My senior year in Chapel Hill, I finally got up the courage to take a course in Asian American literature. Stupidly, I treated it as a little experiment. As an adoptee, I had grown up with white parents in a white town in rural Connecticut. My only knowledge of Asian culture was Chinese food and, when I was growing up, a number of meetings of adopted children that still haunt me, though I realize that my parents had my best interests at heart. They had taken me to these meetings for connection, but what I remember was the disconnect: the awkwardness of forced interaction between children who thought of themselves as white and didn’t want to be shown otherwise. We hated being categorized as adoptees, or I did and I read those feelings into the others, who to me did not seem friendly, or familiar, only more strange for their yellow faces.
Those meetings made me feel classified by my parents as other. One of the things I most remember from that time (and from books like We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo) is the common experience that the adopted child has when one day he looks into the mirror and all of a sudden realizes that his skin color is not the same as his parents’. Up until that moment, he sees himself as white (in the case that the parents are white). I saw myself as white. When I closed my eyes, or when I was in a conversation and seemed to be watching from above, I was a skinny white boy, a combination of my parents, just like other kids. Sometimes, if I am being honest, I still catch myself looking down at my conversations with white people and picturing myself, in that strange ongoing record in my head, as no different from them. As a boy, the one thing that nagged at me was the flatness of my nose. I was constantly tugging on it, thinking that I could stretch it out and thereby gain acceptance.
But let me pause here for a moment. This is going to be a difficult essay to write, and I want to prepare myself—and you, reader—by coming at this topic from a larger angle.
Right now, it seems to me that a similar type of self-contextualizing (through race) is happening on a grand scale in Asian America, as Jeremy Lin takes over sports news and much of AA media references. With Lin’s rise, there has been a feeling, a swelling collective feeling, that we Asians are no different from the other people we see on national TV, almost exclusively white and black. That we are Jeremy Lin, able to play as well as they in “their” arena, the ability of Jeremy Lin pointing to a potential in all of us. The writer Jay Caspian Kang says something to this effect in his Grantland article: “The pride we feel over [Lin’s] accomplishments is deeply personal and cuts across discomforting truths that many of us have never discussed. It’s why a headline that reads ‘Chink in the Armor,’ or Jason Whitlock’s tweeted joke about ‘two inches of pain,’ stings with a new intensity. Try to understand, everything said about Jeremy Lin, whether glowing, dismissive, or bigoted, doubles as a referendum on where we, as a people, stand.” When the disparagements came—as we feared and maybe suspected they would but hoped they wouldn’t—it was like that first time looking in the mirror. We realized that for all of Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments, we as Asians are still different, are still seen differently than other races by the vast majority of Americans.
The truth is, racism toward Asians is treated differently in America than racism toward other ethnic groups. This is a truth all Asian Americans know. While the same racist may hold back terms he sees as off-limits toward other minorities, he will often not hesitate to call an Asian person a chink, as Jeremy Lin was referred to, or talk about that Asian person as if he must know karate, or call him Bruce Lee, or consider him weak or effeminate, or so on. Bullying against Asian Americans continues at the highest rate of any ethnic group. I remember, when I was taking the Asian American literature course, an article in a major magazine that ran pictures of (male) Asian models above the tagline, “Gay or Asian?” I remember a video that went viral last year in which people explained why men prefer Asian women and why women dislike Asian men. Some of the women on the video were Asian American.
As I said, I was treating the AA literature course as an experiment. There were a few white students in class who laughed at the “Gay or Asian?” tag and found little offensive about it, at least until pressed. Maybe the first sign that my experiment was working was the anger I felt toward them. The test, you see, was secretly how Asian I was, or maybe whether I was Asian at all. It was something to do with discovering myself, and how much that self was formed by my birth, which I knew nothing about, and by my birth mother, who had abandoned me, and by the country that had raised me while leaving scars of unknown origin on various parts of my body.
College can be a chance to remake oneself, or to get closer to the foundation of oneself that one gradually moves away from under the influence of peers. I had, in fact, as soon as I got to UNC, attempted to join the Asian American club, but I couldn’t get over how cliquish they seemed, embracing their strangeness, while the truth is that I was trying to get away from those differences. Soon I found myself, with this second chance, once again trying to be accepted by people who looked like my parents, telling myself I didn’t want to be Asian if this was what being Asian meant, being birds of a different feather, expected to be an automatic friend because of race. I had, as you can see, my excuses.
Yet somewhere inside of me, I must have felt that I was growing further from myself. Racist jokes were told with alarming frequency for a school billed the “most liberal in the South,” and I was friends with two groups: one mostly white, mostly Southerners in the same dorm; the other mostly black, with whom I played pick-up basketball. They joked without censor. I had a girlfriend whose aunt and uncle lived in North Carolina, and when we went to visit, they would say that at least I wasn’t black, often before some racist diatribe. This seemed the predominant sentiment then. At least I wasn’t ____.
I was taking the AA course to find out what I was. I hadn’t read much Asian American literature at that time—I think almost all I could add to the class discussion was Michael Ondaatje—and a couple of books planted seeds in me then that would grow into a certain self-awareness later in life. I will always be grateful to Don Lee’s story collection, Yellow. In Lee’s stories, Asian American characters experience racist incident after racist incident, but these incidents are mostly background to their lives as sculptors, surfers, lovers, etc. The characters are very much of the world in which they live, the world in which I lived and a different world than the one in which white people live with the privilege of their color. In class, the white students were incredulous. They claimed such acts of racism could never happen with such frequency. Yet if anything, to me, the racism seemed infrequent, and with minimal effect on the characters’ lives. I had grown up constantly wavering between denying and suspecting that my skin color was behind the fights picked with me, the insults, the casual distance kept up even between myself and some of my closest friends. Sometimes—in retrospect: oftentimes—these incidents were obviously rooted in race. I have been called “chink” and “flat face” and “monkey” many many times. And it is the context of these words that make a child grow uncomfortable with who he is, that instill a deep fear in him. (As a side note: I am married now to a Korean woman who grew up in Korea, and when I mentioned the “flat face” slur to her, she said, “but your face is flat.” Yet how different was this from the leering way it was said to me as a child, something she hadn’t felt as a Korean in Korea.) I was afraid, back then, of myself, as if there were a little Asian person living within me that was corrupting my being, taking me away from the white person I thought I was.
There are still incidents from those days that I cannot get out of my mind. I remember watching, in one middle school class, a video meant to teach us that blackface and sculptures of big-lipped black people and stereotypes of watermelon and fried chicken were wrong. Later that same year, one of my best friends drew a picture of a square with a nose poking off of one side. I knew this was me even before he said it. Sometimes my friends would ask me to do the trick where I put my face against the table, touching both my forehead and my chin to the wood. I thought of this as a special ability, but underneath, I knew I should be ashamed.
I would bet that this friend does not remember drawing me in that one science class. We often drew together. He was in all of my classes that year, as we were allowed two friends to share a similar schedule, and I was the only one who requested him. That he wouldn’t remember this drawing is part of the problem, I know now. He thought of the picture as a joke, though I had never seen him draw caricatures or draw anyone else so simply. Surely a part of him knew what he was doing but didn’t stop him. There was no video to tell him not to—there was no one to tell him not to, even me. I pretended it didn’t bother me.
That was the same year my closest childhood friend suddenly cut me off. We had been inseparable, but at the start of that school year, he made fun of me and seemed to use this attack to springboard into popularity. I spent many nights during those first few weeks of school crying myself to sleep, not understanding why we weren’t friends anymore. It is a wound that still hurts—as I type this, I find my face heating up and my breaths deepening. I still don’t understand completely, but I can point to the fear that this was due to the color of my skin, more than anything, as an indication that it indeed was. I understood even when I didn’t understand, as children can.
In response to the students who didn’t believe the frequency/viciousness of the racism in Yellow, the professor showed us an interview in which Lee says every incident in the book has happened to him. Or perhaps I found this interview later, I don’t remember now. As a matter of research, I thought I would ask a few Asian American authors I know about racist incidents in their books that are based on events that happened to them. Earlier this year, Salon ran a piece by Marie Myung-Ok Lee about a bully who made it into her novel and whom she finally, after many years, confronted. I heard from several writers about experiences making it into their books: how they were unable to get away from writing about those experiences, as unable as they were to stop thinking about them, but hardly anyone seemed to want to call out those past attackers. I spoke with one writer about the condition of anonymity, as the people who had hurt him most were those closest to him.
I think what all of this says to me is that 1. these things happen to all of us, and 2. they leave the type of mark that we cannot escape, that we return to again and again, as writers do.
A few years after UNC, when I was an MFA student at Emerson College (where Don Lee got his MFA and then later edited Ploughshares and taught), there was a rumor going around that in the original workshop stories from Yellow, the characters were white. That Lee made them Asian later. I’m not sure the truth of this statement. In fact, I’m not interested in the truth of it. I’m more interested in the fact that this was a rumor at all. This was something people wanted to talk about, and talked about as if the truer versions of the characters were white. If Lee did use white characters, originally, he is not alone. I know many Asian American writers who refuse to write about Asian Americans, out of a fear of being typecast, or a fear of being seen as “using” their ethnicity, or a fear of being an “Asian American writer,” or something. And really, I understand that. I have been one of those writers. This may not come as a surprise, at this point in this essay, but for a long time, I wrote only about white characters. I wrote about them because I grew up with people like them, but also because they were the people in books and because I, too, feared the label, or at least told myself I did. What that fear really is, it seems to me now, is a fear of not being taken as seriously as the White Male Writer, who has so long ruled English literature.
The breakthrough came when I started to be able to read my own stories objectively. Something was not making sense. Why were my characters who they were? I inserted plenty of flashbacks and backstory to try to “explain” them. But in the end, I realized that what they were missing, in many cases, was a crucial piece of me that had gone into them. They were Asian, like me. Many of them were adopted, like me. The original characters were not the true characters. And “changing” them to Koreans made everything make sense.
For my day job, I organize a seminar at Harvard on the topic of Inequality. I attend these talks both out of responsibility and out of interest. But after two and a half years, I can only remember Asians being mentioned twice, once in direct response to a question by an Asian student. I remember sitting beside another Asian American student and listening to a lecture earlier this year. He said something like, “Nobody ever talks about Asians,” and I said, “Asians don’t exist in Sociology.” We both laughed. It was a joke, but it stung with a certain truth. The time Asians were mentioned not in answer to a question was in reference to university admissions—a heated topic now in the AA community—as numbers show that students of Asian descent make up a disproportionately large percentage of admissions to top schools.
Often I have heard Asians talking about these percentages with pride, even in responding to racism. If attacked, they “point to the scoreboard” of college admissions. Yet it is a very real complaint that Asian descent seems to count against us in those same admissions numbers. Both Harvard and Princeton are currently under investigation on charges of racism toward Asians, whose grades and SAT scores, on average, must be higher than those of other races in order to gain admissions. Many Asian Americans are responding by marking the box on applications that declines to indicate race, something I cannot help but read symbolically. I confess that I would give my daughter that exact advice, in admissions: not to reveal her race. The accusation is that schools have capped their “quotas” of Asian students, and this is why Asians need to score higher, because they are competing amongst themselves for a limited number of spots. Most Asians accept the unwritten rules, pushing themselves or their children harder. But why should they, in a country that prides itself on equal opportunity?
To bring up college admissions is often to be met with the complaint that we should be happy with the success we have. In fact, success is often used as a justification for why Asians are ignored in discussions of inequality. I was forgetting a third mention of Asian Americans in the seminars: as a group other immigrant races should look toward as an example of successful assimilation. Why aren’t we happy with our disproportionate admissions and the many children who grow up to be doctors and lawyers, pushed by their parents? (The more sarcastic answer: why aren’t white people happy enough with EVERYTHING?) Jeremy Lin, early in his success, was called out by boxer Floyd Mayweather as only getting the attention he was getting because he is Asian, since every day black athletes accomplish what Lin has and receive no fanfare. Or something to this effect. Other journalists responded by saying Lin is getting the attention because he worked so hard and is the ultimate underdog. Both these points, it seems to me, have a lot to do with race. Why was Lin an underdog, ignored by scouts when he had succeeded at every level and outplayed the best point guards he faced (see: John Wall, Kemba Walker)? Writers always seem to mention how hard Lin works, and often mention this as a trait of Asian Americans. They mention that he went to Harvard, how smart he is. They mention that he is humble. When I wrote about the “Chink in the Armor” headline for the Good Men Project, a commenter responded by pointing to Asian Americans being too respectful to speak up against racism. This respectfulness, he said, was something he admired about Asians.
It is hard to call someone who thinks he is complimenting you a racist. But the positive stereotypes people think they can use because of their “positivity” continue (and worsen) the problem. Thinking you can call an entire race “respectful” is thinking you can classify someone by race, is racism. Which is what is happening to Jeremy Lin when he is called “hard-working” instead of “skilled,” when his talent is marginalized by a writer who sees him as the Asian American stereotype, the child of immigrants who outworks and outstudies everyone else. Mayweather has one point, at least—other athletes work as hard or harder than Jeremy Lin. I’ve seen the videos of Lin’s workouts, how intense they are, how long, but this is not unusual for a basketball star. Read about Kobe Bryant’s work ethic, or Ray Allen’s, either of which put Jeremy Lin to shame. Jeremy Lin is the success he is because of his individual talent, not because he is Asian American. His ethnicity, I would have to argue, was only a factor in him having to “come out of nowhere,” since that was where Asians have been relegated to in sports.
After ESPN ran the “Chink in the Armor” headline, the writer of the headline made a very defensive apology in which he claimed to be a “good person” who didn’t know the weight of the word he was using. He was fired, and this apology came afterward. When he was first fired, I felt sorry for him. I didn’t think he deserved to lose his job but then his defensiveness came and took that sympathy away. Some on my Twitter feed suggested he didn’t know the term because of his young age. He is 28. I am 29. “Chink” is a very common term, probably the most common slur against Asians, and this was a writer and (I’m assuming) a reader who made his livelihood online. I find it impossible to believe that he hadn’t come across the term in some way. It bothers me to see people make excuses for him. “I’m sorry, but” is not “I’m sorry.” If you believe you can get away with the excuse, then what is that telling me?
A few years after I graduated from UNC, I decided to go to Korea. I had never been back. I was still writing white characters, though I had let a Korean American slip into my novel in a supporting role, a character who never finished his sentences, who was always cut-off or cutting himself off. I was still searching for that Korean part of me. I had spent a long winter in Prague as one of the only Asians in the city, strange in a strange land. In Korea, I fell apart immediately. I ended up losing twenty pounds in two weeks, and I would have run back to the States if not for meeting my wife.
But then a strange thing happened. I got used to seeing Koreans, and was surprised whenever I saw a white person. And after some time, not like the sudden realization in the mirror but a gradual process, I began to see myself as a person from this country. I wrote my first story with a Korean character, and something in it, the vulnerability, the honesty, clicked. In Korea, I had different differences than in America. Not that race was out of the picture—the biggest shock to people was my culture, in spite of my skin color, my inability to speak Korean—but it was like looking at race from the inside out, the opposite of how I had been forced to see myself my whole life. It was a lesson: that I had control over my differences, that I could choose to build them up or break them down, that they were not simply genetic, something that had never been true in America.
49 responses
I am sad to say racism will never truly end, no matter how hard we try to eradicate it; history has proven that. I am and immigrant from Romania–a mongrel of Romanian, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Lebanese blood and DNA. In the summers I become very dark skinned…I have been (jokingly?) called a “terrorist” several times; especially if I leave any length of facial hair un-shaved. I have been profiled and pulled out of line by the TSA (again, “terrorist?”) half a dozen times (out of 8 that I’ve flown since 9/11/01). While attending school in the States starting in the middle of grade 5, I’ve been called a gypsy, a wop, a spic, and…a kike. On job applications or surveys, under “Race” I always write: “the 200-meter individual medley” because…frankly I’m tired of all the bullshit used as excuses (research or stats or whatever other jive they explain for that rubric). Within my own birth country (Romania) there are horrendous biases as well. If one is too dark skinned he is likely a gypsy or a Turk, and “those people” are not to be trusted. If one is perhaps too light, he is likely a Jew, and “those people” are not to be trusted. There are acts of violence to this day against gay and/or transgendered persons; there are antiquated views toward women and violence perpetrated upon them. Wives are husbands’ property and are expected to give them whatever they wish. This country, to my dismay, is dangerously close to returning to 1612 instead of pushing through into the 21st Century and beyond.
I grew up from age 10-12 in inner city Cleveland in the early 80s, and then my family moved to the Wash. D.C. area. I went to public schools in a district which was mostly African-American, all the way until I got into university (University of Maryland, College Park). I was never more at ease, and never felt safer than within the black community, which accepted me for being just another kid. I suppose, besides being a human being, the second thing I had in common with the community was that my family and I were piss poor. Struggling to just get through life, I suppose, united all of us.
I feel most at ease, today, in the same sort of environment in which I grew up. I no longer live in the DC area, but I long for the comfort I felt within what most white people would call “trouble spots” or “dangerous areas.” I can only speak from experience, and my experience was the most positive in that community.
As a 43 year old … white (I suppose) male, a father of an 8 year old girl going into 3rd grade, I am dismayed at the ghastly state in which I find this country and its views on civil rights as well as women’s rights. My mother committed treason in the eyes of the communist government from which she defected. She came to the States because of freedom extended to its citizens. I am seeing that quickly being eroded by culture, attitude, and more dangerously: politics and religion.
Incredibly, both my parents, now into their early 70s, are egregiously racist human beings who watch Fox News and are in agreement with the systematic removal of citizens’ rights based upon their sex or nationality or skin color. I am no longer in contact with my parents; and neither is my daughter. I assume they have disowned me.
Thanks for this piece.
I’m an Asian-American professor who was stunned a couple years ago when one of my students told me her high school basketball team was known as “The Chinks” (in the same way, the reasoning went, that Atlanta’s baseball team is “The Braves”). The school has since changed the team name, but the fact that it was perfectly OK for teenagers to cheer on the image of an exaggeratedly squint-eyed cartoon figure — and that this was happening now and not, say, 70 years ago — horrified me.
And yet, that said, I’d like to address what the author says about “I’m sorry, but” — that is, about people who start to apologize for their racism but really end up excusing it. I agree that this is really no apology at all, and yet, as strange as this sounds, I cringe at any automatic knee-jerk vilification of racism. People make racist statements. I’ve made them myself — I know I have. I’ve felt terrible when I realized I did so, and while I can’t guarantee I won’t make them again, I can at least make myself aware that these statements are deeply hurtful and damaging. Knowing that, I can make sure not to perpetuate them, and in the future I can be more critical of any race-based assumptions. It’s a lot easier to do all of that when I’m not being condemned as evil incarnate. I note how often in news stories about racism the “racist” in question will say “I’m a good person.” Yes, this is defensive — understandably so. Who would admit to a racist act without some kind of qualification? “I’m sorry, but I didn’t realize ‘chink’ was racist” is defensive as well, but I can guarantee that word won’t be used again by that reporter and not nearly so much by the general public. To me, that’s a real victory, and far more important than making sure the reporter is punished for his words. That, I fear, will only make people more defensive, less willing to see where they themselves — we ourselves — are guilty of racism.
Thank you for writing this. You put into words what I could not.
This was a very affecting and thought-provoking read. I also loved Don Lee’s Yellow, though it was many years ago that I read it. Identity is so complex and nuanced and made up of so many layers. I appreciate your brave engagement with yours and your skill in conveying the ways in which you’re grappling with it. Thanks so much for writing this.
Thanks, everyone!
Letitia, I’m not against saying, “I’m sorry AND I won’t do it again AND I learned something.” If you start your next thought with but, you lose me. Like I said, before the editor said anything, I didn’t want him to lose his job. It was the too-much-protest that bothered me, that made me feel all slimy inside, that made me disbelieve his sincerity.
Matthew, this is a beautiful essay. As editor of all of Don Lee’s books, and as a UNC grad myself (1986), I was really moved by the idea that Yellow had made it into the curriculum at UNC and had had such an effect on you. What was the name of the professor who introduced it to you? And can I send you an advance reading copy of Don Lee’s new book, The Collective? I think it is amazing, both tragic and hilarious, his best book yet, and one that tackles the issues in your essay head-on.
I’d also love to see more of your own writing.
All best wishes,
Alane
Alane Salierno Mason
Vice President and Executive Editor, W. W. Norton & Company
Founder, http://www.wordswithoutborders.org
Matthew, well said. (And I did enjoy reading this article a great deal, by the way.)
THANK YOU so much for this. Weird reading this so soon after Saint Patrick’s Day where many stereotypes of Irish people were on display. But thank you again.
Fabulous essay!
I’ve learned that not everyone has evil intent when they say or do something racist, and sometimes a person just hasn’t had the experience and relies on what he or she has heard from others, or the media, or wherever. But that doesn’t lessen the hurt of the person targeted, and when it happens repeatedly in so many different situations, I can see how it can be wearing. In addition there are people who have evil intent, so we need to be cautious when our insides are telling us something just isn’t right.
Most importantly we all need to learn how to give a real apology that doesn’t include disclaimers.
I hope we can continue the conversation about race and how marginalized people feel if they are not in the majority race, and sometimes even if they are part of the majority. Not only that, but as we’ve seen in the news repeatedly, racism can easily turn from hurtful words to violence. It can also affect quality of life in terms of economic opportunities, and where we live, worship, work, socialize, and learn. Those are huge things, and cannot be discounted or taken lightly. We do not live in a post-racial world, and that is evident every day.
We need to learn that beyond race, ethnicity, culture and environment, people are individuals, and there should be no pre-existing expectations or assumptions of who a person is or what s/he identifies as or what his/her experience is. For example, most people might identify me as a white middle class woman, but, in fact, I am interracially married with biracial children (adults) and grew up working class poor, the daughter of an inter-ethnic marriage. Sometimes people make assumptions about me and say things they think would be “safe†to say because they assume I am just like them. If I tell them I am offended or don’t agree with them, sometimes people have gotten angry, as if I tricked them by my appearance.
Part of learning to let go of expectation is to question ourselves about our own experiences and expectations of who each of us is and what legacy race, ethnicity and migration (everyone in the US has a migration history) has left with each of us, an imprint, if you will, even if it feels distant and disconnected. That is what gives each of us our worldview, even down to such things as whether we are optimists or pessimists.
Then we can own our individual worldview, and appreciate and be open to others’ worldviews. It isn’t about who is right or powerful or better, or even that we have tribes or land to protect as it may have been thousands of years ago, but about the wonderful diversity in all of us.
Thank you, Matthew, for your honesty and openness.
I appreciate this so much. I attended a large university where I constantly heard racist comments towards Asian students such as: “There are too many Asians” “The Asians have taken over” “That’s the Asian part of campus” (in reference to the engineering quad) “Why do they let so many of them in?” etc. Alarmingly, this rhetoric was accepted by a majority of students and instances of violent messages scrawled on bathroom stalls or on flyers for Asian Studies events went without major notice/discussion/problem solving by campus officials. It seemed so accepted and without consideration, so thank you for this thoughtful examination of your experience and some of the big picture points.
A wonderfully eloquent piece, heartwrenching particularly when you talk about your childhood experiences. I actually had to stop reading for a little bit. Childhood memories of my own, though through cultural rather than racially-based isolation.
I remember seeing the play ‘Yellow Face’ by David Henry Hwang and just being blown away at the depictions of racism there. As a person who comes from a country that is 97% homogeneous, I have a hard time grasping the very particular currents of race in America. Thank you for giving us all a very personal insight into that.
I don’t think Anthony Federico deserved to lose his job and I can certainly understand him wanting to tell people he didn’t mean it in a racist way and his desire to let people know he’s a good person. When one is fired and portrayed as a racist in the media, this doesn’t seem an outrageous response. He did note that he’d used the phrase so many times before without any issue. ESPN wanted to cover its own butt. But firing people who have put in so much dedication to their jobs who messed up one time is not the right thing to do. This is a word with multiple meanings and used in the phrase in this way, it has never had racist meanings. I really do think it just bypassed the writer, especially since he had used it with no issue before. Tearing a person down who has already lost their job undermines the important points contained in this essay.
Amazing work, Matt. So insightful and moving.
My late husband was Chinese and we met in NC where he was working on a doctorate of physiology. My own grandfather said, “I’d just as soon she married a N…..” I replied, “If he was as black as the ace of spades and I loved him, I would.”
The south is the worse place to be if one is anything other than white. My pastor tried to talk me out of the marriage by telling me to think about the children that would come of this union. I told him they would surely be reared with no prejudices. The post master said I should be tarred and feathered.
When our oldest son was in high school, some kids started calling him “Chink”.
He had the words “Super Chink” put on the back of his letter jacket. They had no comeback.
I have five adult, well-rounded, smart half-breeds and I’d do it all over again.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful piece.
I should have added that three of my five children had scholarships to play college basketball.
Great essay – thoughtful and heartful and spot on.
Thank you for this essay. Race isn’t limited to black and white, and many people tend to forget the problems that go along with racism against less-discussed races.
This was going to be a longer comment, but that would be an essay of its own, and handled with much less composure than you did yours. :/
Matt,
Thanks for a great essay. I am an Asian-American, that, like you, grew up with mostly white friends, in a mostly white town. Once, my Senior year of high school, I had a friend — clearly not that close because he had never been to my house, never met my parents — ask me if I were adopted. Like you mention about your friend, I’m sure he has no recollection of asking me — just like the kids (and friends) who called me Chink, almost endearingly (or am I making this up in my head?), and I’m just now coming to learn more about myself and what it means to be Asian American in a country that has really not given credence to racism against the “model minority”.
When my (again, mainly white) friends cheer on Jeremy Lin, they often ask me, am I extra proud because he’s Asian? I am, I respond, but I don’t often elaborate on why. I think it’s enough that, at this point in my life, I can not only acknowledge that they are asking me the question due to my race, but that I can respond, not sheepishly, that yes, our shared race is very much what drives my interest in his career. But what’s really great about his fame, and about all the attention he’s receiving, is that somehow, it seems to have broken a seal of silence that’s surrounded much of Asian American racism, at least outside the Asian American community. Suddenly, now, we can be collectively outraged and self-righteous and indignant about the term “Chink” — when, like you, I had no understanding of how to deal with this term as a child. We can post articles publicly, and start up conversations with other Asian Americans loudly, proudly about this great athlete of ours — and even be proud of the fact that there is an “our” to speak of. We can write and read and discuss articles about racism toward Asian Americans, and how it has been so slight, and yet so profound in our lives, and we can finally say all this with the equal voice that we haven’t given ourselves to date.
Thank you again for the article.
Frances
In response to the “‘I’m sorry, but…” discussion: The main issue here, what I think really produces that knee-jerk reaction against that phrase, is that the words that follow the word “but” are usually bold-faced lies and evasions. It’s one thing for this writer to come out and say, “I was joking, and didn’t think I was going to offend.” Clearly he would have been wrong–he did offend–but at least he would have presented his subjective truth. However, it’s a tall order to expect someone to believe that he used a word like “chink” without any knowledge of its social context. Why would the word even come to the surface? How would he have known to employ it in the context of an Asian person, otherwise? Does he regularly use the word chink in reference to non-Asians or employ the phrase in his sports coverage often?
Helen: There are definitely “racial currents” in the UK. I’m exposed to your racial currents and I’m across the Atlantic. It helps that I have both black and Asian friends in England, which I know is a very different situation than Scotland, but Edinburgh is the birthplace of Chicken Masala, the hometown of the lovely actress who played Harry Potter’s Cho Chang, and hosts a major international university–it’s a city with some, if limited, diversity. To be fair, however, that distance from social problems stemming from racism is something that is shared by many white Americans. Our country is, like London or Paris, highly segregated by race and class. I imagine that a lot of the folks who find themselves in quagmires like this have only had sporadic contact with people of other races, usually contact mediated by social filters like public spaces or universities. A racist joke may seem as novel to them when they tell it as it is commonplace to the person who is the butt of the joke. Even here in Los Angeles, where any white person can attest to “seeing” people of color every day, there is an surprisingly large swath of white people who can’t point to having a real and meaningful connection to a person of another race. When they do, it’s usually a friend they’ve made in a majority-white work or school environment who has undoubtedly lost sensitivity to casual comments, and navigates his or her life much in the way Salesses describes. I’ve been there; I’ve let those comments slide by silently. It’s difficult and tiring to object, and even more difficult to meaningfully Intimate contact is, unfortunately, not necessarily a remedy, but the lack of it is definitely one of many factors. As for whether mono-racial country is immune to racist attitudes, I have enough examples from China and Argentina (95% European ancestry), to fill an omnibus.
Last point I want to make is to anyone who believes that black people in this country, or really anywhere in the world where they form a minority, receive less instances of verbal racism: you are wrong. This PC paradise has never come to fruition. We, as a nation, transitioned from politically incorrect to anti-politically correct times without ever really enjoying that mythical respite. From Obama’s election to Michael Richardson to Trayvon Martin, the pressure continues on relentlessly. That’s not even touching on the subject of economic and structural racism, the truly pernicious problems. To make matters worse, it’s a form of racism enjoyed by pretty much every other population that isn’t African. I’ve just returned from China, where anti-black racism is casual, vocal, and enshrined with product placements like Darlie Toothpaste. It used to be called Darkie Toothpaste, but the English was changed to Darlie–of course, the Chinese still says 黑人 (“black person”). Clearly, there was no remorse, simple a desire to silence bad global press. We should be careful to not make the assumption that because anti-black or anti-Latino racism is discussed more often than anti-Asian racism in the United States, that is also happening with less frequency. It turns out that discussing a problem is not the same as a solution.
That said, I’m glad to read this article, and I’m happy to see the strong public statements being made by Asian-American artists, writers, and journalists in response to this situation. I also encourage everyone to take an Asian-American history course or do some reading. The class I took at Yale filled in so many blanks in the story of the United States, particularly the history of American immigration and social movements. Indispensable.
Gayle, best of luck to your kids! I sincerely hope that what comes out of this Jeremy Lin story, at least sports-wise, is that Asian kids are given the chances Lin wasn’t.
Jesse, I don’t think it was the editor’s place to say anything except, I recognize (now) that I offended people. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.
Also, someone who writes/edits for a living should be invested enough in words (and in people) to understand the possible connotations of each word s/he uses.
Luis M, Thanks for your long response. I am aware of racial currents in the UK, and as you surmised I was talking about Scotland – but they are very different from those of the US. I’ve lived in both countries.
In Scotland, the New Scots from East Asia are a very recent phenomenon, 1st and 2nd generation for the most part at the moment. This is true also of the growing African population, who I hope will be readily accepted and we’ll start seeing Black Scottish writers (other than Jackie Kay) as well as East Asian.
I grew up with and went to school with people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – even where I grew up, on an island off the north-west coast, there was a family from Pakistan originally, and I was good friends with the middle child. Both he and I didn’t go to the religious school assembly, because he was Muslim and I was Catholic. Shared, but differing outsider status. Religion is the big divider here, by that I mean between Protestant and Catholics.
I feel Scots from the Indian subcontinent are much more widely accepted (though not to deny racism exists towards them). I remember hearing racist ‘jokes’ (urgh) but even idiot teenagers knew it was wrong to say it to people’s faces, and I’ve stopped hearing the jokes now. Maybe because I don’t hang out with racists?
But I honestly have no idea about how things are for Scots of East Asian descent. It’s something I’d like to see more talk of in the media.
Sorry to have hijacked things a bit. A mark of a good essay is how thought-provoking it is.
Thank you for your insightful article. Your personal account of being a Korean adoptee particularly speaks to the kinds of well-intentioned situations that can waver into (self)congratulatory racism.
As a fellow KAD and Asian American literature and culture professor I am particularly intrigued by your assertions. I will think about the issues that you bring up in terms of accountability and intention as I set my courses for next year.
Perhaps we shall meet at MLA in Boston (which is where I assume you live) next winter.
I really enjoyed reading this essay, Matt. I think you really encapsulated this huge argument into an eloquent, thoughtful piece.
First, I wanted to say that I very much enjoyed reading this essay. I’m an Asian-American myself, and even though I wasn’t adopted, I, too, felt very removed from Asian culture. And yet I also made a sort of “pilgrimage” to Korea, which changed my life. Thank you; I was deeply touched by this essay.
But I also wanted to add in my two cents about the “apology,” which is exactly one of the themes running throughout this essay. What irks me the most is that, while the former ESPN writer states that he did not intend to be racist (and I believe him), that doesn’t change the fact that it is. The fact that he was so ignorant about something so obvious (at least to me) boggles my mind. I have a few Asian friends who constantly complain that racism against Asians is by far the most tolerated type, which, sadly, I believe is true. I find it hard to believe that the ESPN writer would inadvertently use the most common racist term for another race in a different headline. But that’s just the point; as Mr. Salesses alludes to (forgive me if I’m mistaken), those people who claim to care about racism almost disregard Asians. Those people know not to make racist jokes about African-Americans or Latino/as. But Asians? Fair game. So it doesn’t matter that he didn’t intend to be racist. Would it have been worse if he had intended it? Yes. But the fact that he didn’t illustrates the general sentiment towards Asians that is not similar to other races. (Note: I am not trying to say that other races have it “better” than Asians; I’m just remarking on my own observations.)
Saturday Night Live had a great skit (in my opinion) about all of the Jeremy Lin coverage. In it, sports anchors made numerous racist jokes about Lin, which were met with laughter and encouragement. But when one mentioned a racist joke about another race, he was immediately reprimanded. I never thought I’d see the day that SNL would get something so right.
So, going back to the ESPN writer, I don’t care if he’s a good person. And I’m not calling him a racist. But his headline WAS racist, whether intended to be or not.
Now, as to what should be the best outcome for it, a commenter mentioned about how the best thing to come out of this was discussion and attention to the racist term, rather than vilifying the messenger. I hear that, and I do agree. Now, maybe I’m vindictive, but I wonder if opinions would change if he was your co-worker. I can tell you that I wouldn’t want to work with someone who could use such a hateful term so flippantly, even if he didn’t intend it to be so.
I feel tugged back and forth by this article. I really empathize with the story of identity and flippant/oblivious racism, but then I’m given pause because I feel that as a child of an African-American father and a white mother I’m not supposed to empathize on a certain level because this is the story of how racism toward Asian-Americans is treated differently. It was a pleasure reading the details that painted a different experience than mine but I don’t know that it’s appropriate to assume that because blackface and fried chicken are well understood to be off limits blacks don’t deal with frequent and obvious instances of racism that are met with incredulity by whites as to their even occurring. I guess my point is that I would’ve liked to have read your story and increased my understanding of your struggle without having a poorly threshed out version of my story thrown in as basis for comparison.
Thanks so much for a wonderful well thought-out piece. My husband is Chinese American, and my daughter is a Chinese adoptee so this essay resonates for me in many ways. I’m baffled by the often subtle racism that’s been directed at my husband – people who say they think of him ‘as White’ as if that’s the highest compliment possible. I dread the day my daughter hears the word ‘chink’ or anything else that makes her heart hurt. And I dread the strange racism my ‘hapa’ son will experience with his Asian name but almost entirely Caucasian features – complete with blonde hair and blue eyes (courtesy of a British ancestor in my husband’s lineage.)
As a fellow UNC alum, I have to say I’d never let my kids go to school down south. I can’t imagine the isolation they’d experience.
Danielle, fair point. I didn’t intend people to make that jump. Education clearly does not stop racism. Racism is rampant. I only meant to say that kids, at least at my age, were being taught institutionally about racism, but only certain kinds of racism, not all kinds.
First of all, I wasn’t surprised and I can certainly agree with the article on many accounts. However, I found myself identifying with the author quite a bit. Everything from being discriminated at school, to various jokes about my race (I am of Irish and Palestinian descent), to losing my best friend due to my race, to being rejected from my boyfriend’s family due to my race, and in addition to what the author has experienced, police surveillance because of my race.
I grew up in a predominantly Chinese community in San Francisco, and I speak fluent Chinese from my growing up in the Chinese Immersion Program since Elementary school – a program that fully immerses its students into the Chinese language and culture. Other than recess and lunch, we had no interaction with the other students in the school.
As we know, race and skin color are completely arbitrary at four years old, and I often saw myself as no different from my peers, and vice versa. I should have recognized since those Elementary school days that I was much less often referred to as ‘cute’ or ‘smart’ by parents or by peers in comparison to my best friend. Though we saw each other as equals among the rest of our classmates, it seemed the outside world had a different perspective. Eventually, that different perspective caught up with us.
I was never completely honest about my ethnic identity until recently. I tried in whatever way I could to make myself appear more Chinese. For example, my mothers last name is Lee (a common name among Chinese and Irish communities), and I exploited her last name and distorted it to tell others that I was at least half Chinese and therefore could be a legitimate Chinese-speaking member of my predominantly-Chinese community.
By High School, the race lines were clearly drawn. My classmates and I were still in the Chinese Immersion Program through our Sophomore year, but we only had two classes together instead of all seven as we did in Middle School. So I began to make more friends, particularly with a very racially diverse group and I felt right at home, as I always did with any group I was around. By this time, I figured it was time to start slowly telling people that my father is Arab and my mother is White, and that I am not half-Chinese, nor am I full-White. I got laughs and a few sneers for it, and a few comments about how I must be ‘one of the good ones’ who doesn’t fly airplanes into buildings. Needless to say, I stopped telling the truth again for quite some time.
Dating was a difficult matter, given that though I have no racial preference, many of the boys I admired did have racial preferences, and I didn’t make the cut. A few times, they would have an interest in me but their parents wouldn’t allow it so we were forced to break it off. A couple times, I was even thrown out of the house. It didn’t matter that I spoke better Chinese than their son or even had better manners; all that mattered was that my skin was white, I had a large nose (that I very much always wished to flatten) and light eyes. I rarely talked about these incidents because I hardly wanted to accept them myself, nor did I want to risk planting the idea in my friends’ minds that perhaps I am different from them.
Toward the end of high school, my best friend (since Kindergarten) and I began to drift. She started being very social and joined a lot of student organizations. Many of which I never found a way to fall into. It was only months later that my own best friend and I ended our friendship, after a long, grueling fight over her not defending me against our boss who wanted to ‘fire’ me. I should probably note that we were working as volunteers for the Chinese New Year Parade, and therefore I don’t believe there was any legitimate cause or reason for the firing, but I digress. I admit that I was wrong to jump to conclusions as I found out later that previous times she had defended me, but I also found out that the reason I was fired was because I didn’t fit the ‘image’ that the group wanted to represent; in other words, Chinese. Up until that point, I heard my colleagues (with the exception of my best friend) addressing some of the children we worked with as ‘the white girl’ or ‘the black girl,’ as well as their particular distaste toward ‘the white lady’ (bak gwai, rather) volunteer working with us as well. Whenever I tried to pipe in that what they were saying was offensive, they just called me their ‘honorary Asian.’ At the time I was satisfied that my cover of being half-Chinese/half-White was still working, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t still offended.
So after the fiasco with the Chinese New Year Parade, I had a sort of awakening that perhaps the attitudes of my peers and colleagues were considered racist, and as soon as this happened, I noticed this racism everywhere: toward myself, toward fellow classmates, toward teachers, toward everyone. A student in one of my social studies classes even told me that I shouldn’t be allowed to speak Chinese! Specifically he told me that my ability to speak Chinese was disturbing and wrong and that I should ‘unlearn’ it and instead learn something ‘like French.’ When I tried to argue with him that I have every right to speak any languages, especially the one I grew up speaking the most, he ignored me and continued to berate me and my other Chinese-speaking-white-classmate. I even tried to assert myself that I am not French either and that I am Arab (for the first real time, I said it out loud to a stranger!). Of course, he told me to instead then learn my ‘terrorist speak,’ and regardless of my race, as long as I’m not Asian, I should not be speaking an Asian language.
This ‘if you’re not Asian, you shouldn’t speak an Asian language’ attitude struck a nerve in me, but this time I didn’t turn my anger inward and instead began a quest for self identity. I began to tell myself more and more that I am a mixed Arab-White American by ethnicity, but I also grew up with Chinese culture, and I certainly know more about how to live in Chinese culture than I do Arab, Irish or American cultures. I began to unravel that there is more to myself than just my race, or my culture or my nationality. Since that argument with that classmate, I have lived in China as well as Russia and have visited my home region in the Middle East encouraging me to speak my heritage language of Arabic. I am also living in New York, dating an American of Korean descent (we’re still working with his family on accepting me, but we can only be optimistic…)
I have come to accept all the cultures I have grown up with, and I have come to accept that no race is innocent or free of racist attitudes. Whites, Blacks, Asians, Arabs and Hispanics alike all include racists as well as victims of racism. We all feel it and we all experience it at least once in our lives. In my childhood, it was simply NOT being the right race, as opposed to being the wrong one. Now that I am an adult and more accepting of my Arab identity (perhaps even flaunting it), the issue is focused on being the wrong race. I am amongst many Arab-Americans in New York under surveillance by the New York Police Department, and specifically being Palestinian, I have been spat on by many supporters of Israel. All these incidents, from my childhood through adulthood have contributed to many periods of self hatred and identity searching. I have now come to the conclusion that there is nothing I can do to change who I am, and I longer have a strong desire to. I always will be the mixed Irish-Palestinian American who speaks Chinese; and I hope that someday we can address racism as its own self-propagating cycle of cause and effect, not in terms of ‘Group A’ is racially targeting ‘Group B.’ If we never see racism in this light, we will never break free of this cycle, and the hatred will continue.
Whoa that was much longer than I anticipated! I guess all stories such as ours are long though, and I tried to keep it relevant.
What I forgot to mention is ‘thank you’ though. Your article gave me a lot of insight and a lot of thinking of my own bring up – also painful experiences, such as yours.
In reality, your story inspired me to share mine. It feels better knowing that I’m not alone in this type of situation. So again, thank you =]
I’ll be honest – this would’ve made me laugh if I hadn’t seen it literally ten minutes after reading this post. Now it just makes me wince. http://notalwaysrelated.com/bat-manchu/20560
I’m sorry to say, but I don’t get this piece. What is the point of the essay? I came to this country over 30 years ago, and I still think that this is one of the best places to live. There will always be people who are ignorant about race no matter where you live. I think that we, as a nation, have become too sensitive to every little comment that we come across in our everyday life. If you don’t like someone’s comments about your race, your clothes, etc… tell them what you think. There are kind and decent people who accept you for who you are. My best friends are all Caucasian and they are the best bunch. Why can’t people look at the positive sides?
Nguyen, everyone has unique experiences growing up here but don’t dismiss the pain of others. I am sure Vincent Chin’s mother would have loved to look at the positive too. Reading some of these posts makes me sick inside. As AA kids we just wanted to belong and not be demonized for our looks but it seems to go on forever. My son escaped most of what I went through because he has an Asian last name but looked more African. Of course, he will have his own challenges somewhat different from mine. One of my white co-workers who married an Asian woman after divorcing a white woman(common pattern) and I had a conversation about discrimination. He casually said the world treats white men as superior and commented very intelligently about the white skin worship he saw in Asia. I was not angry because he was only stating facts. I just wish more white guys would be honest like him.
Thank you Matthew, you shared all the pain we all went through and you put into words non of us could say…
This is any amazing piece.
Matthew, I want you to know that there are COUNTLESS Asian-American males out there who’ve gone through the same experience as you, and that’s even with living with you real Asian biological parents. In fact, your blog is the perfect outline for much of my life…even visiting Korea and having those exact same experiences of walking around on the streets of Seoul and all of sudden it just clicks…you blend in with everybody else and you feel at ease, because for once you don’t stand out in an arguably awkward and odd Asian light.
I’d like to share a personal part of my life that might resonate with you or any other readers of your blog. It is one that echoes your post. Hope you get a chance to read it. You’ll see you’re not alone.
http://masirjones.blogspot.com/2010/01/identity-crisis-for-asian-american.html
Thanks for the thoughtful essay. I started reading it hoping for a nuanced discussion on racism, and came away from it, as an expatriate Asian, nodding along to your experience on writing “white characters” by default, and then, seeing how they made sense as Asians as people.
Racism against Asians is pervasive in all avenues of American society, even in medicine. My experiences with race in medical school were like high school: diasporas of Koreans, whites, Japanese, Hispanics, and Vietnamese (we did not have many black students in our class and the few went with the Hispanic group). For some odd reason, people self-segregated that way. Initially, I hung out with the Caucasian group since they participated in more outdoor activities that I enjoyed. Other days, I would hang out with the Korean American group (the other Asian groups were somewhat exclusive of our members. Go figure). Soon both groups had started questioning which group I belonged to. I ultimately gravitated towards the Korean American group because the Caucasian group discriminated against and made blatantly racist remarks about Asians, which I wasn’t comfortable with. They became increasingly exclusive of other races, especially Asians. It did not negatively affect our learning, but there was always a thinly-veiled tension in the air.
As a physician at a major hospital, it has become even more apparent to me how frequent Asians are mocked in the medical field. Non-Asian physicians from a different era or non-Asian country find no problem in spouting negative stereotypes. You would be surprised that these physicians still entertain themselves with childish penis jokes, dog meat references, mangled ‘L’ and ‘R’s, and Asian women subservience. One interesting encounter was with a Caucasian female surgeon who needed help with her cell phone. “Here, you’re good at electronics. Asians are good at this”. The OR became quiet, and she defended herself by stating, “it’s ok, I’m married to an Asian and my kids are half-Asian”. She apologized to me immediately. No, it’s not ok. I feel sorry for her children that will be reared by a mother who thinks its acceptable to reduce ethnicity down to stereotypes. I highly doubt she had any idea or appreciation for her husband’s culture. Despite how our society holds medicine to a positive light, the pervasive ignorance of racial discrimination casts shadows of a doubt as to the character of even those we entrust our lives to. People may think little racist remarks don’t hurt anyone, but it seeps into their subconscious to automatically belittle other ethnic groups. Eventually, false stereotypes turn into truth for them. Mix in hatred one day and it can endanger patients’ lives. Fortunately, having experienced the evils of racism, I will never stoop so low.
Thank you for this insightful and honest essay! I find it fascinating and honest and important. While I also find Lin fascinating, it is because he went to Harvard and not because of his racial background. The fact is that Harvard is not nearly as prestigious a basketball program as the average NBA player attends. It also has the hallmark of actually graduating all most all of its players, unlike most of the major programs. Lin seems a harder worker to me because throughout his college career he would have had to focus on both his education and his athletic career, which, the fact is, most players do not. This in some ways makes him an underdog as well. I truly hope that some of the attention on him is academically and not racially driven.
Dear Matthew:
Thank you for this honest piece. Like many others have said, you’ve managed to put into words my thoughts and feelings as an Asian who’d grown up in North America.
I have many immediate thoughts and reactions about this essay that I want to reflect to you, honestly, in the only way I know how: rather disorganized, and perhaps random.
I should preface this by saying that I live in Canada – the Mecca of (Supposed) Multiculturaism that is quickly proving to be an experiment gone sour.
One of my impressions of your essay is that it is exclusively from the perspective and experience of an Americanized Asian, in America, and dealing with racism that you have (and still) experience there. That is your privilege, as it is mine, and that is how we see our world. I find no fault in this.
Where I start to encounter difficulties, however, is to pretend that this is the only Asian perspective available within the North American context, and and where (I see) we start running into difficulties of identifying the true “root” of the different rules of racism against Asians. As you know, there are large Asian populations, both here in Canada as well as in America, who have immigrated here, but live distinct and separate lives within completely self-contained, distinct and separate worlds. They are entirely apathetic to the North American way of life, the culture, the language, etc – in many ways, their culture is a perfect antithesis to it.
My position is that, you cannot have a massive, apathetic population of Asians that also pretends to strive towards the same level of respect and recognition that other racial groups have. The two are (at least currently) mutually exclusive, resulting in people like you and me fighting to swim against the current at all times, trying so hard to distinguish ourselves from the rest.
Here on the west coast in Canada, there are entire suburbs exclusively devoted to the Asian way of life, and are often hostile to “intruding” races. Whites (and other races) dare not even enter, and often speak of these places in derision. This is not a condition brought on by white racism alone. This is the result of a lack of understanding of what it MEANS to be part of North American culture. “Self-ghettoization” has aggravated the problem many, many folds.
In a way, we have singled ourselves out for unnecessary ridicule.
Along these lines, I also have this to add – a saying that is true for ALL races: that SOME stereotypes are “earned”. Here on the West Coast, it is almost impossible to board public transit without a young Asian person speaking unnecessarily loud into their cell phones in their native language, when no one else on board is speaking. Or how about an old Asian man picking his nose, with his finger buried knuckle-deep into his nostril? These ignorant acts of rudeness are exactly the types of actions that alienate others, and give racists the ammunition to reinforce the racist stereotypes.
I am swimming against the tide, every day, and I struggle to breathe.
Phil L has a point but sounds like a race apologist. Large numbers of black prisoners or serial killers being almost exclusively white males can’t be good for the images of those groups either. We still need to treat people as individuals and not allow acts of some to define entire populations. So Italians are mafia and Irish are permanent drunks in your eyes too? No one deserves to be discriminated against because of who they look like. It is easy to see Asians get a lousy deal on that front. I read an article in Koream Magazine that spotlighted a Korean lady and her African American husband running a Korean BBQ restaurant in Altoona, PA. Their business dropped one half after the V Tech shootings. I don’t recall any Irish pubs reporting lost sales because of Timothy McVeigh.
The comments on this essay are the most lengthy I have seen on line. Wonderful! The essay was painful to read, and so needed. I once read, in reference to the fact of hate, “Let all the poisons hatch out.” I interpret this as, when we face all of our ignorance, fear and rejection we will be healed. That would be excellent.
I am a so-called African American female, older, former academic. Reading the essay surfaced memories, first of my father’s white relatives who were Christian missionaries in China, 1912-1942, and who behaved as “kin” with their mixed relatives. I wanted to adopt what was called “an Asian brown baby” from Pearl Buck’s Welcome House, until my husband rejected the formerly, accepted, idea. I taught elementary school in Chicago’s Chinatown and at a suburban college. I formed loving relationships with students of all backgrounds attending weddings of former black, white, and Asian students My youngest son married a Korean born, US reared woman. My two granddaughters are brilliant and beautiful. How they will manage will be seen, Just as my Irish granddaughter by another son has learned to do. Of her new boyfriend she said, “He’s mixed, like me.” This is the “in” designation. What the psychologies will be is to be seen. Rodney King said, “Why can’t we all get along?” This is NOT simplistic. It is the most profound of all human thoughts.
I have considered myself an anti-racist activist for over 2 decades now, and never have I ever looked at perception of Asian Americans. I have dismissed my AA friends statements of identifying themselves as Chinese, by stating that they were American, without ever taking into account my perspective as a white American.
I am deeply ashamed of myself. Thank you so much for writing this. Halfway through the essay I sent my friend an apology and a link to this essay, with a resolve to never do it again, and to call out similar situations when I see them.
I still have a lot of learning and growing to do yet. Thank you for showing me that. I would also like to apologize to any Asian Americans for my previous actions and statements which further perpetuated stereotypes and ignorance. I hope I can become a better ally to the Asian American population than I have been in the past.
American Indians suffer the worst type of racism/discrimination/stereotyping as many people around the world believe they’re non-existent (extinct), endangered (seeing Indians as some sort of animal on an endangered list) or irrelevant. A national football team called the Redskins. Where’s the racial epithet for asians on any of these national teams? There is none. And all non-Indians (white, black or asian) are guilty of this but I guess it makes it easier to digest their presence here in the Americas when they can sleep soundly at night knowing that the “savages” are no longer existing. Easy to lack respect for a people when they are perceived as being non-existent. Invisible Americans anyone?
The American media only tolerates racism against Asians. We need to do something. I suggest that we email and call Asian organizations whenever something like this happens. From what I’ve read, there’s this show called “Dads” that discriminates against Asians. I’m going to write letters right after I finish making this comment.
Explicit racism has decreased in the last few decades, but the implicit racism has increased. Many well intentioned people attack minorities with microagressions.
I cannot finish reading this. My forehead is hot and my heart is pounding. Everyone EVERYONE has something to bitch about. This guy whose wife is fooling around on him says she can’t read my fiction and she hates my daughter because she is 5’10” and hates short people. I am a red head. 2 to 4% of the world population. I will be 70 in the Spring. SEVENTY. This whole ginger thing is maybe 2 to 5 years old. When I was a small child, Ginger (Rogers?) was a cute nickname for a redhead or a person named Virginia. I so desperately wanted it to be my nickname. It wasn’t. “Redhead, redhead, fire in the woodshed.” In my early teens a little song I won’t repeat referring to having menstrual fluid on my head. And I was freckled and skinny. WHY did it NEVER hurt me? I knew I was smarter than my big brother and that was the win for me. No other redheads in the family that I ever saw. Lots of dead ones. At my ten year reunion from high school I received the ultimate left-handed compliment. “I wish I knew you were going to turn out like this.” Why can’t you just be you? Why do you have to take on a burden of a “yellow” race? I have never seen a yellow person or a red person or a black person. At a family gathering, introducing the very suntanned son of my Irish nephew and his Italian wife, I said, “He’s one of those little brown people.” He was. Just like your face IS flat. I married a Spaniard. My brother teased him about living in a cave with a goat and a wine bota, but got all freaked when I said his wife was the first Italian we let into the family. Calm the fuck down. I’m trying to.
I found your essay today while searching the web for discussions on racism. My search was out of frustration and sadness after returning home from my 14 year old son’s lacrosse game where once again he had to hear racial comments from opposing players. Our beautiful, loving, kind, smart, etc. son was adopted from Korea at 7 months old. I know that the feelings you describe as a child are what he goes through on a daily basis.
We as a society expect that in 2014 our youth have been educated about racism but we are not quite there. Our son plays football, hockey, and lacrosse. I expect the swearing between opposing players whose identities are hidden behind their helmets. I don’t condone it but accept it. What continue to shock and disgust me are those times when I can see the anger and frustration on our son’s face when he tells us how the other team repeatedly called him Chinky, Asian, ask him how he can see out of his slanted eyes, and make ignorant sounds. It is outrageous. I wonder; has no one including their parents told them how unacceptable this behavior is. I have relied on the coaches to correct the problem until today. As we left the field and my son was holding back tears trying to maintain that tough exterior, he told me what was said and pointed out one of the boys who was walking with his father. I stopped them and tried to calmly tell them how unacceptable the comments were and the impact they have on a person. I don’t know if anything I said to them today will make a difference in the way the boy or his dad behave in the future. Maybe they would have realized the impact of the comments if they were with us during the car ride home. They would have seen the pain that those racial comments caused as that tough exterior came crumbling down.
I’m a Korean adoptee, and I also identify with white culture. I don’t think I have an identity crisis, as far as I know. I’m not particularly interested in Asian culture, but I’m not particularly uninterested in it either. I just kind of don’t really know why I should try to learn about Korean culture so I can go over there and definitely not fit in. It’d be one thing if I found it interesting, but I don’t. I think Japanese culture and Chinese films (and food) are more interesting, frankly. I did take Tae Kwon Do in college, but I don’t remember thinking about it as trying to find myself or getting in touch with my heritage. I just wanted to learn how to kick and punch.
I’ve lived in areas where most people were fairly educated, so I don’t think I have experienced much in the way of really negative racism. For example, I’ve never been called a “Chink.” No one has tried to beat me up. However, I have experienced lots of racism in different forms and I wanted to share some of my experiences. In general the racism I’ve faced has been just kind of annoying, but once in a while I encounter someone who really just bugs me.
Here are some examples of instances of racism that really stand out:
1) When I was a baby, my parents took me to a surgeon who fixed my cleft lip and palate. Children with cleft palates tend to have flat noses. Well, the doctor didn’t want to completely fix mine up because he “didn’t want to take away from my Asian-ness.” Can you believe that? I didn’t even realize that was a bad thing to say until years later when I really thought about it. Plus, if he’d done a better job on shaping my nose that could have saved me from some of the teasing I experienced in grade school.
2) In grade school some of the boys would chase me around and call me Chinese. I remember this bothered me a lot. After I got older this kind of racism stopped for the most part. I’ve heard that sometimes people who don’t know my name still refer to me as “that Chinese girl.” Sometimes people also assume I am Chinese or Korean, depending on which nationality they know most about. In general I find this is because Americans really like to learn about foreign cultures and are really hoping they can talk about one of their interests with me, but it’s still annoying. However, I don’t think this type of occurrence is exclusive to Asian Americans. I knew a European expat who said he was so sick of women asking him only about France and his accent.
Also, more recently I’ve found that this kind of assumption is expressed by foreigners who themselves are looking for someone to connect with.
3) When I was younger, there was this certain type of man who always tried to date me just because I was Asian. I mean, I guess some men have a preference for black hair and a certain complexion, and they can’t help it. But sometimes, even after I explained that I really didn’t know much about Korea, they’d insist that I should learn more to get in touch with my heritage. Then they’d take me to Asian restaurants and try to feed me with chopsticks or something. I liked my husband immediately because he never asked me a single question about Asia.
4) People look at me and do that fake whiny sing-song Chinese accent and they screw up their lips and squint their eyes. The people who have done this are generally very young children and crazy homeless people on the street.
5) Had a miscarriage and went to the OB the other day. She was explaining some things in a very pretentious manner, and I did not want to encourage her to go on so I did not ask many questions. She said, “You can speak up. In our culture it’s okay for women to ask questions.” I’d been speaking perfect English to her for an hour. I was so furious I could have strangled her.
By the way, I complained about incident #5 to my mother, who was indignant that the OB could have mistaken me for one of those submissive Asian women. I realized this in itself was a racist assumption that all Asian women are quiet and submissive, but I let it go. She’s my mother, after all.
I grew up being one of the very few non-white children in a very small town (population about 9,000). It was not easy growing up sticking out. As mentioned by Jen (May 28th, 2014 at 8:14 am), some white men have this STRONG “preference” for Asian girls. While I was picked on for being the Chinese boy, my sister had all the boys hoping to date her. Whereas I am not “white” enough for Canadians, I’m definitely not “chinese” enough for Chinese. To this day I have people who will say stupid things like “Oh I don’t think of you as Chinese” as if that is a compliment. Or Chinese who say that I’m not really Chinese because I don’t speak the language. The racism that occurs most of the time with Asian/Chinese people is that if we speak up for our rights, it’s not a big shock to our co-workers boss etc. I once had a manager who told me that I didn’t need any motivation, because all Chinese were so self-motivated. He proceeded to tell me a joke from his native country of Trinidad and Tobago. “Why will the Chinese never win the World Cup of Football? Because every time that you give a Chinaman a corner (kick), he opens up a cornerstore”. When I made waves about that racist joke, his boss was actually upset at me for not just smiling and laughing. After that, I had hit a glass ceiling because I “wasn’t playing nice and being politically correct” with the rest of the office. The worst part is that the Chinese from mainland China will never accept us “banana’s” so we are really left to be on our own. No cultural support from Chinese and having to excel in the White Majority to be considered normal. Like a previous comment, I too have told my daughter to not tick of the checkbox for visible minority. I know of too many Chinese who were not accepted into prestigious universities because of the unofficial Chinese quota had been filled. Yet whites and blacks with lower grades were accepted.
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/too-asian/
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/12/03/TooAsianApology/
At the end of the day, those of us who are “bananas” would benefit from supporting each other, because the truth is that we will never be consider “white” and yet at the same time we will never be considered “yellow”.
The only way to beat prejudice is to be exceptional. Be so much better than the presumed stereotype that it becomes so obviously wrong. That’s what Jeremy Lin was and I hope is again. That’s how to live.
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