When Will I Look American?
“Are you the foreign exchange student?”
This was a question asked by a substitute teacher in my 10th-grade honors language arts class. And at the moment, no one was that surprised a question like that was asked. No one seemed particularly upset, no one tried to call her out on her biases, so it wasn’t a big deal.
But looking back, Y I K E S.
I am Asian. From just reading my name or just looking at my face you can easily see that. And unfortunately, unless I go through some massive plastic surgery or change my last name, it’s always going to be obvious that I am an Asian person.
And for the most part that’s 100% okay. Despite there being toxic components within it, I still am proud of my Asian heritage and culture. Even if I could do it all over again I would not change this part about myself. It’s a part of me that I have grown to adopt and cherish as the years go on.
But I am also an American. So the fact that a random woman looked at me and my name and automatically assumed that I wasn’t American hurts a lot. Because for so long, I worked so hard to fit in. I would act, talk, and dress like my white peers just to feel a sense of belonging, just to be accepted. And yet, it didn’t matter because, at face value, I would always look different.
And this isn’t to just demonize that substitute teacher. I know that for many people back home I was the first and/or only Asian person they had ever met. So an assumption like that from an older person isn’t the wildest thing that could’ve happened. But it’s more so the fact that I could work so hard to try and belong just to have it stripped from me so easily hurts so much. I am again, an Asian AMERICAN. I am considered a subclass of the American people. And yet, to this day that’s not necessarily the first assumption people will make of me and many others.
And again, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I am a citizen. I vote, I signed up for the draft, I pay my taxes, I have a driver’s license and passport, the list goes on. Because on paper, I am an American. If someone were to see all of that information on a screen there would be no doubt. But when it comes to just looking at me, I know that the assumption for many people is that I am not an American. I must have come from another country and just be residing in the states or something as an Asian citizen.
When does it change? Will it change? How many more generations of students experiencing the same thing I did will there be? People love to praise America for being so diverse and yet to so many people when they think of what an American looks like, my Asian American peers and I are not included in that mental model. Hell, even the natives of this land probably aren’t included in that model.
This post is not meant to discredit other students of color and their own experiences of feeling different or excluded from the definition of “American”, but this was more so meant to highlight my own experience and feelings. Because if y’all wanna start bragging about how diverse this country is, I need your own mental models and definitions of “American” to start reflecting that diversity too.
I’m not going to say that I have it nailed down because I don’t, at all. This is something I only really started thinking about very recently. I can be blamed just as much as I blame others, if not more. Remember that I am not an expert. These thoughts and words are purely my own and they can change over time. But this is something that feels bigger than just me and my own personal growth so I wanted a way to share it. Cool. Thanks.
