I’m Asian-American, and I’m hyper-aware of my Asian-ness. Especially now.
I obviously can’t speak to the white experience, or the Black experience, or the Latino experience, the Native American experience, or the experience of any other race or type of person living in America.
But here is a glimpse at my own:
I was born in South Korea (probably), sometime in the mid- to late-September time frame (most likely). (I say probably and most likely because I was orphaned by a parent or parents who vanished, and was put up for adoption by an agency out of Seoul in 1973 or 74.)
When I was about 9 months old, I was adopted by a white couple living in Maryland who already had a biological daughter, and who not too long after my arrival would learn that they were expecting another girl. When I was 2 years old, we moved to a small town in eastern Connecticut that today is 0.16% Asian and back then was almost certainly even closer to zero.
I don’t remember knowing a single other Asian in elementary, middle or high school.
Almost all of my friends in college were white, I married a woman who is white, and though I live in a neighborhood that is racially very mixed, I’d be lying if I said the collection of friends I have now is diverse. (They’re mostly white.)
I’ve never been back to Korea. The closest I’ve gotten to Asia, geographically, is Hawaii. I can count the number of Korean words I can speak on one hand.
Those are all facts about my experience as an Asian-American. The following list, meanwhile, should give you a sense of how it feels to be an Asian-American. Or, at least, how it feels to be one Asian-American in particular.
Me.
They’re things I’ve been reflecting on in the wake of the recent spate of hate crimes against Asian-Americans, and last week’s mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent.
1. I think about my Asian-ness every day of my life. Not every other day, not once or twice a week. Every day.
Although frankly, it might not be so specific to my being Asian, but more broadly just the simple fact that I look so clearly different from most of the people around me. And so that difference, of course, almost always crosses my mind when I look in the mirror.
But I also think about it every time I interact with someone in public, whether I know the person or not, because in my head I imagine that their mind is registering — at least for a moment during the interaction, even if it’s almost instinctual and practically imperceptible — that I am Asian.
2. I don’t know if I’ve ever really truly wanted to be white. But I’ve thought about how life might be easier if I weren’t Asian.
I’ve been lucky. I haven’t experienced much in-your-face racism in my life. When I was growing up, I occasionally was taunted by kids who thought saying “ching-chong,” or making Bruce Lee jokes, or pulling the skin at the outer sides of their eyes to make them look slanted were funny things to do, but all in all, I never got beat up or really seriously bullied.
So when I say I’ve thought about how life might be easier if I weren’t Asian, again, it’s about my own insecurities.
There’s no evidence to back this up, but I always suspected I had a harder time cracking the popular crowd in school because I was Asian. I always felt like it was more difficult to get a girl to go out with me. When I was out with my parents and sisters, I always felt like people were staring at us because they were white and I was not.
I still feel that way sometimes today, when I’m out with my wife and we’re holding hands.
3. I often feel like a “fake Asian.”
For obvious reasons, I can never officially claim to be white. Yet at the same time, because my worldview and my experiences are colored so much by a relatively whitewashed upbringing and a predominantly white circle of family and friends in adulthood, I can neither with a straight face claim to be Asian in anything other than appearance.
It’s interesting to consider as it relates to my career. On one hand, I have always made my workplace more diverse on paper. On the other, I bring nothing new to the table culturally. I don’t speak another language, and don’t have a traditional Asian experience that might be useful to conversations about racial sensitivities.
As a result of all this, I’ve told people in the past that I’m a “banana” — yellow on the outside, white on the inside. I wouldn’t ever call anyone else that. But I feel like it describes me in a nutshell perfectly.
4. I’m not averse to drawing attention to the fact that I’m Asian.
Not regularly, but when an opportunity presents itself, I’ll crack some sort of joke that centers around my race.
For instance: One of my go-to quips on Facebook when I first started going to country-music concerts as a reviewer for the Observer was something along the lines of, “At the (country singer name goes here) show and playing ‘Count The Asians.’ So far my friend and I are tied 1-1.”
I don’t know. A psychiatrist would probably tell me it’s just a way of masking my insecurities. But ...
5. ... I do like a good Asian joke.
My favorite from the past year came in November, when Dave Chappelle returned to “Saturday Night Live” for the series’ first post-presidential election episode and included a joke about one of Donald Trump’s various nicknames for COVID. “Called the coronavirus the ‘kung flu.’ I said, ‘You racist, hilarious son of a b----.’ I’m supposed to say that, not you. It’s wrong when you say it.”
He’s right, you know. “Kung flu” can be funny. It just can. It’s also, as Chappelle suggests, rather racist. But it can be funny, too, in the right context.
Same with “banana” for that matter. Totally appropriate in certain contexts, totally inappropriate in certain other ones.
So much is about context. Which brings me to my last point.
6. Because of my personal history — because of my own unique experience as an Asian-born, white-bred male who thinks about his race every day but who rarely feels a deep connection to his Asian-ness — I’ve never worried about being the potential victim of a hate crime.
Until now.
It’s a very strange, very unsettling, very sad feeling.
I hope it goes away soon.
This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 4:04 PM.
