Francesca - Week 5: Not Asian Enough
Growing up, I always felt less Asian than my elementary school friends, who had ethnic origins in various parts of East Asia while I was born in the Philippines. You might think that that makes no sense. And on the surface, it doesn’t. How can one person be “less Asian” than another if both of them are from Asia, albeit different countries?
But it’s not that simple. American television only likes to portray one Asian caricature on the screen: pale skin, straight hair, narrow eyes. They’re intended to be East Asian, but the producers clearly didn’t pick a specific ethnicity because they don’t even know the difference between them.
An Asian kid sits down at the lunch table. It’s his first day in America and he’s nervous to make new friends.
He opens his lunchbox.
“Eww!!” the children cry in unison. “What is that?”
The poor kid leaves the lunchroom crying to play with his calculator alone, or something. We’ve all heard the story. The message is really for white kids–telling them to be more inclusive. But the message that us Asian kids from the Bay Area get is different. It tells us that our cultures are supposed to be foreign and alarming when that may have never even crossed our minds. And no one really explains that the story we’ve heard over and over again might not actually reflect our reality, which is confusing and sets false expectations about who we are and what we’re gonna deal with.
My mother always told me that “Filipinos adapt.” She said that it means we have an advantage here in America because we don’t cling onto aspects of our culture (food, accents, garb) that may appear unappealing.
And I thought she was right. I never brought smelly food to school. I wasn’t a nerd who had nothing better to do at recess than play with a calculator. I didn’t get made fun of for how I looked or dressed.
Was it because Filipinos adjust better than other ethnicities? Not really. It was because no one at my school was actually experiencing the cruel reality we were taught about in class. It wasn’t because the stories we heard were entirely untrue–they just didn’t show the whole picture.
It’s time for lunch. I’m sitting with all my friends in a beautiful melting pot of cultures–Filipino, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Everyone opens up their lunches.
You’re probably expecting me to say that everyone opened the beautifully cooked foods of their homeland and we all embraced each other and our cultures. But that didn’t really happen unless you count leftover Panda Express as “beautiful cultural food.”
Anyway. I wasn’t any more or less Asian than my friends. We were all from Asia, and we were all 100% Asian. It was the idea in my head of what an Asian was supposed to be, planted there by American media, that was wrong.
And it only took me like eight years to correct it.
What stood out to me most in your blog was how you challenged the idea that cultural identity has to fit a particular image. I really liked your discussion of how American media portrays Asian people because it shows how stereotypes can influence not only how others perceive a community but also themselves. What immediately caught my attention in the beginning was the opening question about feeling “less Asian” and I think the way you gradually reconsider creates a feeling of growth throughout the blog. I also really appreciated the way you incorporated humor into a serious topic through the calculator and Panda Express stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteI can understand your observation that the stories we hear about discrimination are not necessarily false, but that they are not representative of everyone's experiences. This points out that even stories intended to create inclusivity can unintentionally create expectations that people are supposed to experience themselves. These descriptions of growing up in the Bay Area, surrounded by people from different ethnic backgrounds shows the direct contrast with how such experiences are portrayed on American television.
Your mothers’ statement that “Filipinos adapt” shows an interesting perspective as at first you believed that this explained why your experiences were different than those shown in the media, but you eventually realized that this wasn’t necessarily true. It shows how easy it is to make assumptions about different cultures based on limited information and experiences.
Hello Francesca, I enjoyed your take on racial identity in the Bay Area. Growing up, I also never understood why minorities were “supposed” to be bullied because I never felt like a minority. There is so much diversity where we live, a bubble of cultures, languages, and customs that we discover through the many restaurants, city-run activities, and more. In my eyes, while I understand racism and discrimination against ethnic minorities, I have seen how cultures can coexist and be integrated into America.
ReplyDeleteI liked when you were honest about the confusion you had when faced with “adapting,” or assimilating to American culture. I think it’s a struggle many Bay Area children, including myself, face as well. It’s difficult to grow up learning about your uniqueness and feel represented in your city, but then get exposed to so much media that makes you question if you are only treated like this in your home.
Hate crimes and more show us the opposite of what we’ve learned in the Bay Area: blending in keeps us out of trouble. I’ve tried getting rid of aspects of myself as well, you talked about accents, and even though I’ve never spoken my mother tongue, I actually grew up speaking in a slightly Indian accent. Eventually, I forced myself to stop talking like that, and have a 100% Californian accent now. It’s sad that it takes time to learn how to have a balance between both aspects in our lives, and we lose parts of ourselves in the process, but, like you said, we learn that we don’t have to say goodbye to our culture to be American.
In the past, I’ve noticed that your blogs tend to be fun and creative, but I liked that you chose to show us a more introspective and wise side of yourself. You constructed a wonderful narrative that was relatable and interesting to read!
Although I have experienced things close to bullying before and during first grade, I did not really go through anything like that afterwards which really surprised me. Like your example with the Asian kid, I was used to seeing bullies all the time in the media, and was really expecting to encounter someone like that, but I never really did.
ReplyDeleteObviously, the media often still over-exaggerates the extent as to how much bullying and discrimination occurs, but I think the main reason for this lack of cruelty is because we live in the bay area. In other places in the United States, Asians would make up a small percentage of the population, but here, we make up an overwhelming amount, so it makes sense as to why there are significantly less of us “standing out.”
Despite that, I found your point about how despite not appealing to the stereotypes you were still “100% Asian” interesting, because I had never really thought of someone not thinking they belonged to their ethnicity here. I think because I grew up surrounded by other people who were Indian, I never thought that I was the odd one out, and rather thought it was the one on the screen who was odd.
I really like how you use so many different techniques throughout your blog, like: rhetorical questions, imagery, dialogue, and more. You do that often throughout your blogs, and it keeps them feeling kind of interactive and more engaging for me. Your paragraphing, especially on the second half of your blog is done really well, and it all flows really well after the spacing.