For months, I’ve struggled with finding the right words to express the complexity of growing up as an Asian American and the heightened forms of xenophobia that have emerged as a result of the pandemic. I’ve gone through cycles of sadness, frustration, and anger, followed by constantly diminishing those feelings. I worry and fear for my own safety, my parents, and the rest of the AAPI community, while numbing those concerns in an attempt to preserve my sanity.
We are a minority group that has often felt invisible and are now experiencing a time of increased visibility – both wanted and unwanted. Although I’m still struggling to fully comprehend the experiences that I’ve endured, I want to reflect and dissect on what it has been like growing up Asian American in hopes that it resonates with others in the AAPI community and generates awareness and understanding amongst allies.
Right before New York locked down in March 2020, I started having an eerie and uneasy feeling walking down the streets. Stores were closing down, people were flocking away, and the once bustling city became silent. Maybe I was just imagining it or maybe it was a result of the President coining the terms “kung flu” and “Chinese virus”, but I felt the glares of strangers as I walked down the streets and sensed baristas being short with me when I placed my orders. My friends told me stories about being berated to “go back to China” and neighbors leaving threatening letters in their mailboxes. A Chinese woman was attacked for wearing a mask in New York City. A 16-year-old Asian American student was physically assaulted in Los Angeles. A 60-year-old Chinese-American man was spit at by two women who threw a log at him in Chicago. This is just a small subset of attacks against our community in the past year. When coworkers and friends ask me how I’m doing in light of recent events, I struggle to formulate a response because although the spotlight on our community has grown, I have also become more accustomed to numbing my fear over the past year.
This is the first time in my life that I’ve seen people address the discrimination towards Asian Americans, at least to this magnitude. However, it has been pervasive in this country for centuries. The issues in our community have long gone unnoticed, dwindled down to a single paragraph in History textbooks. The initial influx of Chinese immigrants came to the United States during the California Gold Rush in 1849. Within 2 years, 25,000 Chinese immigrants arrived in California. However, many were not successful in finding wealth and found themselves stranded in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming country. In 1854, in the case of People vs Hall, the California Supreme Court ruled that an Asian person could not testify against a White person. Hostility towards the Chinese community grew during the financial crisis of 1873 as the low wages accepted by Chinese workers threatened the income of others. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first and only law to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States. The law was expanded to ban Chinese immigrants from Hawaii and the Philippines and lasted until 1943. Just a year prior, in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In 1982, Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men while celebrating his bachelor party. Charges were dropped to manslaughter with both attackers paying $3,000, serving three years of probation, and no jail time. During the nearly weeklong 1992 LA riots, Korean and other Asian ethic businesses were targeted, killing over 50 people, injuring over 1,000 people, and causing approximately $1B in damages.
All these incidents led up to the recent Atlanta spa shootings, killing eight victims, six of which were women of Asian descent. After researching these incidents, I realize that I have been blatantly unaware of some portions of Asian American history, because like the rest of the country, I have tried to erase the existence and pervasive nature of discrimination that has existed towards our race. However, as we avoid calling these racist acts what they are, we give way to the violence that continues to attack against our communities.
“As we avoid calling these racist acts what they are, we give way to the violence that continues to attack against our communities.”
So often, we see the world as either black or white, and when we address racism and privilege in this country, it becomes a discussion of being either Black or White. Society tells me that my proximity to whiteness makes me too privileged to validate the microaggressions and discrimination that I have experienced. However, it does not erase the fact that my 4th grade teacher nicknamed me “Ching Chang Chong,” that in middle school a student yelled “communist” at me when I walked off the bus, and that kids would tell me they looked “chinky” by pulling at the corner of their eyes.
As much as I tried to fit in and assimilate myself, I will never check off the box that says “White.” When I was in kindergarten, I came home one day proclaiming that I was Black. During recess, the other kids placed me, another Chinese girl, and an African American boy on the “black” team, explaining that since we weren’t White, we must be Black. As an Asian American, I will never experience what my Black peers go through. I have the privilege of being able to get away with a warning when being pulled over by a cop and to go for a run in my neighborhood without fearing for my life. However, that does not mean that racism does not exist in the Asian American community. Discrimination can take many forms, but regardless of how it looks, it can be detrimental to individuals and communities.
As an Asian American, I have experienced immense pride and embarrassment towards my culture and identity. In elementary school, every year for Lunar New Year, I would dress up in a qipao (traditional Chinese dress), bring in Chinese food, and teach my classmates about their Chinese zodiac signs and how to use chopsticks. Nevertheless, my “otherness” was always apparent in the subtle remarks and tones from peers.
I resented the fact that no one could pronounce my parents’ names and that I had to help them negotiate over the phone with service providers. I overheard a friend once remark that her yearbook photo looked bad because her eyes were squinty and she “looked like a chink.” I formed anxiety every day deciding what to wear and would sprint back from the bus stop to change if I didn’t blend in with the other students. Throughout my lifetime, I have been ridiculed by peers, teachers, and the media regarding the political tensions between the US and China. Although Asian Americans are no longer being displaced into internment camps, I’ve felt myself being blamed and punished for China’s geopolitical actions. I learned at an early age to dissociate from my culture in order to assimilate with my peers.
While we’re deemed the “model minority,” we are also told “wow your English is so good” and are the least likely group to be promoted to management roles. In second grade, despite being born and raised in Pennsylvania, my teacher placed me into ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. As I grew up, I began putting those same stereotypes on myself and my peers. I felt insecure about my own writing and communication skills after decades of my parents and teachers assuming that I wouldn’t be able to excel in those areas. In school, I found myself avoiding joining presentation groups with all Asian students, fearing professors would give us lower scores on our communication skills.
“I learned at an early age to dissociate from my culture in order to assimilate with my peers.”
The model minority myth implies that Asian Americans have overcome racism and was coined to devise a wedge between Asian Americans and Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. This notion is just that – a myth, that does not account for factors like the Immigration Act of 1965, which led to the selective recruitment and immigration status to highly educated Asians. Asian Americans continue to the be highest foreign born minority group with the largest income gap in the US. There is a large imbalance in wealth distribution resulting from the selective, skilled workforce from countries like China and India to the refugee populations from Burma and Bhutan. Poverty rates are as high as 35% among the Burmese population in the US.
It’s easy to look at me and think that I’ve “made it.” I grew up in White suburbia, went to a prestigious, private university, and live and work in NYC as a strategy consultant. When people try to point out how Asians have benefited from stereotypes of being “good at math” and “hardworking,” the truth is, those perceptions have come from fabricated biases that ignore the context of how Asians have immigrated to this country, the history of discrimination, diversity of experiences across the race, and continued barriers for progression.
In the beginning of the pandemic, I moved back home and lived with my parents for several months. This was the longest period of time that I have been with them in my adult life and we began having several conversations around race in the midst of the upcoming tumultuous Presidential election. I asked my parents at the dinner table one night if they had ever experienced racism. My mom instantly responded “Of course we have because we are foreigners.” It upset me that my parents had surrendered to accepting that they would never fit in and I initially resisted by insisting that as an American citizen who was born in this country, I should not feel like a foreigner. However, while I believe this statement to be true, I also recognize that this is not the reality of what I experienced as an Asian American.
I don’t write about these experiences to draw pity on myself. If anything, I’ve spent so long suppressing the feeling that there was anything worth speaking about that I’ve become a proponent of the situation by gaslighting myself and my community. I am tired of constantly playing devil’s advocate to my own experiences and feeling like our concerns are insignificant. I am tired of watching my community mocked, ridiculed, and attacked. In the TryPod episode on “Misogyny Against Asian Women,” the panelists discussed the engrained behavior of Asians to make ourselves small. I’ve been taught to stay quiet, not draw too much attention to myself, and be grateful for my presence in this country. However, I know we deserve so much more than that. We deserve to have equal opportunities in this country and not walk around in fear. We deserve to no longer be silenced by ourselves and others. This is a time when we need to stand together and support one another to create a more equal and just society.
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Feel free to reach out with any feedback, thoughts, or questions.
Love,
