Throughout elementary school, I saw myself as a Korean living in America. My family had immigrated to the United States when I was six years old, and I knew that we would not be going back to Korea. But with the notion that an “American” was someone with pale skin, blue eyes, pointy nose, and light brown or blonde hair, I definitely could not see myself belonging to that category. Though I spoke English fluently and played in various league sports, I ultimately identified myself as a foreigner who wished to succeed here in America.
What helped to develop this self-consciousness was the ethnic makeup of my town, a small suburban town in northern New Jersey. It consisted of two large groups – Koreans and Jews. The majority of Koreans in my town lived within a few blocks of each other, mostly congregated in a cluster of townhouses. Many had come to stay only a few years for business and had kids who would attend my school in the meantime. Some families had settled down with successful businesses and had second generation sons and daughters. Others, like my family, had immigrated and lived in the US for over five years while other families had just recently arrived. As for the Jewish population of my town, they were the envy of all Koreans. They were well settled down, the fathers all worked at large business or banking firms, they owned several nice German cars, and they all lived up in the hills, where houses were of castle-like proportions.
As a third and fourth grader, I had many Jewish friends. “Play dates” were arranged to allow me to go over a Jewish kid’s house or for the Jewish kid to come over mine. This would be planned days in advance, and though it felt unnecessary for my parents, it must have been of importance to Jewish parents because unannounced play dates were strictly forbidden. This system was effective in helping to manage time and for figuring out rides. However, once I started making more Korean friends in fifth grade, hanging out with them was a matter of walking to their house and ringing the doorbell; play dates became inconvenient, and I gradually stopped being friends with Jewish kids. I also began to notice a sharp contrast between Jewish families and Korean families. The Jewish kids always had their mothers at home and were supervised around the clock. Korean kids were often left alone at home with both of their parents working at the grocery store or dry cleaners for the entire day. I felt a sense of freedom as I befriended more Koreans and though my parents retained the unique characteristic of working at home, I was more comfortable playing with a friend who had no time restrictions or parental supervision.
Being a member of a Korean-only social group in fifth and sixth grade, I developed a sense of pride for my “ethnic heritage.” This usually consisted of cherishing the food our mothers made, being respectful to our elders, and studying hard to get good grades. I believed that these were genuine Korean traits, and this belief brought my group of friends closer together. We were not like the Jewish kids who could afford fancy tutors, call their parents by their first names, and have an in-house maid to clean and cook. This class difference contributed to our segregated behavior at school. We played Koreans-only football at recess and worked on group projects among ourselves. It also didn’t help that several Jewish kids mocked our appearance and language every day at school. Labeled as “slanty-eyed” and poor, this form of provocation helped to strengthen my Korean group. We looked for ways to retaliate and found a sensitive spot in their history that we could exploit. Soon, some of my bolder friends imitated Nazi hand motions, and we all learned to draw swastikas. We were naïve to the real atrocities of the Holocaust in sixth grade, but we knew that this offended the Jewish kids and served them right for mocking us.
Racial division was a troubling issue for me by the end of sixth grade. Many classmates perceived me and my friends as “racists” for our Nazi references while completely disregarding the mockeries directed towards us. When my family decided to move to central New Jersey, I was relieved to escape what had escalated into an irreparable relationship between the Jews and Koreans. I had been an active voice in our separatist movement along with some other friends, and I believed it would be better for our core to be dismantled.
Having experienced social conflict so early in my life, I was determined to not let it happen again. I wanted to be open-minded, and I began my life in Edison, NJ with the intention of establishing a diverse group of friends. This town, already in a demographic sense, presented a different arena. The dominant groups were Jews, but from the middle class, Indians, Chinese, and Italians. I had never seen such a wide range of peoples, and if I was going to be open-minded, this was definitely the right place to start.
Upon entering my middle school on the first day, I was greeted by an Asian kid whom the guidance counselor had chosen to act as my guide. He showed me where my classes were, how to read my schedule, and how to open my locker. I asked him about his ethnicity and he told me that he was Chinese. I had previously known only one Chinese kid in my old town, and he used to be a target of my Korean group. We mocked him about his thicker lips, his broken English, and his attempts to befriend the Jews. We made him cry on many occasions and excluded him from our activities. Now, in a town where I had no friends, I knew that I would have to suspend my superiority complex and begin friendships with non-Koreans. My guide, Warren, not only helped me on the first day of school, but allowed me to slowly become a part of his circle of friends, which was a diverse mix of Jews, Indians and Chinese.
It wasn’t long before I reverted back to my old way of thought. I had a tough time tolerating different languages being spoken by my friends at their homes and the different foods they ate. I missed my Korean-friendly environment. I began to attend a Korean church in the area to reestablish my Korean ties. I made Korean church friends and also sought out Koreans in my school. But to my benefit, my diverse group of friends never gave up on me and pursued my friendship. The many weekends spent playing basketball together or hanging out at the mall helped to establish a history between us that soon exceeded my desire to distinguish my identity as a Korean.
High school was where I finally began to feel a major shift in my identity. I became disillusioned with religion and stopped going to church altogether. My sudden distaste for Christianity soon became cause to sever my ties with my Korean friends. I noticed that Koreans were zealous about Christian beliefs more so than other Asian minorities. For them, it was about choosing between me and God, and I was labeled a “pagan” by some who had previously been close friends of mine. I also noticed a phenomenon that almost seemed natural. Our diverse group of Jews, Indians, and Chinese began to separate once we reached high school. Some rare instances saw a mixed group of friends, but in general, it was easy to see that the brown, white, and yellow colors uniformly divided each morning in front of the school.
Among the separation of groups, I found myself as a part of the Chinese group. They were secular, academically motivated, and fairly “Americanized” in the sense that they loved to play sports and showed interest in careers beyond the “typical” Asian (i.e. doctors and engineers). As the only non-Chinese, I felt compelled to redefine myself if I was to be included in this group. I began to see myself as “Asian.” I was still out of place when my friends recalled their favorite Chinese dish or reminisced their favorite Chinese school moment, but the idea of being “Asian” and having to deal with similar issues – the strict parents, the academic pressures, and the passive stereotype – all helped us to pull together and speak freely about them.
I was proud of my group; we were all perceived to be intelligent and hardworking, and for the most part, we were. At times, I felt as if our bonds were dictated more on similar interests and motivations rather than our ethnic or racial ties; but in the end, when it came down to having the highest grade, it was sweeter to see one of us on top rather than a Jew or an Indian. We also loved to claim some superiority over other minority groups. We often joined with Italians to ridicule the Indians of their smell and populous numbers. My Indian friends took the mockery as a matter of fact and only hoped to distance themselves from the “Indian mob” types, which consisted of “dirty, uneducated immigrants.” I soon realized that my high school harbored more divisions than I had ever experienced anywhere else. But unlike my Jewish-Korean affair in elementary school, this scenario featured numerous groups with various agendas, not only race. Classicism, culture, academic proficiency, and sports interests all served as factors that determined specific groups even within a broad group of Jews, Indians, Italians, and the Chinese. I was a middle class Asian who valued good grades and athletic ability; this was how I defined my identity.
Playing varsity football added a new dimension to my identity. To mingle in pads with the big black and white boys, and to hold my own gave me a new sense of confidence and belonging. I wasn’t the only one to play. Warren, who had become a very close friend by this time, also played along with some other Asians in my school. Playing this American game made us feel more American than ever. Whenever I stood on the sidelines before the game listening to the Star Spangled Banner, I felt a chill down my spine that made me feel proud to be a member of this society.
My path to football success did not come overnight. I had to overcome the stereotype that black athletes were automatically better at football. With hard work and some luck, I was the starting running back for two years on the varsity football team, and Warren was the starting wide receiver for the same length of time. Our coaches, beaming with Italian American pride, took joy in poking fun at our cultures. They called me a “ninja” when I ran quickly through the ropes or they asked Warren if he was having “dog” for dinner that night. Of course, this was meant for fun and no harm, but I wondered why it was easier for them to target us. When I casually made a comment about black people in the same spirit, the coaches quickly admonished me for making “inappropriate remarks.”
Football was what ultimately allowed me to call myself an Asian American. I was no longer just an Asian living in America. I felt that to score touchdowns, to play on Thanksgiving, and to hear my name on the loudspeakers surely gave me the right to be American. Sadly, however, we were still Asian Americans, and this meant that we were still a minority, vulnerable to an oppressive act.
I can’t really say if this incident was directed at me and Warren because we were Asians or because we were the two smartest on the football team, but it was an odd case that we did not know how to perceive. My head football coach approached me and Warren one day with topics from college courses. His son had gotten into a drunken driving accident, and he had fallen behind in his work. My coach asked us if we could help his son out by writing his papers for him. As juniors in high school, we were confused at the request, but we were willing to do anything to please the coach. He told us that he trusted us because we were smart and good kids. Warren and I worked hard to write these papers and told nobody else about them. The coach was pleased with our work and over the course of two years, we were asked to write several more papers, including some term papers and research projects.
That situation is still too bizarre for me to comprehend today, and I can view it in more than one way. My coach could have been trying to exploit our obedient nature and stereotyping us as productive, academically phenomenal Asians. To our advantage, we were up to the task, and our coach later rewarded us with recommendations to many scholar-athlete scholarships. But to see that a stereotyped perception of our abilities gave my coach the right to exploit us made our experience bittersweet.
As my high school years came to an end, I found myself very comfortable with the notion of being Asian American. I was still proud to speak Korean at home and eat Korean food for dinner, but at school, I was also proud to be a part of a group that didn’t have any other Koreans. This belief in a limited pan-ethnic identity was challenged when I began dating a Chinese American girl. Melody was born in the United States, and she had all the characteristics to belong to the same social group as myself; she was middle class, academically motivated, and athletic. However, unlike our 50-50 concept of identity, she often saw herself as more American than Chinese. This enabled her to be more open to friendships outside her ethnic and cultural boundaries. I made friends with more white and Indian kids through Melody and became comfortable hanging out with them regularly. I realized that perhaps identifying myself as part of a social group wasn’t as paramount as it had been the past four years. I began to wonder, as an American citizen, as a lover of US history, and as a proud inhabitant of New Jersey – could I define myself as just American? I left for college with this progressive thought in mind and envisioned a future with friendships that spanned all races, ethnicities, and cultures – of both the minority and majority.
This idea, as groundbreaking as it was for me, was short-lived. Last year, as I worked for my parents at their downtown photo store, a white woman walked in and asked for her photos to be scanned. As I was taking care of the job, she asked me, “Where are you from?” I answered “New Jersey” and saw her shake her head. “No, no,” she said, “Where are you from?”
Immediately, I felt like I was back in elementary school; I felt like a foreigner living in the United States and being asked where I was visiting from. This was not the first time I had been asked, but the way she had phrased the question was unbearably condescending. “Oh. Korea,” I answered. Later that day, I wondered if all my transformations in high school - my notion of becoming American and my open-mindedness - were all in vain.
Incidents like this ultimately make me dubious as to who I am and what social group I belong to. An Asian American activist might urge for political involvement and a louder voice, but it is too easy to be skeptical and point to the small numbers and our many ethnic differences. I personally hate to feel defeated or oppressed even in the slightest way, but sometimes, I wonder – does the white majority intentionally try to keep us down, or are they just ignorant? I think back to the days when the Jewish kids made fun of me and my Korean friends; were they trying to be racist, or was everything just funny to them? These are the questions that loom in my mind as I continue my search for an identity, but in the meantime, if anyone asks me who I am, I’ll have to tell them where I’m from. I’m from Korea.
