“I happen to bring sushi for lunch, but I don’t have any soy sauce. Can I borrow some of yours?”
I looked down at my half-eaten spicy chicken sandwich and Snapple bottle, then I look over at my friends who seem to not have paid attention to a single word of what "Carly" had just said. I looked straight into her eyes.
And then I lost it.
“That’s RACIST! What makes you think I would bring soy sauce with me? Because I’m Asian?”
I chased her down the hall before finding composure and reconsider how I reacted.
I must admit when I first saw Carly, one of the Abercrombie-sporting, popular white girls in my grade who walked towards me one day, I got a bit excited. She had purposely approached my table -- third from the cafeteria entrance -- from hers, the innermost table. I had hundreds of scenarios for her motivation to talk to me but her assumption that I would have soy sauce with me was DEFINITELY not one of them.
I remember that minute out of my tween experience more vividly than any other ones -- even more than the godforsaken hover-hand slow dances in the dim-lit gym. However, the anecdote has come to signify something different over the years.
That warm fall day of 2009, I thought about my exchange with Carly for the rest of that day. No matter what, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had made me feel like I didn’t belong. Like I was a foreigner. Like I was alone. Of the 120 students in my grade that were also in the cafeteria simultaneously, Carly decided that I was in the best position to satisfy her need for a salty condiment to go along with her Japanese delicacy. Having moved to the small Pennsylvania town from Seoul, Korea only three years prior to the incident, I was only filled with the sentiment that my effort to blend in had failed.
Once I had realized that my predominantly white classmates all had known each other for years, my only goal was to be like the rest of them. I dressed like them. I did soccer and karate with them. I tried to be one of them, hoping that no one would have the chance to point out the fact that I was different from them. Having approached the final year of my middle school career with moderate success, I was quite caught off guard by my classmate’s unintentional statement about her perception of my origin.
However, having attended a private high school with a sizable Asian population– international students as well as Asian Americans– and finishing my freshman year as one of hundreds of Korean students at Johns Hopkins has made me embrace my identity as an Asian-American. I also know better than to shut off a non-Asian peer when approached with what I call "Carly Situations".
Situations like the Carly incident aren’t moments of blatant racism, but incidents that occur as a result of the other party’s lack of understanding of my experience as an Asian, as a Korean living in the U.S. When faced with these situations, I do my best not to react with anger, but take a step back and give an objective explanation of their misunderstanding. Some mix-ups are so obvious to me that they seem like nothing but ignorance. Truth is, people simply have different experiences and their lives may not have exposed them to cultures other than their own. And guess what? You can be the one to give them that exposure. It took me years to arrive at this conclusion.
Today, there are many discussions of race issues being addressed in the media. Just check out Facebook. I appreciate people’s passion when they raise their concern for acts of racism, but you cannot stop there. Your Facebook posts must go along with your patience to explain your minority experiences to the Carlys of your life. You can't just let the awkward situations be awkward situations.
