And on rare occasions: “An-nyeong-ha-se-yo!”
These are all things that are regularly yelled out at me as I walk down the street.
I could be in any neighborhood of Los Angeles, home of the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea — downtown LA, Silver Lake, Venice or even Koreatown — and I’ll hear the same old chorus on an otherwise peaceful, average day.
I do what I always do in those moments — ignore them, keep my head down and walk by, doing everything I can to keep the anger from rising in my chest and swallowing the lump in my throat. Instead of what I really want to do, which is to yell back, “I’m not Chinese!” or “I’m Korean!” or “I’m American! Just say ‘hello!’”
Every now and then, if I feel safe enough, I manage to calmly reply, “I’m actually Korean American.” Sometimes that leaves them speechless, but other times, they laugh in my face with a look of pride and pity that makes it clear they don’t care.
I’ve never seen this done to white people on the street. No one is yelling “Bonjour!” or “Guten Tag!” to white Americans. But for some reason, they do it to us.
I want to believe that they are just trying to be friendly. But it feels other-ing, as if they’re saying, “Hey foreigner! You don’t belong here.”
Being Asian in America means a special kind of shared identity and trauma — we are invisible, yet so highly visible. Our proximity to whiteness and the model minority myth keeps us at the edge of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) table, even though Asian Americans are also subject to discrimination and racism. In fact, ICE arrests of people of Asian descent have quadrupled under the Trump administration, and Asian Americans are being racially profiled.
While our brothers and sisters in Asia get to be distinctly Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, etc., in America, I’m no longer Korean. I’m Asian — sometimes Asian American, if I’m lucky. Those of us in the U.S. are usually lumped into this pan-Asian third culture that comes with its own set of racial stereotypes, microaggressions, and even violence.
In America, the parts of me that I’m proudest of don’t matter. I lose my culture, my language, my identity — the parts that make me me. I’m just Sharon, the Asian.
“No one is yelling ‘Bonjour!’ or ‘Guten Tag!’ to white Americans. But for some reason, they do it to us.”
Once upon a time, in a coffee shop in Long Island, New York, an older white man approached me in line and asked me, “Are you from Asia?” Stunned but wanting to be polite, I replied, “I was born in Korea, but I grew up in LA.” He then proceeded to tell me all about his recent trip to China and how much fun he had.
“That’s really great,” I said, barely hiding my grimace. “I’ve never been to China and don’t know anything about it, but I’m glad you had a good time.”
He continued smiling, clearly oblivious to, or blissfully ignorant of, my discomfort. Meanwhile, my co-worker, a white man around my age, could barely contain his laughter as he watched the whole thing unfold.
Asia is home to hundreds of distinct languages, and yet, in America, some people assume that we all share one language, and it’s usually Mandarin. We are regularly simplified and categorized as a monolith, homogenizing a myriad of countries, cultures, languages, foods, customs and beliefs. We are not seen as individual humans, each with our own unique histories.
This kind of dehumanization enables violence, like the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, an American of Chinese descent who was killed in a racially motivated assault because he was mistaken for being Japanese during a time of high anti-Japanese sentiment. It’s also what spurred the anti-Asian discrimination and hate crimes that peaked during the coronavirus pandemic, largely driven by anti-Chinese sentiment exacerbated by the Trump administration. It impacted all Asian Americans and is still ongoing today.
According to the Pew Research Center, one-third of Asian adults say they personally know an Asian person in the U.S. who has been threatened or attacked because of their race or ethnicity since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Moreover, Asian restaurants (both Chinese and non-Chinese) in the U.S. lost 18.4% more than non-Asian restaurants during the pandemic.
When specific identities, cultures and histories are ignored, we fail to see people as humans, and they become dispensable targets.
Although a broad Asian American culture may have initially been created by racism and segregation, our shared trauma has the ability to unite us. Prejudice among people from different Asian countries is not uncommon. However, in America, when I see another Asian American on the street, I see a fellow neighbor and family member. I see an auntie, uncle, grandmother or grandfather, and I feel an immediate sense of connection and kinship.
I’m proud of my intersectional identity as both Korean and American. While I don’t expect people to be able to identify and categorize each Asian American person they meet based on their ethnicity, I would much rather not be approached with assumptions and stereotypes. And then I’d be happy to tell you all about my Korean heritage.
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