GOOD MORNING WORLD! Let's check our email....
[glares, despairs, sighs] Thanks, UW Multicultural Affairs for flooding my inbox with you duplicate copies of your newsletter which I don't want and won't read! And I'm glad you have a newletter practically every other day! If I have four in my WyoWeb inbox, I know I'll have at least two in my personal email which you somehow have also! Yeay! Thanks also for singling my out and making me feel like I shouldn't fit in with everyone else.Thanks, but no thanks, I think I can be a person all myself.
I resent that I have to be group as a minority when I feel like I am a person with a perosnality before that. I hate distinctions of any kind, positive or negative. I strongly believe in the merits of people, not just academically, but in their character, behavior, values, etc. I had no say in where I "came from" (which quite literally was Nebraksa) but I have unqiue choices that I make which define me.
Last year I went to Truman State University and for some reason everytime I would have another Asian student in a class with me they would facebook friend me within a week with a hokey phrase and an emoticon. Not that I'm not for making friends and meeting new people, but I hated, HATED the fact that they only wanted to be my friend because of my race. Even though they just wanted to find someone to connect with...blah blah blah. And, not only would they friend me, but their friends, who I didn't even know would friend me too. And those friends of people I didn't even know would comment on deeply archived photos which I had entirely forgotten about ( "LOL this is a funny pic. U R too cute!").
I don't know how to say this without sounding mean, but I imagine them walking around in tight pods which creep closer and closer to any other asian they see on the sidewalk and they get sucked into the middle of this pod and are never seen again. Ever.
And I know how this is. My mom also asks me how Asian people from my elementary school are doing. People I haven't talked to in years. She wants to know what's the up-and-up on all the asian people who I might know over all my other actual friends, but I couldn't care less. She probably wants me to compare their success to mine and no matter who "wins" suggest that I should have done something different anyway and been better off.
And now you know.
5 comments:
Wow, that's intense. As I read your post, I couldn't help but think about my the exchange in London I'm thinking about doing this summer. If I go, I'll likely gravitate towards American fellows over their - it helps with the transition into a new culture, and I relate more to them obviously. But in your case, it is different. You are experiencing this in day-to-day life - inside the normal realm of situations. Whereas I will be an American outside of the country for the first time, you are an Asian who has lived in America I'm guessing your entire life. Why should you be continuously labeled for being Asian? Why should UW think that you, a lifelong American citizen, need to have support to deal with life in Wyoming? Interesting stuff ...
Don't I know it.
I know its one thing if you are from a different country. But in some cases they still gravitate towards me even though they have lived in the US for a while.
I have in fact lived here all my life.
I took a class on cultural communication, and the entire class was filled with stories about people in the same types of situations, some gravitating towards and away from others based on race or culture. You'd think I'd have some solid advice after taking that class, but all of the stories had morals which were so conflicting with one another... some saying we should ignore race, others saying we should embrace it... I can only shrug and sigh at human society.
By the way... Google is making me type in "shlyp" to post this comment. Thanks, Google.
Ya, I can see myself wanting to group with people of my own race/culture if I was a minority. If I suddenly had to go to school with a bunch of city folk, I guarantee I would actively (and probably futiley) seek out people from Wyoming to stick with. It would make me feel stronger. I do find the entire facebook thing pretty odd, though. Maybe instead of attracting asians to yourself, you just keep attracting crazy asians...
I'll try that?
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