Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal
Submission deadline for Spring 2008 issue is March 15, 2008.
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Banana
by Rose Lee, Class of 2007
“Banana,” they snickered as I walked by.
And somewhat to their abashment, I turned around and replied, “No, no, I’m sorry, but it seems you’re behind the times. I think the new word is twinkie.” Some kids averted their eyes, while some kids stared back with a disparaging smirk. After waiting a bit for their reply, I gave a cheery “Thanks” and strolled away to the Cleveland Taiwanese Association’s New Year buffet table. But the dismal venom soon pervaded my mind as I contemplated my new status as a banana/twinkie: yellow on the outside, but white on the inside.
Now, I’m not a confrontational person. I don’t rail and scream when insulted, and I don’t throw knives of profanity through the air in revenge. With infant girls being drowned in chamber pots in China and genocide occurring in Sudan, I’m an avid supporter of the “sticks and stones” idea. However, I was genuinely surprised at the attack from my fellow ABT’s (American-born Taiwanese). I’ve become accustomed to the your-Chinese-is-terrible comments, but as children of Taiwanese and not Chinese descent (a disparity which to many Taiwanese parents is like the Red Sox vs. the Yankees), we were the minority of the minority. Thus, I didn’t see how I was “eons” different from other ABT’s due to my strained Mandarin and virtually nonexistent Hoklo (Taiwanese language). At the age of twelve I was old enough not to be angry, but not old enough not to be hurt, and although in retrospect it’s quite humorous to be labeled as a potassium-rich fruit or a dyed bread product, my ego was nonetheless sorely bruised, along with my self-esteem.
In high school I was one of six Taiwanese kids in a class of about 400 students. My family lives in your average 96% Caucasian suburb that is not so much prejudiced, as it is ignorant. Of course, the brutality of prejudice exists in a very tangible and frightening sense in our world, as seen so evidently in Arab countries with the repression of women, in African nations with their chronic disease of “ethnic cleansing”, and even in the United States with the hundreds of presumed terrorists held in Cuban internment camps without due process. I am fortunate, lucky, blessed, and thankful that I have never had to face the true nature of discrimination. Nevertheless, while nothing distinctly offensive ever occurred in my hometown, I was often subjected to comments such as “You were born here? Oh, um, well, your English is real good.” Indeed, although I can’t claim to have ever faced the prejudice that heroes like Gandhi fought, the immigrant designation has sealed a FOREIGN stamp onto me. There comes a point in the American education of every non-Caucasian child where he or she looks around the classroom and it finally hits: “Hey, I look kinda different from everyone else”.
To tell the truth, though, the story isn’t that interesting. In fact, it’s hackneyed and mundane. Another Asian person complaining about how “difficult” it is to be Asian while racking up the grades in preparation for an Ivy League application. In actuality, I find that people are generally simply curious about different cultures and that yes, while eventually even the most innocuous remarks have a growing snow-ball effect which engraves the you’re-not-like-the-rest-of-us sensation into the skin, it’s really not that bad. Again, this is not to say that prejudice doesn’t exist in the world, because it clearly does, but I find that people can become overly sensitive to questions such as “What country were you born in?” asked by strangers who automatically assume that a different colored skin equals “foreigner”. It may be ignorant, but I wouldn’t say particularly offensive, or anything that would call for the rise of another Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, the more disturbing part of growing up with immigrant parents is the inevitable recognition that being born a foreigner imprints a tag, a scent, a look, or whatever onto the individual that is unshakable no matter how many country borders crossed.
Coming back to Cleveland from a trip to Taiwan, I struck up a conversation with an affable elderly woman. After recounting my brief stay, the grandmotherly woman with her jovial face delicately draped in laugh wrinkles patted my knee and said, “It must have been wonderful to be surrounded by people like you.” And I gave a congenial smile with an eager nod, and recollected how in actuality I had stood out like a sore thumb. I was like a black 7’ NBA basketball player among a sea of 5’2” Asians. Even without a word of my accented Mandarin, people would ask me how I like America. The way I dress, walk, and supposedly even breathe enhances that INTERNATIONAL MAIL stamp imprinted on me. The realization that I simply “don’t belong” – not with the people I look like and not with the people I am like, is actually quite a common affliction for numerous immigrant-born children. Pick up a book by Amy Tan (author of the Joy Luck Club), or read a couple of college essays by 1st-generation students and eventually the whole “homeless” issue surfaces.
Consequently, the banana remark and the exclusion from the kids who were excluded was a sobering experience. However, it was soon clear to me that I wasn’t facing a Taiwanese-specific phenomenon. For example, Indian acquaintances in my high school used the welcoming “FOB” or “fresh-off-the-boat” term to slur newly immigrated Indian students, and I knew African American students who would accuse their fellow black peers of forgetting about “their people” if they tried joining a club like the National Honor Society. Indeed, what it comes down to is just the usual Psych 101 self-esteem issue that generates the formation of cliques – a clique based on how much a person epitomizes his or her race, which is essentially a very ridiculous idea, but then again what cult mentality isn’t, by its very own standards, fundamentally silly? There are the envied groups of cheerleaders, football jocks, and general cool kids, and then there are also the unfortunate nerdy kids, weirdos, and general misfits. Each clique is subject to its own rules and regulations, and is simply another by-product of the human species’ attempt to find some sort of shelter in the chaos of the world. Intra-group, inter-group, intra-racial, inter-racial conflicts– it’s all the same. In essence, it’s a very tragic display of how a community can grow to define its members instead of the members defining the community.
Accordingly, I don’ think that there really exists a specific “homeless” sentiment problem that exclusively plagues 1st-generation children. From my experiences with my fellow Asian-American peers I found a general perception that being a 1st-generation child of a different race leads to some utterly singular experience that the “others,” or the “normal” people couldn’t possibly understand as members of the so-called majority. On one hand, if an individual has faced the brunt of true discrimination – of physical violence, verbal violence, glass ceilings, and what not – there is a clear racial issue that needs to be dealt with. However, from being forced to attend several of the ABT Association events that my parents frequented where the youngsters would gather for an insightful discussion on the “difficulties of being Asian”, I mostly found the complaints minor and, to be brutally honest, annoying. So-and-so asked me if I eat a lot of Chinese food – that’s soooo stereotyping. The other day at the grocery store some woman asked me if I could read the Chinese labeling on some food product she was interested in – that’s sooooo an example of racial profiling. A popular complaint of the professed victims of Asian profiling is the “terribly offensive” situation in which a person asks the Asian individual whether he or she is Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. The absence of “American” or “descent” at the end of these racial terms apparently is a sign of the worst of intentions and absolute bigotry.
I’m not trying to demean the emotion of dislocation common to so many 1st-generation children, as I too have felt “homeless”, but I believe that a tendency to harp on these specific interactions paradoxically cuts the divide between races deeper. The whole prosaic I-don’t-fit-in phenomenon is universal to all humans, whether it arises from a difference in race or a difference in hair color, and placing the ethnic-driven sources on a pedestal above the normal petty examples of popular vs. unpopular, or pretty vs. prettier, emphasizes the fact that race is important. And with my apologies for a growing resemblance to a pre-school teacher, feelings of dislocation are something human, not something ethnic. It is merely another silly manifestation of the desire to fit in, to be just like everyone else, and being of a different race than the majority is no more outstanding than having a droopy nose or elfish ears. In truth, I think I actually have it pretty good. If I had been born Caucasian with a terrible body odor, for example, I would face all the same difficulties but with the detriment of a shocking B.O. So, in truth, I’m very thankful that fate or the higher powers above chose to make me different from the majority by something as inconsequential as my race.
Indeed, it’s very unfortunate that the search for a self-defining community can preoccupy so much of a person’s life. Through my high school career I carried this search-for-where-you-belong objective as I traversed the student body spectrum from the Science Olympiad physicists and their textbook-toting lives to the debate crowd with their life-supply of “Vote for Bush” pins. And somewhere between trying to force down the opinions of my peers and acclimate to their mannerisms and jokes, I finally discovered what all roaming itinerants eventually learn – that if you find “a place to call home”, you’re not looking hard enough. For an individual is just that – an individual, not meant to be crammed into a stereotypical classification to achieve the clan pride ideology, but meant instead to surf the plethora of experiences available to become comfortable in the only place that matters. Yourself. So the plight of the wandering nomads is not so tragic after all, for they already have a home – they always have. It’s just not made of brick or wood.
