I Am More Than An Asian Stereotype
Almost everyone comes up against some sort of stereotype at one point, whether it be about race, appearance, ability, or anything else. While some stereotypes may prove true in certain situations, many other stereotypes are not true and certainly are not generalizable across an entire group of people.
As an Asian-American woman from New York City, I have, for the most part, been blessed to grow up surrounded by forward-thinking people who know how to see past typical, ignorant Asian stereotypes. Unfortunately, however, not everyone I have encountered possesses this viewpoint.
Growing up in a biracial family in Staten Island, New York, I was often presented with a dichotomous cultural lifestyle. As a child I never felt pressured to choose one culture or one identity over the other: my mom’s side of the family, immigrants to the United States from Guangzhou, China, and my dad’s side of the family, native Staten Islanders, created a perfectly normal family dynamic in my eyes. The fact that my dad is Chinese and was adopted by an American family (hence my last name, Walters) never fazed me or made me perceive my dad as “white.” He was just my dad. This situation never made me consider myself “white” either; I was 100 percent Chinese and 100 percent American, and there was nothing more to it.
But once I started getting older, my peers began to realize that my last name didn’t match up with my Asian appearance, and high school was around the time the questions started. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind explaining to others my unique family background; plus, a lot of people found my dad’s adoption situation interesting.
But when people started to make comments like, “No wonder you look half white,” or “You’re such a white girl,” I couldn’t help but recoil. Sure, I couldn’t speak Chinese fluently and half of my family was “white,” but did that make me white, too? I was taken aback not because I thought there was something wrong with being white, but because I despised being squeezed into a suffocating little box.
On the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes got questions like, “Where are you from? No, like, where are you really from?” These questions often left me with my mouth agape and mind whirling, because while I hated having the Chinese part of me ignored, I also couldn’t stand it being the only thing by which I was identified.
Thankfully, these things were not mentioned to me all that frequently, but when they were, I conditioned myself to answer with nonchalance and even with a tone of routine boredom in my voice, not wanting to make it obvious how bothered I was.
Being in college now is much of a different experience, where I am surrounded by other educated, knowledgeable, and diverse groups of people. Occasionally, if I don’t understand a Chinese cultural reference or have never tried a certain Chinese food before, there are some who will joke, “Oh, you’re so white.”
But I try not to let it bother me. I make myself remember that I had it right as a little kid: I am 100 percent Chinese and 100 percent American. No one can label me as one thing over another unless I let them, and I know that my cultural identity is far from the only thing that defines who I am.