How I Came To The Work - Part 3: Awakening

I don’t remember thinking a lot about racism or sexism in my first teaching job. It was a high school band teacher position, and most high school band teachers are White men. I was aware of this but I didn’t see this as a sign of oppression. It just seemed like the result of individual choice.

There wasn’t any conversations during department meetings or faculty meetings about diversity. The other band teachers stuck pretty closely to the canon of school band music which was predominately  composed and arranged by White men. Even the “multi-cultural” music was composed by White men. All these lists of “essential” music and state lists of songs were mostly if not all filled with White male composers. I knew this at the time but it didn’t really bug me.

I felt like an outsider when we’d have these meeting with band teachers at other schools. There was no other people of color, everyone was taller than me, and it was hard for me to socialize and make friends with  other people. At the time I thought it had to do with the fact this was a hard job that was overwhelming, but in retrospect there was probably other stuff related to my racial identity that effected my experience.

My second teaching job, I was a special education assistant, and I started seeing teaching differently. Instead of focusing on what I was teaching, I was focusing on how to teach. The majority of student I was teaching were students of color, unlike my previous job where most of my students were White.

I had all of these new experiences at this job that broadened my sense of humanity. One of my favorite students was this wonderful 3rd grade girl. During a classroom party her mother came and the 3rd grader really wanted me to meet her.  When I started talking to her mom, the girl started translating for her mom, and I quickly realized that her mom didn’t speak English.

I shared a teaching space with students who had a wide variety of special needs including students who non-verbal. I felt discomfort being around students who were autistic, and I learned over time to see that as just one facet of their identity. The modeling of other teachers and the way that they treated them with dignity made me ashamed about my bias and gave me a new way see the humanity in different people.

The experience that impacted me the most was this little Asian boy who I taught. He had some language processing issues, which is why he got special ed services. And I taught him how to read.

I taught him how to read. 

That’s an amazing thing for me to think about. Reading is such an important gateway to the world, and I was the one who empowered him with these skills. I don’t know if he felt a unique connection with me because we were both Asian, but I know that I felt special connections, and a higher level of commitment to him, because I saw a part of myself in him.

I didn’t take this job looking for my eyes to be opened to the diversity of the world, but it came to me in ways I never expected. I had all of these experiences with people who different than me, and I found connections looking at these differences full on, because I couldn’t ignore them. And with one special boy, I saw myself, and something more in education. So when there was an opening at school that put diversity as a central part of their mission, I was intrigued, and I applied...

How I Came To The Work - Part 2: The Set-Up

I’m going to start the first essential question in getting a better understanding race in America and becoming anti-racist: When did you become of aware of your race, the race of other people, and racism as a system of oppression? 

I’ve been aware of race for as I long as I can remember. My racial identity was never in question. I knew my parents were from Taiwan. Along with other cultural makers like language and cuisine, I understood at an early age that I was not part of mainstream American culture, and by American culture, I actually mean “White American” culture.

Even though I was raised deep within the “colorblind” culture of the 1980s that taught that the best way to deal with race was to “not see it,” I was VERY aware of race. I knew how many people were Asian-American in my classes, and I knew that my neighbors growing up were Black.  And I knew that most of the people I saw on television were White.  I wasn’t upset about this fact, as I was woefully unaware of what this White presentation communicated to me about who was valued in our society.

The first time I remember being offended as an Asian-American was watching the Siamese cats in  Lady And The Tramp in middle school. The first I felt prejudice was when I was in late elementary school and one of my teachers was surprised that I wasn’t that good at math. The first time I became aware of racialized views on family was when I found out that some Asian parents in my high school community were critical of the fact that I had a White girlfriend. And the first time I became aware  that I had issues related to my racial identity development was when a large group of Asian-American students sat together in my college dining hall and I felt physically sick.

All of this prepared me to hear a different story in my college American history class. My college history professor focused our understanding of American history from the end of the Civil War to the Vietnam War.  She structured this class by following the oppression of different group of people.  For the first time, I heard of Asian-Americans being part of the story of American history as she taught about the American internment camps of Japanese-American citizens before and during WWII. This piqued my interest in my people’s history, so I followed up this class with taking the course, Asian-American History. This class along with a lot of quality time with a psychology graduate student in therapy helped me come to terms with my racial identity.

What I knew of race, and racism was of the past, not the present.  This served me well for some time.  In graduated school, all of this knowledge helped me understand the need to represent cultural with authenticity in education.

This is where I was when I entered education. I knew about the racial sin of our past, and like so many, I was unaware of the how this story was not done. I understood racism, but I was unaware of how systems of racism permeated every part of our society. I had done some good work on myself, and work on my craft as an educator.

I saw myself as a teacher and a person who was not racist. Like learning fingering on a flute, I felt like I had this part of my pedagogy down, and instead of continuing on an anti-racist journey, I sat down at the side of the road content, unaware of all of the racism  around me, and throughout our society.

I had no idea how much I had to learn, and that my work had just started.

Facial Hair: Masculinity, Racism, & The Mirror

It’s the one thing guys have left.

Traditional markers of masculinity have been socially acceptable for women to take on as expressions of their identity. Women can wear pants, have tattoos, have short haircuts, participate on the high wrestling team, play football, be sports fans, love whiskey, and find other women sexually attractive. There’s a lot of judgement and resistance for women to do all of these “manly,” things and more that I didn’t state here. However, many of these things are no longer signs of being a “tom boy,” they are just things that women do as well as men…and women are excelling at many of these things doing them better than men.

It is important to note that this does not mean that the patriarchy isn’t firmly in power in almost every aspect of society. While women can wear pants, have a short haircut, and drink beer, they still face many limitations in business for example, because of institutional sexism.

The one thing that men have left as expression of masculinity, that women do not embrace is facial hair. Male facial hair and beards are on the rise in popularity. My theory is that because in this time where the false dichotomy between masculinity and femininity is beginning to break down, men need something to hang on to. Facial hair is one thing men still got that is clearly manly as other markers of what it means to be main down collapse under the pressure of progress.

I am not asserting that men with facial hair are holding back feminism, or that growing a beard is somehow anti-women. What I am asserting is that some men are searching for a new masculine identity, and facial hair is helping. For some facial hair has nothing to do with the changing waves of gender roles. However ,it is undeniable that there is something going on here with the rise of bushy beards in our society.

This is one reason why for the past two weeks I’ve grown out my facial hair. I’m curious about what this means to me as a man. Does it make me feel more manly? Will it make me feel older? What is this thing that some men are so obsessed with, and other so strongly identify with as part of their gender expression?

Mixed in with these wondering is racism.

I have been told all my life by East Asian people (China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea etc), non-Asian people, and popular culture that East Asian men do not grow facial hair well, and should not bother trying. The argument is that is comes in too patchy and most likely you will end up with “Fu Manchu.” It’s really messed up that both East Asian and non-Asians alike use a horrible racist character that played on the worst of Asian stereotype (oh, and so much yellow-face) to describe East Asian male facial hair.

This is why I’ve NEVER gone more than two days without shaving since puberty.

Guys brag about facial hair, discuss it as a topic, and it symbolizes so many different things. I remember singing a Russian song “Salvation Is Created,” in college. The director wanted us to sing with a darker tone. He told us to think of ourselves being Russian in the cold, dark, winter singing this song, while stroking our thick beards. The facial hair aspect was a visualization used to get us to sing with a more manly tone. So beards = being strong and masculine, and East Asian men are told not to grow beards…and we are also stereotyped as being less sexual, less muscular, having smaller genitalia, and being more submissive. The message that I received to not grow facial hair, because I couldn’t, was just one more way that society emasculated East Asian men.

This sucks, and feels horrible.

I’m growing out I’m trimming up as a hair on the chin, little soul patch and a mustache. When I look in mirror and I don’t know what to think. It looks different, it doesn’t feel right, but I’m not sure why.

The standard of beauty across the world is white. Skin lightening creams are really popular in African countries, and all across Asia, people die their hair brown or blond and get plastic surgery to look more Caucasian. It’s not a big jump of logic to conclude that the standard of what male facial hair should look like follows the same pattern.

Good facial hair is based on Caucasian styles of facial hair. A Chinese person can dress white, but a Chinese person can’t make their facial hair look like a Norwegian’s beard. I can’t grow a beard and look like Thor. The fact that my facial hair cannot reach that standard is expression of being less than. I probably judge my facial hair largely based on Caucasian standards of beauty, so what would happen if I somehow based my facial hair on something different?

I’ve found many images of East Asian guys with facial hair, and a lot of them look different than what many white guys look like with mustaches. It’s patchier, but at the same time it can really suave. I don’t know what looks good, and I’m doubting my instincts because I know they are mixed with racist messaging. It makes me really sad to realize how much this has affected the way I view something as seemingly inconsequential as facial hair. What else am I seeing through this racist lens about myself?

So I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking I’ll shave it off, but I’m not sure. That feels like giving up.  I feel I want to keep it to explore what all of this means, but I’m not enjoying the mental dissonance that happens every time I look in the mirror and are reminded about the racism inside of myself, and how the world continues to view Asian men.

Like with many things, racism, puts us in a lose/lose situation.  So we just make a choice, feel the pain, breathe deeply, then hold our heads up high and keep our eyes on the prize.  

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.

Year 5: Week 8 – "That's Racist"

I was sitting in the back of the classroom as one of my colleagues was leading a review session. While one of the students went up to the board to draw a diagram of the lungs and the diaphragm, one boy jokingly called the drawing “racist.” Another boy next to him repeated the joke while a different boy a couple seats down joined in their laughter.

As the seventh graders left the classroom, I asked these boys to hang back for a second because I needed to talk to them. Here’s what I had to say:

This is one of those things where I talk and you listen and maybe, hopefully you will apologize when I’m done. It is never okay to joke about racism. People have died because of racism. Not just people like Martin Luther King Jr. forty years ago, but people last year. People have died and continue to die because of racism.

People you know in your lives, teachers in their school and friends of yours face racism. Racism hurts and scars. It’s one of the biggest problems in our society.

To joke about racism is to say that the suffering that people feel every day because of racism is not important, that their pain is not real. That is not insensitive and offensive.

You live in a world that is less racist than times past. You enjoy the sacrifices that people have made fighting racism, every single day. You cannot make a light of this and turn one of the most important issues in American history into a joke.

Here’s another thing: Racism is serious. If I joke that one of the other teachers at Parker is being racist, they would be investigated seriously. Even if they find out that I was just making a joke. The investigation would damage their career and my job would be in jeopardy. 

Make fun of something else about each other. Mock how the sports team they like is bad, talk about how they dress funny, pick something else. I get that you make jokes about each other sometime. That’s fine, that’s part of being a man.

Don’t ever make a joke about something being racist ever again. It’s offensive to me as an Asian-American, the people in history who died because of racism and your friends who identify as being a person of color.

People your age have died because of racism. There’s nothing funny about that.

Trayvon’s “American Skin (41 Shots)” by Bruce Springsteen

When Bruce Springsteen first performed “American Skin” he was widely criticized for performing a song about the shooting death of Amadou Diallo. On February 9th, 1999,Four police officers shot at him 41 times, (19 that actually hit Amadou) as he reached into his pocket to take out his wallet. The police offices were acquitted of any crimes as discussions of racial profiling and police brutality spread across America partially due to Springsteen bringing attention to this event.



Days after George Zimmerman was acquitted of in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Springsteen performed “American Skin,” dedicating it to Trayvon, “We’ll send this letter back home for justice for Trayvon Martin.”

While the deaths of Diallo and Martin are different in many ways "American Skin" remind us of the underlying reality for both of these men that as Springsteen sings “You can get killed for living in your American skin.”

As President Obama so eloquently reflected, there is a tension between the statistics about black males and our racist reactions.



More than ever we need to work to understand the context of what our different skins mean and how they define for each of us what it means to be American. Events in our culture stick to us differently. For me the Japanese internment camps during World War II are probably more forward in my thoughts about America than for other people, which has to do with the fact that I’m Asian.

Obama’s explanation of the context of people’s reactions is critical for us to consider because as much as we have one unified American experience, what sticks with us, what shapes our perspective has to do with how we form our identity as much as how society views us.

On one side we have outrage and disappointment that a country that seems so progressive has failed to bring justice. On the other side are arguments that Trayvon was a “punk,” that the justice system followed it’s own terms (which somehow makes this verdict okay), and that Zimmerman’s reactions were somehow justified.

We shamefully can’t even bring up gun control with this case. No police officer would have used their gun the way that Zimmerman did on Trayvon because of their training. This gross misuse of a gun puts into question the validity of having a hand gun as a self-defense tool, the training that must be required before owning a gun and the people in our society refuses to stand up against the gun companies and to each other to do what is right.

Summer weekends bring death to the streets of Chicago, mostly on the Southwest side of the city. It makes the local news but doesn’t make national headlines. I’m sure if one person was shot that looked like my wife, it would. “American Skin” will continue to echo as we struggle to deal with issues of racism in our society. 

There is this idea that we can't slide back to the racism of the past, that racial harmony is a trajectory that America will inevitably reach.  This assumption is dangerous.  Ignorance, scapegoating, racism and inequality are not things of the past.  We must not only celebrate the progress our country has made but also acknowledge that this progress came from very hard work that we need to continue.

Obama is right.  The younger generations are much better at being open and accepting than the older generations.  So it on us to not pass on the worst of ourselves and to let the younger generations challenge our assumptions and our views of the world.  We can do better, we must do better so that the American skin that each of us wear is not a curse but a blessing.