Asian. Five letters. 4.3 billion people. How can it possible that sixty percent of the United State’s population is forced to confine their heritage to one word?
As I sit here, filling form after form and bubble after bubble, I can’t help but feel my heritage is confined to a single category that cannot possibly define who I am. There is just no way that every single individual’s heritage can be accurately represented in such a vague, broad term.
While some forms have the choices of ‘Chinese’ or ‘Other Asian,’ most ethnicities are assimilated under the branch of Asian. Even colleges, that only admit a certain percentage of each ethnicities, have fallen victim to continue the injustice against students.
Asians are the greatest growing demographic yet there is a lack of awareness in regards to the different heritages that get grouped into being Asian. Non-Asians view anyone of Asian descent as being of the same ethnicity and culture.
Asians have a history of being mistreated due to blind grouping. During the Chinese Exclusion Act, anyone that looked remotely Asian were discriminated against and refused entry into the United States. On top of that, during WW2, anyone who was or looked of Asian descent, was stripped of their belongings and shipped off to a miserable internment camp because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
While people associate being racist with derogative terms or putting others down, there is far more. In a community where there’s a large Asian community, microaggression is prevalent. Whether it’d be making sly comments about Asian last names sounding the same making passing comments about the height of the population.
Even though our country is considered progressive and diverse, there is no movement in recognizing Asians. While I’m not placing the blame completely on society for failing to recognize the different heritages, since Asians do tend to be in the shadows and choose to hold their tongues, there needs to be a change.
TCHS School Newspaper