“What are you?”
This question has never, and will never be a new line. When you are a person of color, especially one of multiple cultural backgrounds, you spend much of life at least subconsciously working to be accepted in order to be successful, but also trying to avoid being easily categorized. When you are a colored American, you navigate the discourse not just within American society, but within your home community, treading the fine line between being too stereotypical and being too Westernized. Your idea of success is relative. The mainstream representations of yourself aren’t ideal. You mine for gems of role models underneath the American rubble. You weld together your identity like a glass sculpture. Then when you meet someone new, they study your face, your body, your name, every surface level sign, and always ask the same question.
I am Asian.
Asians are mindful. The model minority myth has been instilled in us since childhood with the academic pressure to make our families proud. It’s a different type of pride, and a specific breed of shame should we ever fall short. While we are different, we are not to be disassociated from other communities, for we would not exist without them. Wong Fu Productions’ “Yappie” series says exactly this in the pilot episode, that we are a community of immigrants, but we do not have the same illegal alien stigma as Latinx communities. We were viewed as foreign enemies since World War II with laws put in place to discriminate against us, yet not all of us will understand the villainized status of being from the Middle East. Our relatively high economic status grants us immense amounts of privilege, but we are not scrutinized for it before white people are. The systems of oppression put into place do not leave as deadly of a scar on our bodies as it has on generations of Black communities’. As stated in the pilot, “We can relate to every type of hate.” It is not the time to play Oppression Olympics. We all have the capability and obligation to support every oppressed community.
Asians are sexy. Not because you can search for us on porn sites or because the fetish community wants us to fulfill their fantasies. Sometimes even our fellow Asians will believe our portrayal in the media as the unattractive, unvaried, or submissive characters among our American counterparts. The truth is: we are so attractive it’s deadly, and it was so intimidating that we were stereotyped, shunned, or fetishized to make us digestible. And if you don’t believe in our allure, you can ponder over why Americans will continuously appropriate aspects of our culture and claim them as their own to achieve our levels of “exotic.” The same aspects that they’d use to deem us as ugly. Be warned that we will take back what is ours and fucking show you how it’s done.
Asians are diverse. We are rooted in tradition while continuing to evolve. Not only could you immerse yourself in fifty different cultures, but you could also spend eternities marveling at our creative, athletic, and social pursuits on top of our more academic ones. We are diverse in mind, body, and heart. We are capable of making incredible art, challenging amazing physical feats, and demonstrating that our compassion for others has no bounds, despite the boxes we’re locked into. We care about a lot more than what America leads you to think we do. We don’t exist to fill a quota. We have never been easily definable. “Where are you really from?” is a loaded question that has answers that you might not be prepared to hear.
Asians are resilient. We take the punches. We get up, we take more, we are gaslighted, and that cycle has yet to end. We are the butt of jokes, the insubstantial side characters, the eccentric foreigners, the nerdy robots, and recently, the scapegoat for the COVID-19 pandemic. For whatever reason, racism against Asians, microaggressions turned violence, has emerged with the pandemic, then it was often dismissed, overlooked, and normalized. Yet we still get up. And when our brothers and sisters of color are facing injustice, we can’t stop fighting for them because that’s never been an option. Their hurt is our hurt. We are not immune to making mistakes towards ourselves and others as much as we are not immune to being hurt. To being colorist. To perpetuating anti-Blackness. We have to be held accountable for the moves we make in this country because we dream for it to be better. We have the right to enter and take up space. We are to learn about it, share it with everyone, and contribute to helping it grow.
I am a mixed-Asian American. A woman of color. After 19 years, this still only scratches the surface of who I am. Yet despite our differences, I know that off my surface, you found yourself somewhere in the depth of my words. You don’t need to be Asian, a woman of color, or someone like me for these truths, responsibilities, and calls to action to live inside of you as well.
I return the question, “What are you?”