By Maddie Park
Last week, I stepped foot into the Walter U. Lum Square in San Francisco, for the second time in a long while. I no longer viewed the square as a seven-year-old child overjoyed by the beat of the Lunar New Year Lion Dance drum, but as a 15-year-old Asian American teen feeling the downstream waves of COVID-19 and its effects on my community.
Trees bordered the square, locals perched on the dark blue benches – damp from the recent rain – watching pedestrians pass, seemingly unperturbed by the wet metal of the benches. Numerous round green tables were scattered about – some directly in front of me, some underneath the white, outdoor tent, and still others underneath a small bridge. Chinese American men and women in baby yellow sweaters, mustard jackets, or beige jeans sat around the tables playing cards or mahjong. Others made their own circles using plastic, dark green fruit crates as stools and beaten cardboard boxes as a surface.
That day, I joined a paid walking tour of San Francisco Chinatown. Though society had slapped the label of “Chinese American” on my face, I yearned to seek familiarity and community by learning more about my culture, inwardly feeling like an outsider looking in. I watched our tour guide stride through the park, coming to a stop in the middle of a cement bridge. With wisps of curly gray hair flying across her face, she serenely described the scene behind her, similar to a guide on an African safari. As I stood there with my majority white tour group watching the Chinese locals, I felt as if we were ogling a species in their habitat. In my mind, I wondered how the individuals in my group must have felt in a place that was distinctly non-white and uniformly “yellow”. Was this Asian American enclave just another novelty to cross off the list of attractions for San Francisco? How many of these “yellow” faces spoke perfect English – Mandarin, a relic of the generations past – yet still regarded as Asian first, American second?
Two weeks ago, my mother came home from work – eyebrows knotted, lips pursed, and forehead scrunched. She had been rounding all day at a community hospital in Fremont, a region considered to be one of the most racially diverse areas in Silicon Valley. A white man, the husband of one of her patients, had first examined my mother’s complexion – noticing her raven black hair and flat Asian face – then, asked her in a harsh and seemingly dissatisfactory tone, where the “real” physician was. My mother responded sharply, telling the patient’s husband that she was, in fact, the “real” doctor. Yet, he remained discontent, and his features worked together in a way that suggested his inability to accept the situation before him. He opened his mouth, and with lack of any restraint, loudly demanded to see the white male physician assistant; despite my mother having been trained as a cardiologist at one of the highest-ranked hospitals in the nation. At this point, tears began trickling down his wife’s face. The hospital bedsheet crinkled as the woman shifted, huffing mutely under her breath. My mother, barely making out any words, realized the patient’s reluctant acceptance of her as “good enough” for now.
When I look in the mirror, dark brown eyes – dark, like the wood of Asian-owned store fronts, graffitied because of the coronavirus backlash – stare back. When I look in the mirror, coal-black hair – black like the tunnels Chinese immigrants dug to build the Transcontinental Railroad – stares back. When I look in the mirror, lightly-tanned skin from hours in the sun – but “yellow” in the eyes of others – stares back.
I am a third-generation Asian American, and while I make efforts to connect back to my cultural heritage – by visiting family or attending school affinity group meetings – I cannot deny that I am more American than Asian now. Yet, I am scared I will be regarded as the “forever foreigner”, a notion that immigrants and their descendants will never feel fully American. In school, I listened to lectures and read literature on the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps during World War II, and the violent murder of Vincent Chin – a Chinese American man living in Detroit who was fatally beaten with a baseball bat, due to anti-Asian sentiment in the car industry. The American identities of Asian Americans have been continually ignored – forgotten as they have been segregated, harassed, or murdered. AAPIs have almost always been viewed as only Asian. I had hoped we had moved on, and had learned from the detrimental consequences of these historical events from over 40 years ago. Yet, as a 6th grade student, I watched from my television screen as history repeated itself. Elderly Asians were harassed, even killed, and Asian Americans felt fearful by simply crossing a street, even in largely diverse regions like New York City or San Francisco. It seemed that society could not overlook our skin tone and complexion, and as a result, we were blamed – despite having no hand in the virus outbreak or the consequences that followed.
As an 11-year-old, I’ll never forget the way that my eyebrows shot upwards, how my eyes opened half an inch wider, and how I felt a pang of deep-rooted fear within me, when my mother told me about a Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, who had been shoved to the ground, who had died due to severe head injuries – just because he was Asian, and associated to be a carrier of the coronavirus. I had fidgeted in my seat, fearful of how this murder seemed so close to home – merely an hour away from my house and not even four miles away from my uncle, aunt, and baby cousin’s apartment. I was scared to look at the television screen, the local newspaper, and find their faces, or my mother’s face, plastered on the front page, naming them as the newest victims of Asian hate.
It scares me that there are individuals, even amongst the highly educated, who believe that Asian Americans experience more privilege than other minority groups. A couple months ago, while I drummed my fingers against my greyish-pink desk, I became aware of how silent my classmates had become. I could hear the vent banging, could even sense the quiet whir of the whiteboard projector. I stared at the slide in front of me, trying to comprehend the New Yorker-style cartoon I was seeing. I listened, mutely, as my teacher talked about the construct of “whiteness” and provided Asian Americans as an example of a group that was being smoothly assimilated into this construct, implying that we are more “in” than “out”.
I was and am deeply uncomfortable with this statement. While Asian Americans are given more benefit of the doubt due to the blanket “Model Minority” stereotype, the example thoroughly disregards the violence and discrimination Asian Americans have often faced. It unfairly portrays us as immune to racism, even though Asian communities have almost always been on the backend of discrimination.
My experiences serve as a reminder of Asians toeing the line between belonging and othering. When we belong, we are painted as the oppressors. When we are othered, we feel fear and pain – physically and emotionally taxing pain. But, no matter what, regardless of how Asian Americans are represented in society, we are the scapegoat. We are labeled as “resilient” for our abilities to silently accept the blame. Every. Single. Time. But, “resilience” too neatly whitewashes our struggles, when in reality, Asian American history is messy and nuanced and complicated. There are moments when we feel terrified, but there are also moments of empowerment.
I do not want to choose between being Asian or American. I want to be Asian and American. Yet, I don’t want this to come at the cost of sugarcoating our past, thereby enabling history to repeat itself. I don’t want us to fail, time and time again, by distancing ourselves from cultures that may feel foreign to us. I don’t want us to create false, harmful assumptions about certain races, that serve only to shut down conversations around racial inclusivity and pit minority communities against each other. Instead, we must educate others about unfamiliar cultures and hold people accountable for any flawed beliefs. By not only highlighting the differences, but also the similarities between Asian and American culture, we will be able to foster further unity amongst communities.