To Be Asian-American: Being Asian On Campus-Part 2

“I’d like to talk to someone about feeling uncomfortable seeing groups of Asian people around campus.” 

“Okay, can you come in next Tuesday at 1pm?”

I had sat in front of the phone trying to figure out what to say. I rehearsed different phrases and ways to express how I felt. After ten minutes, I decided to just pick up the phone and say whatever came to mind. I was surprised at the straight-forward way I expressed my feelings and I was shocked at the kindness of the person who set-up my appointment.

CAPS: Counseling And Psychological Services at Northwestern made their presence known from the first day of freshmen orientation. When I moved into my dorm, I table tent with information about CAPS was prominently displayed.  I heard the advice that since every students had a number of free sessions, so you might as well come up with an excuse to go and get your monies worth.

In the wake of student tragedies across America related to psychological issues, Northwestern University, like many colleges in our country actively promoted and supported counseling and psychological services like CAPS. While most people didn’t talk openly about going to CAPS, whenever these services came up in conversation people expressed gratitude that this service existed. It was this atmosphere and lack of stigma that gave my the strength to pick up the phone and later go up the stairs from the health center and enter CAPS.

I stumbled through my first session not really knowing how to describe my problem and my feelings. The psychologist didn’t really say anything and didn't validate my feelings verbally. At times there were silent pauses that I filled not because I had anything meaningful to say but rather because of a desire to curb a feeling of social awkwardness.

I felt like I was trying to prove that I needed help from CAPS and I felt like I was trying to convince the psychologist and myself that I had a problem with working through. At the end of the session, I wasn’t sure what I had gained from the experience.

The psychologist asked me if I would like to talk to someone on a weekly basis and I said that I would and he said he would set me up with a graduate student and he would help guide her work with me.

Every week for the rest of that school year, I met with a counselor at CAPS. I grew to appreciate having a stranger to share my thoughts and my feelings. It was liberating knowing that I didn’t have to worry about my words leaving the room. My sessions would start simply by my counselor asking me how I was doing. I would talk and once in a while she would ask clarification questions. Sometimes I talked about my racial issues, and my feeling about those groups of Asian people and during other sessions it never came up. She didn’t give assign me any books to read or really give me an advice, she simply gave me the space to work through my thoughts and feelings.

Over time, those groups of Asian students stopped bringing up negative feelings inside of me. I don’t know why. Maybe by talking about my feelings it allowed me to really feel them and once that happened I could let them go. I’m not sure.

One beautiful spring day after a session, I walked out of the health building, felt the sunshine in my face and through the blinding sunlight, the sky looked a color blue I had never seen before.  I saw a group of Asian students walking across the street and I smiled at them.  As I walked, I whispered to myself, “I’m good.”

To Be Asian-American: Being Asian On Campus-Part 1

I first noticed them in the dining hall. They were always in that back right corner at a long table, a group of Asian students eating together. Then I started to notice other groups of Asian students around campus. They always seemed to be enjoying each other’s company, often with matching t-shirts or jackets.

I was aware that Northwestern University had a significant Asian-American population. That’s one of the reasons that I chose that school. I knew this was important but I didn’t know why. When I got to campus, much like how I socialized in high school, my group of friends was more related to marching band. I got to campus, had a great band camp experience the week before school started and that was my social group (which later expanded into my fraternity).

During the first couple weeks of school, I didn’t go to the various Asian student organization meetings. I was busy with marching band practice, and I had my group of marching band friends.

One of the wonderful things about Northwestern’s marching band at that time was that it was a cross-section of the campus. The band included students of all majors and many students of color.  It was a mix of Caucasians and students of color that felt right.

As I noticed these groups of Asian students sitting together in the dining hall and moving around campus, I started feeling uncomfortable. I was invited to their meetings, and it was my choice that I didn’t go to them. However I still felt excluded and it was this feeling of not being part of this group, that chipped away at my pride in being an Asian-American.

Every time I saw a group of Asian students together, it reminded me that I was Asian. I hated this reminder. This insecurity built a superiority complex. I felt better than them because I was “integrated.” I had white friends, I didn’t need to just hang out with other Asian people.

Like I discussed in last week’s post, Caucasian students would ask me about these groups and I chafed at the question. “I’m not one of them, I don’t know.” This community of Asian students who associated with each other because of their racial identity, were people I did not want to see. I didn’t know why at the time, I just wished that they would go away.

Every time I saw a group of Asian students together, I felt anxious and tense, but it passed and I forgot about it until another encounter. And then one night in the cafeteria, I got stuck behind a group of Asian students in line. They were speaking in Mandarin, I understood most of what they were saying and I felt annoyed at their happiness and laughter. I sat with my marching band friends and instead of joining in with the regular jokes and conversations I was sullen, trying to calm myself down.

We left our table as a group and exited the cafeteria. As we were heading toward the door of the dorm, another group of Asian students were congregating at the door talking and unaware that people were trying to pass (which is a very common thing for college students to do). As my friends worked their way through the crowd, I followed and started feeling nauseous and felt the heat of rage taking over my body.

Without saying by to my friends, I rushed off to my dorm room and dove into bed, my face buried in my pillow. Laying there in the darkness, tears welled up, but refused to release. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I didn’t know what to do, but in that moment, I realized that I needed help.

I sat up, went to my desk and turned on my computer.  In the glow of the computer screen, I saw a table tent, which had greeted me when I first moved into my room.

It read: CAPS - Counseling and Psychological Service.

To Be Asian-American: Pride

Throughout my life, white people have asked me why members and racial groups needed to have affinity groups, celebrations and organizations. There are no Caucasian affinity groups except for the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis which are universally treated with disdain in our society, so why do racial and ethnic groups get money and resources?

It’s about pride.

Pride in one’s race is a positive connection to one’s racial identity that is constructed through a feeling of belonging, and positive associations.

When people are asked to list what groups they identify with some choose gender, other choose their career and other’s strongly identify through sports or the arts (e.g. “I’m a Cub’s fan).

For most people of color, race is high up on that list. A person can choose to shed their love of the Cubs, and let that identity go, but people of color cannot let our race go. Whether we like it or not, for people of color, race is part of our identity that society does not let us forget.

Many of the reminders of racial identification are positive. When an Asian-American student asks me about my heritage, I feel a wonderful connection with the student. When I eat Chinese food with my family, I feel at home, and when my son asks me to read a book that feature Asian characters, it warms my heart. Unfortunately, many of the reminders that I’m Asian come from awkward conversations, ignorant action, and racist comments.

When you have this part of your identity, that you do not choose, that you cannot hide, taking pride in it is an act of spiritual self-preservation. When people of color do not have pride in their racial identity, it manifest in problems that affect all of society and our shared greater humanity.

A little Asian boy who is ashamed of the shape of his eyes because of jokes other students make, may develop internalized self-hatred. This could manifest into something as innocuous as spending all of his weekend playing videos games or as destructions act lashing out through violence at others.

It is a complex and difficult thing to develop pride in one’s race. While I was never ashamed of being Asian, it wasn’t until I was in college that I felt a true sense of pride (I’ll get into this more next week).

To have pride in one’s race as a person of color is to embrace the part of your identity that for so long in American history was a mark worse than a Scarlet letter. It is this history and our present racial struggles that require deliberate and thoughtful actions.

It's hard for me to fully understand the need for affinity groups to help build racial pride.  It's a very complicated issue with many different layers, so I understand my Caucasians friends and colleagues who don't get it.

So here's what I got for my white allies:  People of color meetings and racial pride activities aren't including you because we don't like you.  There are conversations that help us build pride and feel supported that cannot happen when you are in the room (this is not something we blame you for, don't feel bad).  The more we can do this, the better we can feel about our racial identity and the more open we can be to having conversations with you and building deeper and more meaningful relationships.

Be supportive of our racial pride.  This isn't a reflection of racism, this is about us learning how to love ourselves.  If none of this makes sense to you, that's okay.  I still don't understand cottage cheese.  The effort you make to understand and your trust is meaningful.

Thanks.

To Be Asian-American: The Classroom Full Of Caucasians

A couple of years ago one of my friends showed me a class picture of his daughter’s kindergarten class. Every single child in the picture was Caucasian and blond. His daughter who is also white has darker blond hair, closer to brunette so she stood out. We laughed at this photo together.  I figured that my friend might laughed because the idea of living in such a racially homogeneous community seemed so absurd compared to his background and the way that he valued diversity in his friends.

I laughed for a different reason.

Growing up in a suburb of Seattle, there were always other minorities in my classes. I was never the only Asian student. As a child, I thought this was how it was for all children in America. As I grew older, I came to realize that this wasn’t the case and I made sure that the colleges that I applied to have a racial diversity in its student population.

At that point in the development of my racial identity, I knew that it was important that I was in an environment with other racial minorities, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t strongly identify with Asian culture, I didn’t speak Mandarin Chinese and most of the time I wasn’t close friends with my Asian classmates.  Having classmates who were students of color in my classes gave me a sense of comfort and safety. I didn’t fear Caucasians students but I knew that I was less likely to experience overt racism if I wasn’t the only person of color in the room. It’s similar to the fact that some men are less likely to make a sexist joke if half the people in the room are women.

Having other students of color in the class was an important check on my own interpretations of comments about race. There have been times in classes when a students said something that I initially thought was racially insensitive but after talking to other students of color, I realized I was overreacting and there were other times that if not for other students of color, I would have overlooked racially insensitive comments that required further discussion.

I laughed at that picture of all white kids, because it felted preposterous and kind of scary. It felt like something of out an SNL sketch. I have never been in a classroom with that racial make-up. This has to be a joke. How could a classroom this white exist?

These classrooms do exist in America and there are schools that have 100% white students. This is not necessarily a reflection anything negative about these communities. However for myself and my son, this lack of diversity is something that I could not feel comfortable with as a child, and that I feel is unacceptable for my son.

I feel blessed that Ollie’s school puts a priority of diversity and that last year; there were multiple layers of diversity in his classroom including racial diversity. Ollie knows that there are differences in hair and skin color, but he doesn’t talk about this with shame but rather with curiosity and pride because there are people in his world and in his class who are like him.

To Be Asian-American: Speaking American

Is an immigrant who lives in a Chinatown community and rarely speaks English less American than my parents who chose to live in a predominately Caucasian suburb?

There’s this presumption that when immigrants come to America, they need to become “American.” They need to speak English, adapt American customs and embrace mainstream American culture as their own. This idea is similar to the cultural melting pot that people once used to reference in describing America.

If we are to be a country built on the idea of personal freedom and self-determination, to assert that there is a singular path and qualifications that immigrants must follow to be American runs counter to the core values of our country.

The idea of a melting pop illustrates a big pot that minorities join and assimilate into, perhaps having a microscopic effect on the contents of the pot, but more likely experiencing a loss of identity in the wash of an illusion of “Americanism.”

My parents chose to speak mostly English to my brother and I instead of Mandarin Chinese. We probably ate as much Chinese food as typical American food. Culturally we were almost 100% American, watching American television and listening to European classical music and American pop music.

I have cousins who had very different experiences as children of immigrants. Some of my uncles and aunts only speak Mandarin Chinese to their children and hardly ever eat anything but Chinese food. I remember going over to one of my uncle’s house as a kid and seeing rows of videotapes with Chinese characters imported from Taiwan.

When I was younger, I thought that my family was superior because we spoke more English in our house and consumed more mainstream American culture. This came from the immature logic that in order for my families’ choices to be correct, someone else’s choices had to be inferior. As a more mature American citizen, I respect and embrace my uncle’s choices.

As American’s we want to honor’s people’s individualities and celebrate other cultures, however it’s in our human nature to feel uncomfortable when we hear people speaking languages we do not understand or walk down streets where the signs are not in English. We can’t have one without the other. It’s okay to acknowledge that discomfort because it is in this feeling that we can find a point of empathy of people coming to America who experience this feeling of alienation on a daily basis.

Yes, it would be easier if everyone only spoke English in America, but easier isn't necessarily better.

To be American is not about the language that is spoken or about the food. It’s about embracing a shared set of values, and positively contributing as a responsible citizen to our communities.  Immigrants make very different choices about what it means to them to be American.  It's in these choices, that we find the freedom, and the diversity that enriches all of our lives.

So who's more American, the Chinatown resident or Asians like my parents living to predominately Caucasian communities?

Neither.  Being American isn't a competition and it is the fact this choice exists in our country which defines its greatness.

To be Asian-American: The American Dream

There was Rock 'n' Roll, Ford Mustangs, but most importantly, the American Dream.

My parents came to America looking for a change, for a way to break free out of patriarchal traditions, and for opportunities to create a life that was their own. Neither of them had horrible lives in Taiwan, in fact they had pretty good circumstances. Both of them belonged to successful families, both were educated and they were blessed with peace surrounded by the conflicts that were all around them in Asia in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the way that Happy Days colored a time of great social strife and injustice as a feel good utopia, American music and film presented America as a place of joy, freedom and opportunity. So after my uncle, my father's older brother, settled in America, my parents followed suit and moved to the Seattle area to pursue the American Dream.

In those early days, America had its moments. My dad's first pay check went to going out to a fast food fish and chips restaurant. They served beer in frozen mugs, which my parents had never seen before. This amazed them and they really felt like they made it draining beer out of those mugs. To this day, they talk about this date as one of their favorite memories and if you look in my parents freezer, you will always see a beer mug in there.

After some time, my dad bought his dream car, a Ford Mustang. This was a legendary car in the mid-1960s that epitomize for my father everything that was great about American. Unfortunately no one told my dad that by the late 1970s when my dad got this car, the Ford Mustang was as my dad explains, a piece of crap.

That car was not the only time the American dream let my parents down. My dad worked a a dishwasher, my mom with a master degree worked as a maid and a babysitter. They constantly faced racism, (and still do to a lesser extent) and found that doors of opportunity were not open to them. Instead, they had to pry them open combatting prejudice with optimism and perseverance.

In this strange new land there were people, a few who embraced my parents differences and showed the potential for good in white America. These were neighbors, teachers and friends, who reached out and gave them hope that mainstream America could be more accepting and tolerant as it has become since my parents came to this country almost forty years ago.

My parents lives would be easier if they had stayed in Taiwan in their years as young adults. They really struggled in American. It was a hard life, but it was their life, one they created together, one they could own. Now that they are older, they have no regrets, no doubt that coming to America was one of their best decisions.

I'm very weary of the notion of the "American Dream". This idea that hard work in out country is the only thing that you need to be sucessful is simply not true. Yes, hard work was a big part of my parents success, but they also benefited from belonging to successful families, being educated, immigrating by choice, and being perceived as a model-minority . . . and of course, luck, a lot of luck. If you look at subsets of Americans who struggle with economic upward mobility they lack many of these benefits, if not all of them.

America is not defined by the rich privileged white guys who founded this country. What has made America great and continues to help us grow as a country are individuals pushing against racial and social injustice to bring us closer to the promises of our forefathers. My parents are part of this. No, my parents weren’t lawyers and they didn’t work in the government, but they came to America and proved everyone they met the value and worth of Asian Americans. In this way, they did the most important type of social change: influencing the hearts and minds of people through taking care of themselves, their community and their country.

This may not be cars or frosted mugs, but that's the real American Dream.

To Be Asian-American: What kind of Asian are you?

Cashier: hmm. . Kingsley Chin-Jer Tang, you must be from Shanghai.
Me: No, I’m actually from Seattle.
Cashier: So you’re Japanese.
Me: Uh, no. I said I was from Seattle.
Cashier: but where are from?
Me: I'm from Seattle.
Cashier: [awkward silence]

Do you think I was being a jerk to that cashier? I knew exactly what the cashier meant. He wanted to know what flavor of Asian I was. I could have made it easier on him and helped him with his awkward wording and told him that my parents are from Taiwan. But it’s not my responsibility to help people figure out how to be respectful and sensitive in the way that talk about race. This person’s display of ignorance through making assumptions about my race made me feel uncomfortable and awkward, so I decided to return the favor.

It made a difference that the person who was asking was Caucasian. When a person of color asks me about my race, they almost always ask in a more appropriate way than Caucasian people (e.g. How do you identify as a person of color?). When people of color ask me about my racial identity, most of the time, it comes from a genuine interest in my lived experience as a person of color. Honestly, when Caucasian people ask me about my race, especially in insensitive ways, it feels like they asking about a club (oh, you're from Taiwan, that's nice, how's that working out for you?).

Can you imagine if people made assumptions about parts of identity casually conversation?

“Oh, I see that you are a woman, you must be into Sex And The City.  You are such a Samantha.”
“I see that you are wearing a sports jersey, you must be a straight and enjoy degrading jokes about woman.”
“You look pregnant.  How's that long term relationship going with the man that you married.  When are you due?”

Just because I’m Asian doesn’t mean that I want to talk about being Asian all of the time. When you are a minority, most of the time when you are reminded of this fact, it comes from a negative interaction. When a person asks me about being Asian and follows that up asking me how to cook fried rice, it makes me feel sad and brings up all that of that bad stuff like the time in college when a white girl debated with me about my Asian heritage insisting that I was Korean.

My students ask me all of the time about how I identify as a person of color. Most of the time they ask me in unintentionally insensitive and inappropriate ways. I embrace these missteps as teachable moments. I signed up for this as a teacher. but I didn’t sign-up for going to a store and having my ethnic heritage questioned.

I’m not saying that we should be colorblind. The whole “colorblind” movement did grievous damage on the way that we talk about race in America. It’s okay to wonder what country someone is from. That’s fine. This is one of the first things that I wonder about when I meet someone, but it’s never the first thing I ask about. Go ahead and embrace that curiosity, just don’t be disrespectful and don’t make assumption.

If you ask someone how they are doing and they immediately bring up the fact that they just came back from visiting their Korean grandparents, go ahead and ask for details about their Asian identity. If someone is wearing a Cubs jersey, it’s probably safe to talk about baseball and I don’t mind at all that people bring up superhero stuff with me because I’m almost always wearing a superhero t-shirt.

My face, my hair, my skin tone, my race, aren't conversation starters.  I didn't choose these things.  I don't put on my Asian-ness when I wake up in the morning.  The social construct of race, the stereotypes and prejudice surrounding my Asian identity, were forced upon me.

You want to know more about being Asian?  Go to the library, read a blog or talk to me, I'm happy to talk about my racial identity, just get to know me as a person first.  
 

To Be Asian-Americans: Tears

My Asian-ness keeps me from crying when I hear about another unjust death of an African-American. I am shaken to the core at horror of the violence, but I do not shed a tear because I do not see myself, my son and my family represented in that video. Intellectually, I understand the injustice, the history that led to these tragedies and the hard work that must be done to move our country forward.

Emotionally, as a human being, I empathize and I hear the strength in the mother’s voice and anguish in the girlfriend’s cries and I am moved and I feel the feelings, transform in a warmth behind my eyes, but I don’t completely let go and the tears do not come.

I don’t cry because I do not know and I cannot completely understand what it means for African-Americans to see one of their own face terrible injustice, again. I’ve read Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns and watched Gates’ series African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. I have a great depth of knowledge of Motown and Soul music and I can drop many Rap verse by memory. I’m proud that I’ve taken the time and that I have interest to learn about African-American culture, but I’m not black. I can spend the rest of my life immersing myself in African-American culture, and I still will not know what it means to be black in America.

The reason, I have this interest in African-American culture is because it has taught me what it means to be a minority in America. I spend most of my time as a minority surrounded by white people. I don’t belong to an Asian church or have a group of Asian-American friends that I hang out with. I live primarily amongst white people. When you are a “model minority”, it is easy to forget that I am not one of them. It is in African-American culture, that I have found inspiration and understanding in the development of my racial identity.

I’ll never forget walking into my first teachers of color lunch and seeing a room, where once again as an Asian-American, I was a minority. Instead of being lost in a sea of Caucasians, I was embraced in by a group of African-Americans. We validated each other’s feelings and trusted what we could not fully understand to be truth, honoring other’s perspectives. It is in that room I felt valued and seen for what I am, an Asian-American.

These shootings are an issue for Asian-Americans. It is not an issue in the same way that it is for African-Americans, or for Caucasians. All of this racially based violence is a symptom of how we as Americans value and in many cases devalue groups of people in our country. Unfortunately it continues to manifest most tragically and most visibly in the African-American community. But even if it doesn’t affect your community, it affects you. With tragic injustice, the promises you tell your children about our country become closer to lies and in these lies we lose our souls.

To Be Asian-American: Loving v. Reality

I was 5 years old when I had my first kiss. It was just a peck, nothing more than Preschool-aged play. I don’t remember her name, but I know that she was Caucasian.

My wife is Caucasians, and the vast majority of my past love interests (crushes and girlfriends) were also Caucasians. If you didn’t catch the hint from the title of this post, I’m Asian-American.

Growing up, my parents never talked to me about the why I should date within my own race or with people who shared my own cultural heritage or with the issues of dating someone who wasn’t Asian. My parents knew how hard it could be to find love and they didn’t want to put up more roadblocks. They also strongly believed in creating a new cultural identity mixing their Taiwanese traditions with America ones. Encouraging me to date other Asian girls was inconsistent with this approach to Americanization.

Then things started happened in high school that made it clear to me that while Loving v. Virginia, the 1967, United States Supreme Court Case that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage was long since past, not everyone was on board with that decision.

An Asian parent after finding out that I was taking a white girl to prom, complained to my mom saying that I should take an Asian girl since some of them didn’t have dates yet. A Caucasian teacher echoed this same sentiment. And then at a wedding reception, one of the people at our table after asking me about the race of my girlfriend and finding out that she was wife, chastised me for dating a girl who wasn’t Asian.

I fully respect people’s desires to date and marry within their own race or cultural identity. JDate.com, it’s all good. Even with only a cursory knowledge of Jewish history, it’s easy to understand why a persecuted minority group, who’s people have suffered incomprehensible tragedy and withstood efforts to erase their culture would want to marry within their cultural identity.

I also understand what that person was saying at that wedding. For many people having a shared cultural identity and race would help in developing a marriage. A shared cultural identity with similar life experiences could make a lot of things easier. While there’s a school of thought that says that people who have many differences actually have better long-term relationships, there is logic in the “marrying within your own race/culture is helpful”-logic.

The whole interracial thing hasn’t been a huge struggle in my life but it has presented challenges. Sometimes when my wife’s name is called in a waiting room people are surprised that she is white. There’s a lot of mandarin Chinese spoken in my parent’s house, that sometimes I forget to translate for my wife. I’ve had to correct acquaintances who assume that my wife is Asian (this is pretty awkward). I’m glad that everyone likes to mention how mixed-race children like my son are so good looking but many of these people are completely ignorant of the unique challenges that Ollie will face in his cultural development as a person who fails to fit into traditional racial categories.

I don’t completely understand the evolutionary biology, and the social influences that affected the relationships in my life. But I do know that I love my wife. You may not believe me, but her “white-ness” was never an issue in my mind. I’m not saying that I’m colorblind. I knew she was white from the moment I met her. Trust me, I’m very aware of the race of people around me. Our differences were bonuses, not burdens. It is exactly this shared viewpoint on life along with our belief in each other that provided the foundation for our relationships and our family.

We are not out of the woods in our acceptance and understanding of interracial marriage.  Yes, Loving v. Virginia was 49 years ago, but in issues surrounding interracial marriage still resonate in our cultural consciousness. About a month ago, I talked to a Hispanic student about how minorities often have preference lists for race when it comes to dating. With her parents, African-Americans were at the bottom of that list and she was told explicitly that she couldn’t date a boy because he was African-American. I shared the ranking that is typical for Chinese-Americans.

This isn’t so much an expression of racism but rather an expression of generational differences, cultural influences and societal pressures. The idea of a “ranking” is disturbing, but it’s a lived reality. I’m not proud of this shared experience between minority groups, but I’m really we were able to talk about it.

I wonder, do some Caucasian people have these lists?  Do they talk about it openly?
Have you talked race and dating with your family?

Have you been made to think about the race of who you date or who you marry?

To Be Asian-American: The Model Minority

I’m a model minority. I’m that minority that doesn’t make you clutch your purse when I walk by. I’m that minority that doesn’t get followed around when walking into stores. I’m that minority that people assume is good at math. And I’m that minority is that worries you the least when I date your daughter.

I’m Asian, the good kind.  I’m Taiwanese. I’m not a communist from China, and my people weren’t your enemy during any wars. And I’m not from the other parts of Asian, like Pakistan, so that whole Muslim thing, not an issue.

Is it a relief to be the preferred minority in America? Not really, but I’m not going to deny that being at the top of the minority totem pole doesn’t provide me with a level of privilege that makes my life easier. And as with any kind privilege, these benefits have baggage, and are never “all good.”

The thing that I was told when first learning about race that the problem with the idea of the model minority was that when we as Asians fail to live up to people’s positive stereotypes, it hurts our feelings. As someone who isn’t great at math, (I have issues doing math in my head), I have had my fee-fees hurt when people assume I’m good at math. Either people laugh in disbelief when I inform them that I’m not a math genius or they look at me disgusted like I’m some sort of a lower form of Asian. Thank God, I’m decent at troubleshooting tech stuff. I don’t think I could deal with disappointing all of the people around me who ask me for tech help.

More significant than my fee-fees, the idea of the model minority made me blind to the fact that I was a minority, and that there were significant issues in my life related to racism in America. I’m not saying that I have the same degree of challenges as an African-American whose ancestors were brought to America through the slave trade or as a Mexican whose parents are illegal immigrants. I’m saying that somehow I came to assume that racism didn’t effect me and wasn’t my problem as an Asian or an American.

Then came moving to Chicago, a class in Asian-American History, my first African-American friend, and finally, working at a school that valued racial diversity and an open dialog around issues related to diversity and inclusion. And now, I see things differently.

Racism is everywhere in America. It feels like in the past year, it’s racism has come out of the closet in the guise of security and making America “great” like never before in my own memory. Yes, we’ve made progress but that’s no reason not to push and push hard for change.

The idea of the model minority is inherently racist. The categorization and the comparisons that people make between minority groups separates racial communities and builds a wall of prejudice and ignorance that gets in the way of Caucasians developed meaningful relationships with people of color.

Watch the model minority thing.

It’s much more than hurt fee-fees.