I live in a gated community called The Highlands. And when I tell people this, or when they find out when visiting my house, there are often shocked.

One friend once told me honestly, “But I thought you were a Scholarship student. I didn’t know Asians could be rich.”

And when I asked her why she thought that she said, “because you’re Asian and you’re smart and you don’t seem rich.”

This is when I realized that not only do we have stereotypes of certain races but also that these stereotypes are tied to economic classes. It was surprising to a lot of my friends that I was a smart Asian but not a scholarship student. It was hard for them to think that a “Korean” did not run a laundry mat or a Teriyaki. When people think of the “highlands”, they think: BMW, Benz, huge mansions, swimming pool, women with Coach bags, servants and mega-millionaires. And although I cannot completely disagree with all of this, because some of it is true, I wish people would realize that there are always outliers. Not everyone who lives in the highlands is that way; not everyone who is wealthy is that way. For example our household is: Land Cruiser, regular sized house, a yard littered with dog poo and attires from Nordstrom Rack. My parents don’t have “servants”, “secretaries” or “drivers.”

So because of these stereotypes on the “rich” or the “Top-One percent”, it is difficult for me to talk with my friends whose families are of lower income. They assume that I can’t relate to their financial problems. When they talk about college tuitions, their parents losing jobs or not being able to travel a lot, I say that I can really relate. And I do; I do understand what they are going through. But a lot of time they sort of shut me out and assume that I am being over sympathetic.

So I guess my point is, people always talk about how stereotypes towards lower class is bad but they forget about the stereotypes the “upper one percent” suffers also.

And yes, we do not segregate ourselves among races. When you walk through the commons during lunch you definitely do not see tables of “Asian geeks”, “white jocks” and the “blacks”. And yes, there are no written, hard, unfair racist rules in our school. However, from my experience what hurts most are slight, casual racists “jokes” that are meant to be “funny.”

For example, a couple days ago in my journalism class, someone asked me “do you guys have friends in other schools?”

And I said, “Yeah! What school are you talking about?”

For middle school, I attended the public school. And because it ended in eighth grade, a lot of friends were dispersed throughout the city to different high schools. So I have friends in most private schools in the Seattle area.

But my friend’s response was, “Psh! Really? Are they all Asian?”

At that moment, I was speechless. I knew he had meant it as a joke. I knew he was a good person who would never say anything to hurt me on purpose. But it still stung.

I thought: “Does he think that I only have Asian friends? Is that how he views me? Can’t I just be Kristine instead of an Asian?”

Comments like that constantly remind me that I’m Asian and that I’m not the same as everyone else.