Back when I was in high school I remember these two brothers that were in orchestra with me. They were ABC's (American Born Chinese). They spoke fluent English without an accent of course. I remember that the younger one from my class would get really annoyed and irritated when people asked him what he was or what kind of Asian. He would nearly spit at them, "I'm American". I always answered that I'm Korean. That is what people expected to hear not, "I'm American". It threw a lot of people off and it used to piss me off a little. In high school I was one of those Asian American kids that wanted to know everything about my culture I felt lost and like I didn't quite belong anywhere. I never dated anyone from my high school partially because no one every asked me out, maybe they were too scared that I was so KP (Korean Proud). I had notebooks with hangul (Korean characters) written on them, K-pop singers in my locker and notebook instead of whomever was popular on the radio at the time. I didn't think I was better then anyone, I just thought I was connecting with my culture. I was even going to a Korean church regularly in addition to my Home church was was predominately white (ok so we were the only Asian family at my church while I was growing up).
Looking back to this guys answer, "I'm American", I think I understand it better now as an older adult. Back when I was a kid I was so blindly proud of my culture without knowing the roots of it just the surface pop-culture that was going on and how nice it felt to hang out with other Korean kids since I grew up only knowing about 4 other Korean families only one of which went to my school district and was my age. I don't know if it is the jackass in me or just the plain truth but when people ask me what I am I find myself answering "I'm American" a lot more because in truth I am. I was born and raised here, my citizenship is for the United States of America. I speak American English fluently. All signs point to the fact that I am American. I'm also just kind of an ass and I like to see the confusion in people since they aren't expecting that.
I have a fun little list of things I like to say when people ask me"Where are you from?".
"Upper Arlington" (that's the city I grew up in)
"Columbus" or "Grandview Heights" (that's where I live now)
"Ohio" (The state I'm from)
"The United States"
"I just came from the Bathroom"
How ever if they were smart enough to ask the question they meant to which is usually "What ethnicity are you?", then I can whole heartily answer "I'm Korean". Which is sometimes followed by their interpretation of "Ahn young haesayo" (Hello) which is just silly to me and depending on my mood for no real good reason at all seems offensive and presumptuous. These are just my feelings. I can only imagine the increased annoyance of friends who are adopted or mixed who encounter the same questions.
I really enjoyed your post. As an adoptee, I think growing up I felt the opposite: I went out of my way to prove to myself and everyone that I wasn't Korean—that, despite my appearance, I was 100% "American," whatever that meant. I think not having a cultural frame of reference (i.e., family, school friends, church or other social outlets weren't Korean) made it more difficult for me to embrace who I was. Even living in Korea for two years when I was 8-10, just made me rebel against any sort of cultural identity even more. It wasn't until college when I started meeting some Asian American friends that I begin to actively embrace any sort of Korean or Asian culture. And here I am at 41, still dealing with some of these issues, though it's nice to see your blog and know that I'm not the only one out there dealing w/ issues of cultural identity, as I did when I was younger.
ReplyDelete