“Of course she’s good at math. She’s Asian.” 

Katherine does well in school because she spent all-nighters completing her assignments and bailing out on the school parties to review her next exam. Katherine is the vice-president of Elderly Allies because her passion is to help others. Katherine has hobbies in art and music because she loves to challenge herself. Katherine is Taiwanese-American, but that is not a free pass to all her achievements. 

Being Asian American means you have an awareness that it is the first thing people notice about you. Sometimes I think that’s all someone sees in me. But I am me because of so many things, outside of my race. It seems that no matter what I do or don’t do, the color of my skin and heritage seems to be the only explanation. No one ever cares about how much time I spend in solitude, staring at a screen and reading books in order to reach my goals. In the mouths of others, everything I work hard at seems to be irrelevant compared to my genetic makeup. 

“Speak English or go back to your country!”

Growing up as a bilingual in a predominantly white neighborhood, where almost everyone knew how to speak English fluently, I was oftentimes the interlocutor for my parents, jumping back and forth to make sure the other person clearly understood what they were trying to say. I was frustrated to see people squint or make facial expressions to signify that they were struggling to understand their words, frustrated to complete the endless forms on insurance and debit cards, and frustrated to be the one waiting on long holds on the customer service line. But I was more frustrated at my parents for not being able to enunciate properly or be more verbose and putting all the weight on me, as their first child who they worked hard to be able to raise in America. I was too privileged and spoiled in my own fluency in the English language to empathize with their challenges as immigrants who chose to retain their culture and native language. 

Today, I noticed that familiar feeling of frustration. I felt the frustration that many other bilingual individuals may feel when they face rejection or prejudice simply because they are not white enough or American enough. This frustration is doubled for people who are recent immigrants from their native country, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be to be expected to speak a language other than your own. Will “Karens” ever stop telling us to go back to where we came from?

I’m not Asian enough and I’m not white enough.

I realized later in my upbringing that my ability to speak English fluently was not a shield; in the end, I was still Asian and the American in Asian American is invisible. Being Asian American doesn’t mean Asian-White. Being Asian American in middle school means you can’t bring your asian lunch to eat with your white friends in fear that they might judge you. Being Asian American means I’m not Asian enough and I’m not white enough. Being Asian American never protected me from prejudices and racialized statistics, I am still only 3%.

I went from being the majority to being the minority. In Taiwan, almost everyone was ethnically Taiwanese and spoke Mandarin. In America, almost everyone is white and speaks English. My skin color is seen as a threat and leads to falsely made assumptions, and my cultural language is not part of the dominant narrative. I can recall moments when I went to Costco with my family, and I was immediately greeted by the cashier with a mockery “konnichiwa” or an “annyeonghaseyo.” But I am not Japanese and I am not Korean. 

He was the perfect student, but he still got rejected.

As a high school student, I see how the system is not made for people like me. Institutions always claim there is no quota to proportion out how many people of each race are allowed to attend. I want to believe it, but then I see stories like Stanley Zhong’s. Zhong is literally the picture perfect student, scoring a 1590 on the SAT and had a 4.42 GPA, with high hopes of being rewarded for his labors during the college application process. Yet, he was rejected from 16 out of 18 schools he applied to. How am I supposed to keep dreaming when I see the dreams of others being ripped into pieces? 

It’s never enough when you’re not white. We are the model minority. 

Asian: We are the scapegoats, the workers, the followers, the background characters, but never the leaders, the ceo’s, the president(s), and the main character(s). We overwork but never complain. The hard working elements somehow blend into the background, becoming white noise. All that is visible is the jaw-dropping results, the fruit of our labors. Our face is never good enough to be at the front of an American magazine, and our names are always too hard to pronounce properly. Even though America does not have an official language, the lack of English speaking ancestors easily becomes viewed as a burden. It’s never enough when you’re not white. Can I hide from my skin, just once?

Define Asian.

Being Asian means having a built-in community. Being Asian means I am exposed to different languages and cultures. Being Asian means I am adaptable. I can bond with people all around the country instantaneously. I can walk into an Asian grocery store and bond over childhood snacks I adore like Hello Panda cookies or the classic Pocky Sticks. If I want, I can gossip in Mandarin with my brother and there’s a high chance no one would understand. I can talk for hours on end about places I visited in Taiwan, and I can connect with my family on the other side of the world.

Asian American, today, conjures up preconceived notions and stereotypes of Asians, despite their American upbringing. As Asian Americans, we must still keep up with the model minority status and work twice as hard as white or European Americans; we are drafted into being the top students, seeking a Harvard degree, and working for a company that doesn’t work for us. If you look up Asian American on google, you will find that it says “Americans of Asian ancestry,” yet we are often only viewed as Asians who immigrated to America for a better life – to achieve the American Dream. But this dream is a fantasy and leaves us questioning why my race matters.

I am Katherine, I am Taiwanese and I am also American, I am Asian-American, and I am proud to be me. I am proud of the knowledge of culture I hold and my ancestors who brought me here. I might be at a disadvantage now in modern American society, but I want to be a part of the solution. I want to build a world where the American Dream is not longer a fantasy, but a reality that embraces the melting pot culture we share.