Just Another Blog Post about Being a POC
An Acknowledgement: All the thoughts in this post are an accumulation of my experience, conversations, and limited readings of various kinds. I am no way an expert, and I am continuing to learn each and every day. I welcome all feedback and hope that this can provide another perspective for someone else.
The best way that I can start this is by saying that I am typically terrified of expressing myself or opening up to anyone. But that fear is amplified when I think about sharing my thoughts on social media. I prefer conversations in person because we’re forced to look at one-another and remember that we are both beings with feelings. In person, disagreements have less of a chance or escalating or spiraling out of control. However, I feel compelled to push past my fear and anxieties to share due to several events that aligned at just the right moment.
We Notice
Like like most other people of color, I started to notice I was different at a very young age. Every Asian child seems to have experienced the same nightmare with bringing lunch to school. Opening up the meal that was just…food. Personally, my meal was not tied to any positive or negative feelings. It was unremarkable until an off-hand comment made me realize that I was different. My food was weird, gross, and smelly. And subconsciously, that comment made me worry that I was also weird, gross, and smelly.
Everyone experiences these off-hand comments that enforce a very specific standard of what is “right” and “good”. Boys are told to “man up” if they get upset. Girls get told that they’d look prettier of they smiled. Someone describes something as being bad by calling it “gay”. Too loud, too mean, too angry, and too much. Everyone feels like a misfit or an “other” in one way or another, which allows us to empathize with one another. But I also think while we’re in the middle of our empathy, we forget that our fears and pain are only our own. I have experienced my share of bullying, but I constantly remind myself that I literally don’t know the extent of pain a black/trans/disabled person has experienced. In that same way, no one else has experienced the exact amount of pain as another person, and empathy can only go so far.
We Notice
We all pick up on those subtle cues to learn how to behave and to make ourselves less “different” from our mentors and our peers. We saw when the adults smiled or nodded in approval when we used “please” and “thank you”. We noticed the reactions around us if something was good or bad. We all changed our behavior to adapt to these social cues. But sometimes the offhand comments point out things that we cannot or don’t want to change. Like when someone calls a person of color “exotic”.
I felt like I had to keep noticing everything to protect myself growing up. When I went to daycare for my first and only time, the children teased me about the shape of my eyes until I cried. My first Fourth of July in Texas, I went to an outdoor festival and a drunken man assumed I was “fresh off the boat” when I didn’t acknowledge him. Even in university, a new friend told me that she was thankful I wore white glasses because she was able to tell me apart from the other Asians on campus.
I quickly learned the basic rules to protect myself. I smiled back. I laughed along with the jokes. I made my own jokes and poked my own fun. But the most important rule I learned was that it was all around one single rule: it is safest not to stick out.
We Notice
I did not realize that I was avoiding conflict until a friend posted an article about being an Asian in America in 2021 and how it feels like being minimized, dismissed and ignored. Every idea, experience, and statement felt like a light shining on my memories, revealing the subtleties that I had failed to notice in myself. I was taking so much time to notice the situations around me and the dangers that they held that I didn’t notice how my behaviors could negatively affect me or others around me. In my fear, I was allowing so many things to happen around me or to others because I was afraid of being pulled out from the crowd and ridiculed for being different.
So I’ve started to speak up when I can. I shared the article to someone who had given me feedback to be “more assertive” and told them that the feedback might stem from their perception of me as an Asian woman…as well as be something cultural that I may not actually want to change. I pointed out that someone’s Facebook status acknowledging their disregard for diversity was a statement of their negligence. It was written in a way that seemed like an apology, but did not have an apology or any acknowledgement that they were going to try doing differently in the future.
The reactions I’ve received when I’ve spoken up have reminded me that the acceptance I’ve received from white people I know has been conditional on me not speaking up. I’ve watched people I trusted as close friends grow defensive and argue that I’m “too sensitive” or “making a big deal out of nothing.” This made me feel hurt, but also increased my determination to continue calling out racism when I see it.
We Notice
I know that I have not commented very often in the past, and my own posts are few and far in between. I prefer to help amplify the words of those more eloquent than me.
I also know that there are many others like me. Others who are scared to stick out, scared to speak up, and scared to go against the grain. Or others who have spoken out but were silenced and told they were wrong. They were too angry, too mean or too much. But I need to speak out when I can, if not for others…at least just for me. At least so I can finally act upon how I truly feel, and fight against all the ways minimized myself to fit in.
Between each time I speak up, I’m still going to keep noticing. Noticing the behavior, the comments, the push back from those people who I had once believed were safe. Noticing the well intentioned people who end up stifling arguments by saying we didn’t speak out with kindness. Noticing those who completely ignore people of color, pretending not to hear or see their efforts to speak out and make the world safer for them.. Noticing those who completely shut down people of color when they speak up, telling them to fall back in line and into what is acceptable. Noticing and making notes to myself.
And I’m sure others will keep noticing too.
