Lessons on racism, from a pair of chopsticks
Note: This article originally posted to my Medium here. For consolidation purposes, I'm adding it as a blog entry.
It’s a Friday night. The hostess promptly seats us in the corner booth of the crowded Chinese restaurant, and blunt-banged waitress scuttles over to take down our orders. Ten minutes pass, and suddenly our dishes begin arriving silently, without embellishment, just like the waiters serving them. My friends eagerly grab their chopsticks and dig in with no hesitation. I, the only Chinese person at the table, turn quietly to our waitress to ask for a fork.
In third grade, two years after I first arrived in America wide-eyed and pigtailed, a white classmate casually looked up from across the lunch table to ask if I could use chopsticks for all kinds of food. “Can you pick up fries with them too?” The questioned intrigued the others, who began looking down at their lunch trays, contemplating the physics of such a task.
Being one of the few non-white or black students at my Alabama elementary school, the unexpected spotlight on my culture felt like a magnifying glass in direct sunlight. The “NOT WHITE” sign embossed into my every facial feature burned neon red and I forcefully retorted, “No, chopsticks are dumb. We use forks at home.”
That night, at the plastic, curbside-adopted patio desk my parents lovingly renamed “dining table,” I watched as my mom expertly transferred her rice from bowl to mouth with a pair of beautifully embellished ivory chopsticks. “Mommy, do you think you can eat French fries with chopsticks too?”
With a mouth brimming full of rice and pride, she answered, “Of course. Chopsticks can pick up anything. Because Chinese can do anything.”
“Well that’s not how you’re supposed to eat them,” I declared with a sneer. “Americans don’t eat with chopsticks.” She watched silently as I stomped to the utensil drawer to trade in my ivory chopsticks for a white plastic fork.
My teenage memories always seem to waft back with the faintest smell of bleach. They were the years I had tried my hardest to purify everything “un-American” about myself.
I never would have never openly admitted it, but back then, “Asian” to me was synonymous with “shame.” I saw my own culture as less valuable than the “American” package sold on TV, a package wrapped in pearly white paper, a pretty blonde bow, and Tiffany blue eyes. Compared to that, I was a cardboard box.
I hated my own off-brand heritage because it wasn’t popular. And my teenage logic reasoned, if I could shed any evidence of my immigrant past, maybe I could trick everyone else into thinking I belonged here, in America.
So I threw out the dumplings Mom packed for my summer camp lunches, and scrounged for quarters for vending machine snacks instead. I burned my scalp with a lemon juice and vinegar concoction a friend swore would “bring out my natural blonde highlights.” I pretended English was the only language I knew. I refused to date Asian boys. I quit piano lessons. And I vowed to never eat with chopsticks again.
Racism doesn’t always come in the form of an ignorant stranger. Sometimes, it’s something internal, darker, stalking you beneath every reflective surface.
My junior year of high school, a friend casually commented, “You’re like, more white than you are Asian.” I felt sickening sense of pride wash over me. I’ve finally tricked them, I thought to myself. I can finally feel like one of them.
But you never really trick yourself. Denying my own heritage to take on someone else’s was as effective as cutting off a tree’s roots to grow different fruit. It took me 20 years to realize, I had mistaken my birthmark for a bruise.
When the cries at Trayvon Martin’s funeral turned into a rallying chant, I heard for the first time that I had been cheering for the wrong team. I had spent my childhood kneeling before a TV screen that never once acknowledged my existence. It chewed on the flavors and textures within our melting pot and spit out a bowl of tasteless oatmeal instead. It defined “American” culture with white actors and storylines and left every other minority in the footnotes.
Of course, the media can’t be blamed for everything. But there is no doubt it created an alternate reality where only one culture seemed to exist.
But things are finally starting to change. It took me 20 years to understand my parents’ pride when they first stood on American soil, with opportunity shining like diamonds in their eyes. It took me 20 years to see how grateful I should be, for their determination to give me better opportunities.
Nowadays, I embrace every minority like me, who was once scared to acknowledge their skin color. Let’s all stand in the spotlight, eyes piercing, staring into the faces of every person who ever dared to look away. Let’s be proud of our origins, no matter how “off brand” it felt or still feels.
I realize now, that to love my own skin is to love every other skin like my own. To acknowledge my own color is to acknowledge the entire rainbow. To feel pride in yourself is to feel pride in every single being it took to create you. Being American has nothing to do with race or culture. Being American is simply being proud of exactly what you’re made of.
My friends continue making conversation as I zone out, watching a Chinese family quietly eating a few tables over. The mother is transferring clumps of slick Udon noodles into her son’s bowl with a simple pair of ivory chopsticks. They’re the kind of noodles you shouldn’t be able to pick up with two sticks. They’re the kind of noodles that would intimidate any American enough to ask for a fork instead. But the mother handles the task with no difficulty, and I smile. Mom was right. Chopsticks really can pick up anything.