. The other half is sort of a smorgasbord of European. My understanding is I am probably mostly Swedish-German. So I am very pale from the Swedish-German side, and I freckle. My hair to non-Asian people is black. To Asian people, it’s very brown and curly—which I think is sort of my appearance in all things. Depending on if you are looking at me as an Asian perspective or a white perspective. I think I look very different to different people. You know, my mom is gorgeous. My mom is this beautiful woman. And I don’t necessarily look a ton like my mom. We don’t have the same skin tone. Her hair is, like, silken black. It’s perfect. But people will compliment that my mom and I have the same, like, big smile. And so I think that is the feature that I see myself as is my mom’s smile.

I asked Alyssa about her physical appearance because this is a podcast, and you can’t see her. She’s a person of Japanese descent, and if that’s the only thing you knew about her, maybe you pictured someone else. I also wanted Alyssa to describe her physical appearance in her own words because, based on the context, what Alyssa says might change. She looks different to different people. Alyssa has a Caucasian father and an Asian mother.

Alyssa Nilemo: I think it has been one of the strongest forces in shaping me as a person. I think being biracial to parents who are not biracial had challenges that neither of them anticipated. I think it had challenges for my brother and myself that were very different. I am the most passing of the mixed kids in my family. So between my brother and myself, and three cousins, we’re all mixed, but I am the only one who has ever benefited from being white passing. And that sometimes has made things easier for me. I’m very aware that in some points in my life, it’s made things safer. I have watched very scary, violent things happen to my cousins and to my brother. And I did not have those happen to me. I was only in proximity to them if I was with them. So that definitely shaped a lot of younger experiences. I think my response to that fear was to lean into being as white as possible.

Alyssa is Japanese American, and she’s also white American. She’s both, and being mixed race gave her access to multiple social and cultural spaces. But also at times, she felt like she was neither and fit in in none of those spaces.

Alyssa Nilemo: I think it also contributed to some confusion on belonging. I’ve not always been sure if I am allowed to be a part of the Asian community or if I’m wanted. Sometimes I feel like being mixed is a superpower. I feel like I can codeswitch in ways other people have not had to learn to do, and that that’s been very beneficial in my life. Other times, it’s really frustrating to be biracial. It’s really frustrating to sort of be close to the first generations or so in my family and the community to try to navigate that and express the challenges to people without having people kind of push back or challenge on that.

Especially because of her family’s involvement in the Denver Buddhist Temple, Alyssa strongly identifies as part of the Japanese American community. But based on the conversations I’ve had with her and her brother Chris, I know that it was complicated growing up. What was striking is that the way in which Alyssa and Chris dealt with the Japanese halves of their identities were wildly different. Alyssa sought leadership roles in Japanese American organizations. She found solidarity among the broader Asian American community, which eventually led her to run for political office in Colorado. Chris, instead, immersed himself in Japanese culture. He learned a traditional Japanese craft and left Colorado for opportunities to share what he learned. That path eventually led to him settling down in Japan. Alyssa Nilemo is a fourth-generation Coloradan running for the Colorado House of Representatives District 44. By narrating her story, I reflect on my own civic duty as an American citizen.

Imagine a physics classroom demo on space-time. A heavy object is placed at the center of a stretched-out bedsheet, and as marbles roll across the warped fabric, they follow circular paths around the weight in the middle. What if every part of ourselves was one of these middleweights that attract other bodies in the universe toward us? Welcome to Middleweight, a podcast about the interlacing connections that create communities and cultures. My name is Toshiki Nakashige. This is District 44, Episode 6: “I looked a little more minority, and she looked a little more white.”

I’ve heard Alyssa refer to herself as mixed race, mixed, biracial, half, and, on occasion, hapa, which is a Hawaiian word used to describe people who are mixed race. All of Alyssa’s ancestors on her mother’s side are full Japanese, at least based on the family history they know. And Alyssa’s half Japanese because her father is Caucasian. When Alyssa’s mom Donna showed me the family tree she’d drawn, there was a line connecting Alyssa to her father, Jim Holland.

Donna and Jim met in the early 80s. Donna Inouye: He loved Japanese culture. He was raised Catholic, but he also went through a hippie phase with his older brother and so found Buddhism. So when we met, he was drawn to my Asian face, so when he found out I was Japanese, that was a big plus. Then he found out that I was Buddhist, and he was just overjoyed. And as it turned out, he was a slightly different kind of Buddhism, maybe more Zen. But the fact that I said he could come to temple with me was just—that was something he deeply wanted to do.

Donna and Jim would get married and have kids. Chris was born in 1986, and Alyssa in 1989.

Donna Inouye: I would say when we had the kids, Jim and I were just hippy-dippy enough that we felt having biracial, bicultural kids would save the world because, you know, spread the love, spread the understanding. Of course, it doesn’t work that way, and that was apparent in the people around us, the world around us, their acceptance or non-acceptance of Alyssa and Chris. And so that was disappointing.

Among Asian ethnic groups, Japanese Americans are most likely to marry someone who’s not Asian. For example, a study shows that 55% of Japanese American newlyweds between 2008 and 2010 married someone who wasn’t Asian. That’s compared to the 29% of all Asian Americans who married someone who wasn’t Asian. These numbers are more recent than when Donna and Jim got married, but this general pattern is historically consistent. There are more interracial marriages among the Japanese American community. So Donna’s marriage to a white guy like Jim, in and of itself, wasn’t atypical. Moreover, Donna’s father Herb raised his children to assimilate to American culture, and perhaps a consequence of that was that there were multiple interracial marriages among the family in Donna’s generation. Still, Donna expresses disappointment that the communities in which she raised her children sometimes made them feel uncomfortable for being mixed race. Donna didn’t grow up with a strong sense of Japanese culture. So raising kids with someone who loved Japan, she was excited to give that to her kids. She provided opportunities for Chris and Alyssa to learn different forms of Japanese art, like taiko drumming and traditional dancing called Nihon Buyō.

Donna Inouye:  Jim was always gung-ho on the kids learning Japanese culture, so that was kind of a no-brainer for us. But then his mom, she came to visit one day, and just shook her head. I mean, her disapproval was just very obvious, but it was fair also because Jim mistakenly was telling us that their other half was Irish-American.

You might remember that Alyssa described the smorgasbord of European on her white side to be mostly Swedish-German. But when she was younger, she was led to believe that her last name Holland came from Irish origin. She would even participate in Irish step dancing, thinking that that was part of her ancestry. The more I asked Alyssa and Donna why this happened, the more confusing it got for me, which must’ve been infinitely more confusing for Alyssa. Anyway, Alyssa’s paternal grandmother was sad to see that her Swedish roots weren’t being honored.

Donna Inouye: So his mother said, “Jim, I don’t see anything Swedish here. I don’t hear anything Swedish coming out of your mouth or your wife’s mouth.” She goes, “How are the kids ever going to learn?” And that was the first time I ever knew.

Donna was sensitive to the wishes of her mother-in-law, but to Donna’s credit—

Donna Inouye: Trying to learn about the Swedish culture is hard, and it’s hard to find stuff. I did find a little magnet, refrigerator magnet, Swedish flag. What else did I put up?

Alyssa told me that they also had German children’s books around the house. But she just remembers how terrifying the stories were. Some were about flesh-eating trolls. This incident concerning Jim’s mother is just an example of the countless times that Alyssa experienced a sudden tug-of-war regarding her ethnic and racial identity. The family lived in a house in an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, southwest of Denver. Geographically and demographically, it was similar to the area that Donna grew up in, with majority white students in the public schools. And the family commuted to Downtown Denver for Buddhist activities.

Donna Inouye: If we were at Temple, and so most of the kids there around were Japanese in appearance, then my kids felt they were total Caucasian. But you go to school, and they’re around Caucasian kids, then my kids—“Oh, we look Japanese.” So there was always that little tension for them.

Because she’s fully Asian, Donna didn’t have the same challenges as her mixed race children. But she empathized with the feeling that there was a mismatch between outward appearance and identity.

Donna Inouye: Because I grew up feeling not Japanese enough, I felt like I could really relate to them. You are Japanese enough that not only should you not be picked on for it. But you should be so proud of this, and we should emphasize it because you don’t want to blend in. You don’t want to be like everybody else, completely undoing, you know, what I felt I had been raised like.

Donna encouraged her children to embrace cultures outside of what was deemed American. Alyssa explored European heritage through Irish step dancing. And on the Japanese side, in addition to Nihon Buyō dance, she would practice a Japanese martial art called naginata. Alyssa isn’t involved with either of these activities anymore, but I know that they were pivotal for her to maintain a sense of Japaneseness. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Alyssa wasn’t the only one in her household whose mixed race identity was confusing. Her older brother Chris also had some tough times growing up in the majority Caucasian environment of Jefferson County. Donna recounts an incident regarding her son Chris and a neighbor.

Donna Inouye: One neighbor thought she was doing the good thing, and she told Christopher that he wasn’t Japanese, he was American. And he was only like five. He said, “No, my mom’s Japanese.” And she goes, “Oh, no, no. She goes, no, she’s white, Chris.” And Chris goes, no, she’s not. He was crying, and so I went over there because I didn’t understand why she made Chris cry. And she goes, “I wasn’t saying you were white.” She goes, “I was saying that I think of you as white.” And so I told her—I said, “But you know that’s not a compliment. You know that’s not right, don’t you?” And she goes, “What, what? I mean it as a compliment.” She goes, “It’s no different. You’re no different.” And I said, “Then that means you don’t see me, and you don’t see Chris. You can’t say we’re not different.”

I’m going to give Donna’s white neighbor the benefit of the doubt that she wasn’t trying to be malicious. But regardless of her intentions, I can see that that kind of comment could’ve really messed with Chris’ understanding of the world at that age. This interaction wasn’t physically violent, but I know that Chris also went through some dangerous episodes because of how he looked as a mixed race kid growing up. After this ad break, I get the chance to talk with Chris.

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Chris Holland—Donna’s son, Alyssa’s brother—now lives in the Greater Tokyo Area. I also live in Japan, so before I came to Colorado, I actually met him in person.

Chris Holland: My name is Chris Shigeo Holland. I prefer going by Shige.

Shigeo is Chris’ middle name in the US, named after his great grandfather. Shigeo or Shige is also the name he goes by in Japan and what I usually call him. But because Alyssa and Donna call him Chris or Christopher, which is what he went by in the US growing up, I’m also going to refer to him as Chris for the sake of continuity. Chris is Alyssa’s older brother. They’re about three and a half years apart. Because of their age difference, they didn’t usually attend the same school during the week, but they’d spend every Sunday together engaging in Buddhist activities.

Chris Holland: The Denver Buddhist temple was kind of a cornerstone for us. It was probably one of the more stable elements in our life. And so I think both of us, to some extent, kind of clinged on to the Japanese American community or maybe just to the community surrounding the temple, maybe without even realizing that it was Japanese American sometimes. It was just the community we grew up in. I think both of us recognized issues with the community, with the temple early on. A lot of it had to do with the fact that our family was very involved with community activities, temple activities. Our mother worked there. So I guess we knew what was happening behind the scenes probably more than your average child or teenager would. And maybe we knew too much for our own good. But I think we both felt like action was necessary. There was some type of need for change or for more—I don’t know, something was missing. I don’t think either of us saw a lot of hope for the future if the next generation didn’t pick up where the last generation left off.

I’m not familiar with the specific issues that Chris is referring to. But based on the conversations I’ve had with members of the Japanese American community, not just in Colorado but in other places too, there’s an ongoing battle between honoring tradition and moving forward to keep up with the modern world.

Chris Holland: When I was younger, I got involved into taiko, like the Japanese drumming, wadaiko, with the group in Denver, Denver Taiko.

For Chris, taiko was a way to get in touch with his heritage. Chris says that he didn’t particularly enjoy taiko when he first started lessons as a teenager. But compared to other activities like tea ceremony, he felt that he could get other kids in Denver excited about Japanese culture because hitting big drums was seen as cool.

Chris Holland: Yeah, that was just something that slowly, I guess, just blossomed into something that I did and was taking more and more seriously every year. I think just a fateful encounter at a conference in LA with a pretty famous teacher who teaches in Honolulu. Yeah, they had just started up a fellowship program. And so I just applied and was accepted. And so I went to Hawaii to study taiko there. And then, yeah, from there, I left for Tokyo to play with a professional group here in Tokyo.

Chris spent about ten years with his taiko group in Japan. He eventually quit the group to focus on other aspirations, but I think you could say that he was successful in connecting with his Japanese roots. He now has a Japanese wife and two kids who attend school in Japan. I’ve only had brief interactions with Chris, but I could tell that he’s thought deeply about why he made those big life decisions.

Chris Holland: I think by the time it gets down to us, where we’re like yonsei. When you get to even sansei, yonsei, gosei, the culture thins out a little bit, you could say that. The connections to the culture, to the language—they start to thin out. And so I think I just felt like there was a necessity for some of us to reconnect with the culture, with the language, and then bring that back. And so that was kind of my starting point.

Based on his family’s strong ties to Colorado, I believe Chris’ intention was to return to America in order to, as he says, “bring the culture and language back.” After his grandfather Herb’s death in 2015, he spent a year in Colorado to explore a possible future in the United States. But adjusting to American culture was difficult for his Japanese family, prompting them to return to Japan, where they’ve been ever since. He didn’t say it in these words, but my interpretation is that living in Denver resurfaced a lot of what he experienced as a mixed-race child. In response to what he perceived as a deteriorating Japanese American culture, Chris and Alyssa felt the need to do something about it. Chris chose to devote himself to Japanese culture, and from his perspective, his sister went the other way.

Chris Holland: And I don’t know, you’d have to ask her, but I don’t know how much she felt that the answer to that was going to be cultural, or was going to be the culture or the language, and how much of that was going to be more communal, like kind of almost political, actually. Like, I’m not surprised she’s doing what she’s doing because she’s always trying to organize things, make systems work better, make people work better together, you know, bring different groups of people that don’t normally come together together. So I’m not surprised that she went the political route, even though I think she’s a bit crazy for doing it.

The siblings went down diverging paths to deal with challenges related to their Japanese identities. How Alyssa approaches politics today is rooted in the skills she learned earlier in her life. But what exactly happened during their childhoods to propel them in these different directions?

Chris Holland: I don’t think we grew up with a lot of overt racism, but there’s a very subverted, I mean, not just racist elements to society, but also classist. Like we grew up in a very white community that I think is plagued by divisions, like racial divisions and class divisions.

Jefferson County thirty years ago was essentially experiencing what Douglas County is going through today—rapid urban expansion from Denver causing friction between more affluent and less affluent neighborhoods.

Chris Holland: When I go to school, there’s a palpable—yeah, I hate to say it but—hate between these two groups of people, between minority groups and between rich white people. And I mean, interestingly, the minority groups were cool with the poor white kids. They kind of saw them as, you know, in with them. But both myself and my sister spent years and years and years and years going through multiple identity crises. We’re trying to figure out how to be half white and half Japanese and fit in in that environment. And on top of that, I mean, not being super well-to-do or well off ourselves. It just kind of compounded the situation. And being in that type of environment where minority groups really, really do not like rich white people, being half white was never a good thing.

The Holland and Inouye family lived in a three-bedroom home, but they weren’t wealthy by Denver metro area standards. From Chris’ perspective, their socioeconomic status combined with their race made them doubly the targets of animosity. Chris also experienced misdirected racism because of the way he looked.

Chris Holland: In that same environment, you have white people that are openly, “Eff you beaner! Get the eff out of here!” They’re very openly racist against like Mexicans, whatever. So in the summer, I get a tan. I try to stay out of the sun these days. Unlike my sister, I get pretty dark. But I used to catch a lot of, like, Mexican racism. And it was just weird. I used to be like, A, “That’s not cool, man.” Like, “That’s offensive.” But B, “I’m not Mexican.”

Being mixed race meant that they were phenotypically ambiguous, and this resulted in different social outcomes between Chris and Alyssa.

Chris Holland: We had experiences growing up. And I know talking to my sister later that one of those experiences, I had a white hoodie on. And some white guy with a Slurpee threw his Slurpee at me and messed up my brand new hoodie and said, “Effin’ beaner, go back to Mexico!” And I think my sister told me later on that that was the moment she decided she was white. She didn’t want to be seen as a minority. She didn’t want to be seen as, potentially be seen as a target for that, which I didn’t know until years later. But for me, those same type of events kind of ignited like a revolutionary inside of me. Like I wanted to stick it to the man, I guess. I don’t know.

The Slurpee event happened at a time when Chris looked less like a Caucasian person, but he explains that, for him and Alyssa, how they looked racially wasn’t a static experience.

Chris Holland: Half kids go through phases where they look more white or more, you know, Asian or whatever they are. And they just kind of go through phases. So I think when we were younger younger, she actually looked more Japanese than I did. And then when we got to our teen years, yeah, she started to look more, like, Caucasian than she did Japanese. And I think just when we hit our teen years, the cycle of looking more Asian or more white as you grow just happened to land at that time where I looked more, a little bit more—I don’t even want to say Asian—just like a minority. I looked a little more minority, and she looked a little more white. And I feel like that caused us just to lean into whatever one we happen to look more like at that time. 

For Chris, leaning into his minority side meant immersing himself in Japanese cultural activities like taiko drumming and learning the language.

Chris Holland: I guess when I look back on it, I can remember watching her dance like Nihon Buyō when she was younger. And there were certain times where I felt she looked, like, very Japanese. But then as she got older, like, she grew a lot taller than the other Japanese girls. And it was, like, kind of obvious that she wasn’t, you know, she wasn’t 100% Japanese anymore.

I know that it was important to Alyssa that she hold onto the feeling of being Japanese by devoting time to Nihon Buyō and naginata. But listening to stories about her childhood, I could see this whole other struggle happening. As Alyssa was becoming aware of racism, she started to look less Japanese. She could pass as white in moments when it could benefit her, but it was also at the cost of feeling like an imposter in Asian spaces. As a result, Alyssa developed compassion for people who might have a reason to feel like they’re different from what’s normal. She leaned into the community organizing aspects of the Japanese American community and pursued a career that involved taking care of others. Chris feels removed from American politics, especially now living in Japan. But he and Alyssa talk regularly, so he understands the culture war issues that make nuanced conversation difficult in a local race like hers. Douglas County is majority white and conservative. So I asked Chris, given her mixed race identity, how he thinks the voters in her district might perceive her.

Chris Holland: So I don’t know what the world will perceive her as. I’m afraid that they’ll see her as like, you know, a bleeding heart liberal minority—I don’t know. Which, I mean, in some regards, she kind of is. She, I mean, she is pretty liberal, but in other regards, she really isn’t. And I, if people gave her a chance, I think they would realize that she understands the dynamic of current society probably a lot better than most people. Because we lived through a microcosm of what America is going through right now when we were kids. They would see that, yeah, all these issues everyone’s trying to figure out how to cope with right now, she’s been coping with her whole life.

Living as a mixed race person means that Alyssa has been constantly reconciling competing interests and opposing points of view. And Chris believes that that lifelong experience is a major strength for Alyssa.

Toshiki Nakashige: Thank you so much for your time.

Chris Holland: Yeah, thank you.

Toshiki Nakashige: Yeah.

Chris Holland: Yeah just like—I would clear everything with Alyssa before you put this on the thing.

Chris is a pretty private person, so I appreciate his willingness to speak with me. I know he did it for Alyssa. Chris and Alyssa have taken drastically different paths in life and don’t always agree when it comes to politics, but I can tell how much respect they have for each other. While we’re on the topic of Alyssa’s mixed race identity, there’s a connection that I want to make between how she feels like she doesn’t fit in in racialized spaces and how she feels like she doesn’t fit in in partisan political spaces sometimes. I have a fun analogy. More after this break.

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Up until last summer when she decided to run as the Democratic Party candidate for House District 44, Alyssa was a registered Unaffiliated voter. I’ve actually talked about the upward trend of the number of Unaffiliated voters in Douglas County on this podcast before. But I want to dive a little deeper. This is Rob Preuhs, professor and chair of political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Rob Preuhs: Technically in Colorado, or one of a number of states that asked folks to register or affiliate with a party. And so Republicans, Democrats, but we also have the Green Party, we have libertarians and a few other really smaller parties. So Unaffiliated is essentially you signifying that you are not aligned or don’t feel like aligning with any particular party at that moment that you’re registered.

In Colorado, it’s called “Unaffiliated,” but the term “independent” is also used to describe this type of voter. The Democratic and Republican parties are generally the most powerful groups in our government system today, but there’s a rise in the number of independent voters across the country. It’s significant in Colorado because the Unaffiliated voting bloc is actually bigger than either the Democratic or Republican party individually. In Douglas County, a little less than 50% of voters are Unaffiliated, about 32% Republican, 17% Democrat, and 1% other parties like Libertarian. So why are there so many Unaffiliated voters in Colorado? One explanation is that the state has experienced a rapid population increase in recent decades.

Rob Preuhs: Some of the surveys, data that we know, for instance, suggests that people that move to a state are less likely to affiliate. So we have lots of new migrants from other states. Our growth rate from that those sources have diminished within the last five years. But over the last 20 years, we’ve been one of the top states, destination states. So people get to a state, they’re not familiar with politics, or they just don’t feel like it. And they click Unaffiliated, that’s part of it.

There’s also a growing feeling toward rejecting the two-party system.

Rob Preuhs: Another part of it is this, you know, structural national process, which we’re just seeing more and more people less likely to be inclined to affiliate with one party or another, right. And part of that’s just being disaffected by the parties, or it’s just being sick of the two party system. And then I think a third element here is that, you know, we still have some moderate tendencies. People that are conflicted in terms of which party they would really like to affiliate with.

Speaking with politicians like Mayor of Westminster Herb Atchison and State Representative Bob Marshall, I learned that some people also change their registration to Unaffiliated if they feel that their party has changed and no longer match their own moral values. Rob explains, though, that Unaffiliated voter behavior is often predictable, and only a small fraction of voters actually change which party they vote for from election to election.

Rob Preuhs: For the most part here in Colorado, as is nationally, folks that say respond to polls that say “I’m independent,” or “I’m Unaffiliated.” If you push them a little bit, you ask them, well, do you tend to lean one party or another, they will say, “Yeah, I tend to be Republican,” or “I tend to be Democrat.” And if you push them a little bit more and ask them who they voted for in the last couple of elections, most people, you know, in terms of the full pool, probably at the 80% level, tend to vote one party or the other. And so that, that true, like, “I can go either way”-type of voter really doesn’t exist in mass. But there are, you know, 10 to 15 to 20% that do that. You know, in Colorado, we can be fairly successful kind of predicting the overall orientation in terms of votes, by taking a look at that just ratio between Democrats that have registered as Democrats and folks that are registered as Republicans, and those Unaffiliateds tend to reflect that ratio.

The number of Unaffiliated voters in an area like Douglas County is high, but this means that, based on the fact that 32% of voters are Republican and 17% are Democrat, a political scientist might predict that Unaffiliated voters would vote about 2:1 Republican to Democrat. It’s worthwhile mentioning that Colorado has what’s called a semi-closed primary system. Unaffiliated voters are given the option to vote in either party’s primary election. I’m unsure how prevalent it is at a large scale, but at least anecdotally, I’ve heard of voters registering as Unaffiliated so that they have the option to vote for a weaker candidate in the opposing party’s primary with the intention of increasing the odds of the party they do support in the general election. So to relate party affiliation back to Alyssa and to the cultural negotiations she’s had to make throughout her life, let’s think of Nihon Buyō and Irish step dancing as two political parties. Alyssa has Japanese ancestry. Therefore, she naturally aligns with the Nihon Buyō political party, but she finds that it’s not a 100% match.

Alyssa Nilemo: In Japanese dance, I remember just being mortified every time we had to put on the kimono because I was bigger than all the other girls. And so there were always like these open arguments with the older women when they were dressing about how difficult it was to dress me. And I didn’t fit right. And I was too big. And like they would say these things out loud.

Alyssa isn’t actually that much Irish American but still wants to explore her European heritage. She tries out the Irish step dancing political party but then gets penalized for things about her that she can’t control.

Alyssa Nilemo: And then when I would go to Irish dance, I remember my poor mom just fighting to get my hair to curl, because you get deducted points if your hair is not on point. I think somewhere towards the end, they started to change that in competition. But like, there’s always been this piece where I think I internalized this critique that there was something wrong with me in all spaces. 

Alyssa has an earnest interest to connect with both political dance parties and feels compassion for the members of both groups. Yet she doesn’t feel like she fully belongs to either of them. Until recently, that’s what it was like for her navigating the actual political world. Alyssa Nilemo is now a Democrat, but she doesn’t want that to define the conversation.

Alyssa Nilemo: That is sort of shaped how I lead and feel where I don’t like titles to things like the party affiliation and the purity test, because I have been told my whole life, I’m not right, and I don’t fit. And the last thing I would ever do is create that for someone else. And I do think that’s why you see sort of me have this like, I can work with people across parties and in all spaces and all things because I have never passed a purity test on things in my whole life. And that’s sort of that driving force of how race influenced what I’m doing now.

Alyssa’s Asian and white, Japanese and Swedish-German. And she’s also racially and ethnically Unaffiliated all at the same time.

Alyssa Nilemo: I think I do a lot of things in my life unaffiliated. And it’s absolutely born from that.

If I were to describe her physical appearance, I would say that Alyssa looks like a Japanese American woman. My framework of what it means to claim Japaneseness in the United States is fairly inclusive, so it’s possible that other people don’t see her the way I do. I’ve been following Alyssa’s campaign for more than two months now, and I’ve met so many inspiring people along the way. Like, a college student who regularly volunteers for Alyssa and wants people her age to pay attention to the local issues that affect them the most. I got the chance to speak with Douglas County high school students who attend the school at the center of an explosive debate about transgender issues. I also go canvassing for the first time. Next on Middleweight: District 44.

Iris Pixler: I think no one knows who, like, their state representative is, and I don’t think I would have known unless I met Alyssa.

James: So that kind of sparked a discussion in our school of gender inclusivity, and it almost created a new kind of divide.

Meg Furlow: Have thick skin and a short memory. Not everybody is happy to have somebody at their door. But just move on, and don’t take it too personal.

Middleweight is produced by me, Toshiki Nakashige. The art for the podcast was created by Yoko Takahashi. Music was composed by Tim Greer and performed by Steve Denny and Gary Tsujimoto. For more information about the podcast, please visit middleweightpodcast.com, and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. My name is Toshiki Nakashige. Thanks for listening.