Being Asian-American means being part of a hybrid culture, sometimes one that can be unyielding. Sometime when I was younger, on a rickety bus with chattering students' voices making a din, I experienced an infuriating episode. My bus driver was driving to my house, and we stopped in front of it. My house is relatively big and brand new since we had just moved into the neighborhood and had it built. I was proud of how my parents were able to work for their own living and work to provide our family with the means of living. However, this one girl on the bus, not any older or wiser than I, commented snidely when she saw the house. At first, she asked, "Who's house is this?" Up until then, I was speaking and laughing with everyone on the bus normally. When she asked that question, I piped up and responded that it was mine. She remarked: "It would be." Now at first, I didn't really get the gist of what she was saying. I clambered out of the bus clumsily with a confused expression on my face, but I still didn't understand what the girl meant. I thought it was a rather offhand comment, but I didn't see any harm in it. Then I started to look at the way she had said it and the context in which she said it. Around the bus, when we pulled up next to my house, kids started to whisper about how large it was. Then the girl in front stopped her conversation with a fellow peer to look outside the window to view my house. I started to pick up on the meaning behind her words.
Ever since I was younger, I have known that there are certain stereotypes built up about Asian-Americans. "Asians are always smart," "Asians are always bad drivers," and "Asians are immigrants that don't have to be treated as our equals." The last stereotype applied to me. Since my parents are Asian and immigrants, they are not given the credit they deserved. Therefore, since they are super smart, this automatically grants them the ability to afford to afford a big house. I found this insulting and derogatory. Yes, my parents are Asian, but by no means was the world handed over to them. My mom payed for her college tuition by herself, taking on menial labor and work. My dad used to work three jobs at a time to afford for his education. They both worked their way up from small positions to larger company roles. The house that the girl was basing off of a stereotype was really years of toil and labor finally accumulating into a domicile. Sure, some people may think I'm paranoid for taking one silly little comment so seriously, but that was the world I lived in. The one where on the playground, I could hear really mean Asian names being called out at times. The one where classmates would make fun of the size of my eyes. The one where, even if I got a good grade in class due to my hard, late-night studying, my classmates would just point out that I was Asian so it didn't count. The one where colleges take a look at your ethnicity and automatically set the bar a little higher, not lower thankfully, but definitely not equal to others as well.
This all comes from my perspective. The perspective of a teenage Asian American growing up amid these various influences. And while some people may think I'm paranoid, the day after the bus incident, my friend came up to me and told me that she and the bus driver had scolded the girl who had said that comment. It wasn't just me that felt that the girl's comment was implying something deeper, something more rooted in society, like a very unpleasant stereotype. Anybody who works hard for what they want should not have to have a label put on them, instantly denying their hardwork and attributing it to the color of their skin or the size of their eyes. I don't mean to say everyone has these stereotypes. Just like my friend and that bus driver, there are people who stick up for me and care about me. i don't worry about what other people might think about me or say about me as long as the people who matter to me are the ones who understand me best. Being part of this hybrid culture where I fit into both American stereotypes and Asian stereotypes, I find myself pushing the boundaries to overcome them. I want to break the mold that society has created for each culture in order to make the world a better, more yielding place. Luckily, I am in the position to do so, because there is no preexisting mold for an Asian-American teenager and it's about time that we stop labeling everybody and just let them be.
