Leah Kim explains how pervasive quiet racism is in society, and why we should actively seek to call it out.
By Leah Kim
I’m sitting in a cafe in SoHo, NYC. As I look around, I am aware that I am of the minority. At this moment right now, almost every other customer is White. Notably, the entire staff behind the counter is non-White.
New York City is known as being one of the most diverse places in the world. And yet. I am always aware that I do not look like the majority of the people I cross paths with on a day-to-day basis. The majority is undoubtedly White.
The only other Asian people here in this restaurant are an Asian mother and her young child at the table next to me. When she first sat down, she asked me, in English, if I could keep an eye on the kid while she went to the bathroom. I said, “Of course,” reflecting our innate trust in each other because to each other, we are not Other. She came back and started talking to her son in Korean, further cementing my feeling of connection with both of them.
I have been livid since hearing about Lucky Lee’s. While reading the New York Times article about the misguided, tone-deaf nutritionist / “influencer” who has shamelessly and ignorantly appropriated from Chinese culture and cuisine, my blood started to boil. I felt hot with anger, my pulse quickened, and my eyes stung with tears as I felt slammed back to my own experiences of insult as an Asian-American.
Every now and then, something like this comes up where I feel outraged and enraged. I talk to my fellow Asian-American friends: “Can you believe this? So racist! So ignorant!” I post something to that effect on social media. But my involvement has always fizzled out at that point. I, as do many other Asian-Americans, think to myself: “That person was just an idiot. We know better. We take the higher road. We’ll just keep focusing on doing well in school, getting good jobs, and buying nice homes. We’ll show them.”
I fall back in line with the role of the Model Minority. I squash my real feelings about it all — feelings that I have carried my entire life.
Because it feels overwhelming. How can I possibly effect any change on this quiet racism that has persisted against Asians in America? The fact that this woman was able to open a restaurant in New York City — not some obscure town in the middle of nowhere — using elements of Chinese culture as Instagram-ready decor while simultaneously ridiculing Chinese cuisine is more than just offensive. It is alarming. It says: Chinese and Asian culture and people are so insignificant that even though we live in this city together, we don’t really see you. It hasn’t even crossed our minds to consider your perspective.
“Because there were so few of us, we all came to know each other. I felt part of a community. Even older Asian students befriended the younger ones.”
Growing up, I desperately wished I could be White. I hated my yellow/brown skin, my extremely black hair that was so black that it was sometimes described as blue-black, my slanted eyes, and my flat nose. Looking at class pictures year after year, I felt jolted by how much I stood out along with the one or two other non-White kids. I longed for lighter skin, freckles, wavy hair, and a slimmer jawline. The more slender face shape that too many Koreans these days trade in for their “moon faces” by way of plastic surgery. I practiced smiling in a way that wouldn’t make my eyes crinkle up and virtually disappear. In fact, I still do this.
My mom packed my lunch for me in a cutesy Sanrio Little Twin Star lunchbox. She packed me Korean food that she had made with love that she knew I loved: rice, seaweed, and grilled fish or sometimes ddukbokki. She packed me chopsticks. I remember being made fun of: “Eeew, that looks gross and smells weird. And why are you eating with sticks?” I begged my mom to please stop packing me such embarrassing meals. No more fobby lunch boxes. “Please, can you just pack me bologna sandwiches on white bread zipped in a plastic bag and put it inside a brown lunch bag?” I remember saying in class that sushi tuna rolls were my favourite food and someone saying, “Eeeew! You eat SUSHI? That’s raw fish! That’s disgusting!” I retorted, “It is not raw fish!” But when I went home and asked my parents, they answered, “Well of course sushi is raw fish.
I spoke as little Korean as possible and insisted on only using forks.
I cringed as I heard my parents, who I knew were very intelligent, make grammatical errors when they spoke English and I hated the way they were responded to because of that, as if they were a bit stupid.
I wanted a golden retriever not just because I love dogs, but because, what more American dog was there? I bit my tongue when kids would pull their eyes into slits, laugh, and say, “Ching chong ching chong!” I pretended not to be bothered when I was called Chuey, after the token Asian character Carmelita Chu in a 90s movie called Ladybugs, because, you know, all Asians look the same.
I felt ashamed.
I hated being Asian.
My high school was not very diverse. It was a private, Catholic, college-prep school. I knew that I was lucky to be able to go to this kind of school. My parents worked hard to be able to move us to a good area and to be able to pay for private school. It should have made me feel proud and confident. But almost everyone around me was White. One year, Asians made up a mere 4% of the student body.
Because there were so few of us, we all came to know each other. I felt part of a community. Even older Asian students befriended the younger ones. I remember exchanging notes with “Asian Pride!” doodled on them.
“I remember thinking, You’re just mad that we’re smarter and we work harder! I was still reacting from feeling less than for most of my life.”
For college, I went to UCLA. I learned that it was dubbed the University of Caucasians Lost in Asia. I relished in this reinterpreted acronym. Yes! For once, White people, YOU feel what it’s like to be the minority! I remember claims of reverse discrimination due to Affirmative Action. I remember thinking, You’re just mad that we’re smarter and we work harder! I was still reacting from feeling less than for most of my life. I joined KSA — the Korean Students Association. I graduated with an Economics degree and minors in English and Korean.
I finally started feeling proud to be Asian.
While I was still in college, in 2002, Abercrombie and Fitch produced T-shirts featuring Asian caricatures with exaggerated stereotypically Asian features — slits for eyes and Buddha bellies — wearing straw rice paddy hats. In Orientalized writing, the shirts said:
“Wong Brothers Laundry Service — Two Wongs Can Make It White”
“Rick Shaw’s Hoagies and Grinders — Order by the foot. Good meat. Quick feet.”
“Pizza Dojo-You Love Long Time: Eat In Or Wok Out”
“Wok-N-Bowl — Let the Good Times Roll — Chinese Food & Bowling”
The company actually stocked these shirts on the shelves of their stores in cities with high Asian populations like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and claimed that they thought the Asian community would love them.
I wore a shirt that spoke out against Abercrombie and Fitch, that read: “Artfulbigotry and Kitsch: Ignorance Racism Excuses.”
I don’t remember having to explain to anyone in my immediate world why Abercrombie’s shirts were so offensive. The shirts were removed from shelves and a pseudo-apology (read: backtracking excuse) was given and I moved on. The company continued receiving backlash — about the lack of diversity in their advertising and even on their sales floors — but that was nothing new or surprising to me. I had long ago already internalised that I, as an Asian person, was not good enough to have the opportunity to appear in American media in any way.
Soon after graduating, I abandoned the finance industry and became a yoga teacher. Being a yogi was what I identified with most. It was freedom from having to fight for acceptance (not least within myself) as an Asian or to remind people that I was American — “born and raised!” None of that was really relevant to me anymore because I was all about yoga. And back then, yoga was not as ubiquitous as it is today. It was something I was able to latch onto and claim for myself, something that I knew more about than most people in my life. When I would tell someone I was a yoga teacher, I was often given an immediate awe of approval. I finally felt like I had found my identity.
A few years into full-time yoga teaching in LA, I started to feel oppressed by the trajectory I perceived myself to be on. I was feeling a bit hungover from having drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid. I sensed I had lost a bit of my actual self in filling the role of Yoga Teacher. I found myself speaking with a carefully edited and controlled (read: contrived) vocabulary and wearing stereotypically yoga teacher clothes 24/7. It crossed my mind that I was probably insulting Hindus by wearing mala beads as stylistic embellishment.
I spontaneously booked a one-way ticket to Hong Kong. I wanted to live generally in Asia, but I wasn’t really sure where. I ended up staying in Hong Kong and there was something deeply resonant about being in that part of the world. The air, the smell, all my fellow Asian people. Despite not being Chinese, I felt quite at home.
I hit a career-high while living in Hong Kong when I signed with Nike, starting a 10-year relationship as their Global Yoga Ambassador. Whatever insecurities I’d had as an Asian-American were almost instantly quelled because how could they not be? A huge American company chose me to represent yoga for them. They took pictures and videos of me and put them on billboards and apps. They sent me around the world to talk about their initiatives and how yoga was part of it all.
All that outer approval silenced any inner doubts, even if temporarily.
“I had long ago already internalised that I, as an Asian person, was not good enough to have the opportunity to appear in American media in any way.”
LE
AH KIM
Leah writes about mental health, motherhood, and being human. As a pregnant, full-time mom, spare time is challenging to come by, but she loves creating a cozy home, growing flowers and veggies in her garden, and baking bread from scratch.
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