An Open Letter to the Woman Who Told My Family to Go Back to China
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Yet somehow I still often feel like an outsider.
As I've started becoming more aware of how race affects how you get treated in America, I've given up on identifying as American, despite growing up here, being a citizen, and not speaking my parent's native language very well.
I find it much easier to identify as Asian-American now, and there is a sense of comradery, especially in cities with smaller AA populations. A nice side effect is that I no longer get bothered when someone asks me that oh-so-annoying question "where are you from" meaning "what ethnicity are you".
I live in and was born and raised in NYC around large Asian communities, so I feel like I'm fortunate to grow up learning about my parent's culture and where they're from but at the same time I'm a child of a completely different culture. I often find myself feeling torn between the two. I'm not Chinese, my birth certificate proves I'm American, however I often don't feel like I can represent myself as either.
My fiance is White American and the glances and stares we get when we're in more homogeneous parts of the country are pretty telling.
What does it matter if you get looks from people who have no value to you? You would get even more stares in parts of China.
I consider myself an American, not hyphenated, who possesses more knowledge of Chinese culture than average. My close friends come in a variety of colors and as far as I can tell, we are just ourselves. That's not to say racism doesn't happen at all in the Bay Area, but we do have the luxury of being considered "nothing unusual" most of the time.
That's terrible. I can't even imagine. I wonder what we can do to help change this?
But even beyond that, I personally believe the "just don't be racist, everyone is the same after all" belief is rather naive. I suspect that there are in fact in some places and in some ways, increasing racism against certain groups, specifically mainland Chinese. The mainstream narrative that there is no such thing as culture is so obviously false, I honestly take people with these opinions about as seriously as they take redneck Trump supporters.
If you want me to pretend that everyone is the same, and that immigration has absolutely zero affect, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to disagree (but I will try to be welcoming and polite).