I just got
back from the 2015 Ascend National Convention and I was so inspired by all of
the presenters and panelists that I promised myself to start up my blog again
and share my experiences. This blog will focus on my journey of embracing
my own culture and becoming aware of how it affects my professional career.
In 1982,
my family moved to U.S. from Hong Kong. I was ten years old and found myself
being a minority for the very first time. We moved to the suburbs where
there were not many other Chinese. All of a sudden, I was different.
I was singled out in the classroom, at the playground, and on the school
bus. I did not really speak English. Sure, I learned English in
Hong Kong but it was different when you did not use it or hear it every day.
Everyone spoke too quickly for me. I was completely lost anytime an
American colloquialism was used to explain things. Like text responses on
the iWatch, I had several predetermined responses ready to go at any given
time, "Yes, no, and what."
Even then,
I realized that many of the people I interacted with had blind spots about the
Asians. Back then, people wouldn't know or care about the fact that I was
Chinese. I recall painfully how some of the kids (and adults) were
hateful of Asians because of the rise in popularity of Vietnam War movies in
the early 80s where Asians were the antagonists. We were often racially
profiled. There were times when I did not feel safe walking down the
street because of the things that people were shouting at me. There was
an incident when some kids threw an ice ball across the street at me shouting,
"Go back to where you came from chink!" I went home with blood
on my forehead and my pride left somewhere back in the snow banks. I was
becoming conditioned to dislike being different. I was being conditioned
to dislike being me.
My most
shameful act of giving up my Chinese identity happened when I called my cousins
chinks on the school bus because I wanted to pronounce to the others that I was
not one. Needless to say, once I got home, there were a lot of
"Aiyah's" and shouting. My aunts and uncles and parents were
ashamed of me. I was a scared 10 year old boy who was just grasping at
straws to fit in.
There were
other stereotypes that I wish were actually true. Most people
automatically assumed that I was good at martial arts. Many would assume
I knew Karate even though Kung Fu would have been more appropriate for a
Chinese immigrant. They would mock me with Bruce Lee fight cries or Mr.
Miagi quotes. Had I actually been a master, I am sure I would not have
been made fun of as much. Then there were the stereotypical math and
science genius genes that never found their way into my brain. With all the
focus on STEM today, I wish I was a math and science genius.
There were
a few more incidents that made me feel like that scared young boy who was
treated differently. I struggled through the disapproval of an
interracial relationship by a girlfriend's parents that led to our breakup.
I remember the reaction of another girlfriend when she saw the chicken
and the fish plates during dinner at my house and how she made fun of it with
my friends when we were back on campus. I remember one incident when I
did not respond quickly to a question from a stranger on the street and they
immediately took the approach of repeating their question slower and louder as
a way of compensating for an assumed language barrier. These incidents
made my skin crawl. They reminded me that no matter how I try not to be
different, I was very much still the subject of discrimination, jokes, and
humiliation. They made me feel like that ten year old boy again.
"Acceptance"
and "tolerance" were terms often used in the early 90s for diversity.
Affirmative Action which required companies to hire a certain number of
minorities had created tension between the white majority and minorities.
As a Resident Assistant at Bentley College, I was invited to participate
in a course to help promote diversity on campus. It turned out to be one
of those experiences that pivots a person to the core. They taught us
that acceptance and tolerance were not good enough. For diversity to
work, we needed to appreciate and celebrate differences. Isn't that what
I had been doing? I have embraced, appreciated and celebrated different
cultures and fully assimilated into the American culture. So what more
was there to learn? It turned out, my life changing take away was that
the one culture I did not embrace anymore was my own. As a result of my
experiences, I had all but avoided being Chinese. I did not have any
Chinese friends and the one student group I never went near was the Bentley
Asian Student Association (BASA). Ironically, I would have spent much
more time with my now wife had I been an active member of BASA.
With the
realization that I had been avoiding my own culture, I began rediscovering what
it meant to be Chinese. I spent countless hours binge watching Chinese TV
Dramas on six-hour VHS tapes. I decided Chinese food was my favorite
comfort food, MSG and all. I spent time learning about Chinese history
and my ancestors' lives in China. I also realized then I ultimately
wanted to marry a Chinese woman some day because we would share the same
culture and values, and I would be able to go to dim sum and enjoy real chicken
fingers and not worry that my wife was going to freak out. I was finally
comfortable being Chinese.
So now I
was a fully assimilated American who is also happy to be Chinese. I figured it
all out, right? I was ready to help others with their struggles as Asian
immigrants. I was fortunate to have been asked to support diversity
efforts at work which led me to my first Ascend Convention. Ascend is the
largest non-profit Pan-Asian professional group whose leaders have dedicated
their time to cultivate Pan Asian leaders. I was moved by their passion
to give back and pay forward. Shortly thereafter, I began my own journey
of giving back and paying forward. I felt like I was the poster child of
what they were selling. After all, I had broken down all the stereotypes and
became successful in corporate America by not being afraid to speak up or stand
out. Or had I?
Shortly
after an Asian Awareness Program where I facilitated an introspective exercise
for a group of Asian professionals, I encountered my own challenges at work.
Through that experience, I realized that I still carried the weight of
suffering in silence as described by many of the participants in my session.
I realized in my own introspection that when it came to things related to
my own job satisfaction, I was more willing to let things go unsaid than to
become the squeaky wheel that got the oil. Humility is a tricky thing. It
is also the one Asian stereotype I traded in long ago to become popular.
I was humbled when I realize I wasn't as much of a poster child as I
thought.
So despite
30 plus years of living in this country, efforts of fitting in and not becoming
a stereotypical Asian man living and working in America, I still had Asian values
and beliefs at the core of my being. Some of those traits had been very
important to my success - value meritocracy and work hard. Other traits may
have prevented me from opportunities, work life balance and job satisfaction -
keep quiet and not cause waves.
So what's
next? This epiphany was not about going back to losing my Chinese
identity. It was about finding a new balance that helps me pull together the
best of what I've learned from growing up in this country and what I brought
with me from Hong Kong. It is about being agile and flexing between the
two. It is about innovating something new like Ming Tsai's East meets West
fusion dishes. It is about being bold and willing to do what my scared
ten year old self was not ready to do. It is time to stand up and be me, an
Asian American.
Stay
Cheesy,
The
Rambunctious Rat
I just got
back from the 2015 Ascend National Convention and I was so inspired by all of
the presenters and panelists that I promised myself to start up my blog again
and share my experiences. This blog will focus on my journey of embracing
my own culture and becoming aware of how it affects my professional career.
In 1982,
my family moved to U.S. from Hong Kong. I was ten years old and found myself
being a minority for the very first time. We moved to the suburbs where
there were not many other Chinese. All of a sudden, I was different.
I was singled out in the classroom, at the playground, and on the school
bus. I did not really speak English. Sure, I learned English in
Hong Kong but it was different when you did not use it or hear it every day.
Everyone spoke too quickly for me. I was completely lost anytime an
American colloquialism was used to explain things. Like text responses on
the iWatch, I had several predetermined responses ready to go at any given
time, "Yes, no, and what."
Even then,
I realized that many of the people I interacted with had blind spots about the
Asians. Back then, people wouldn't know or care about the fact that I was
Chinese. I recall painfully how some of the kids (and adults) were
hateful of Asians because of the rise in popularity of Vietnam War movies in
the early 80s where Asians were the antagonists. We were often racially
profiled. There were times when I did not feel safe walking down the
street because of the things that people were shouting at me. There was
an incident when some kids threw an ice ball across the street at me shouting,
"Go back to where you came from chink!" I went home with blood
on my forehead and my pride left somewhere back in the snow banks. I was
becoming conditioned to dislike being different. I was being conditioned
to dislike being me.
My most
shameful act of giving up my Chinese identity happened when I called my cousins
chinks on the school bus because I wanted to pronounce to the others that I was
not one. Needless to say, once I got home, there were a lot of
"Aiyah's" and shouting. My aunts and uncles and parents were
ashamed of me. I was a scared 10 year old boy who was just grasping at
straws to fit in.
There were
other stereotypes that I wish were actually true. Most people
automatically assumed that I was good at martial arts. Many would assume
I knew Karate even though Kung Fu would have been more appropriate for a
Chinese immigrant. They would mock me with Bruce Lee fight cries or Mr.
Miagi quotes. Had I actually been a master, I am sure I would not have
been made fun of as much. Then there were the stereotypical math and
science genius genes that never found their way into my brain. With all the
focus on STEM today, I wish I was a math and science genius.
As I grew
up, I shed more and more of what would have been Asian stereotypes. I had
become fluent in English. As a teenager who dabbled in theater, I would often
try out different accents. A Chinese accent was the one accent I could
not do. Although, it once defined me as different, a Chinese accent had
been permanently erased from me. Strangers assumed I was born in the U.S.
and friends would comment that they forget that I was Chinese until they hear
me speak Cantonese with my parents. I was outgoing, popular, and far
removed from the reserved and soft spoken stereotypes. I dated white
girls, and only really had white friends. Those were good things, right?
The scared ten year old boy finally gained the approval of the natives
and accepted as one of them. I finally fit in.
There were
a few more incidents that made me feel like that scared young boy who was
treated differently. I struggled through the disapproval of an
interracial relationship by a girlfriend's parents that led to our breakup.
I remember the reaction of another girlfriend when she saw the chicken
and the fish plates during dinner at my house and how she made fun of it with
my friends when we were back on campus. I remember one incident when I
did not respond quickly to a question from a stranger on the street and they
immediately took the approach of repeating their question slower and louder as
a way of compensating for an assumed language barrier. These incidents
made my skin crawl. They reminded me that no matter how I try not to be
different, I was very much still the subject of discrimination, jokes, and
humiliation. They made me feel like that ten year old boy again.
"Acceptance"
and "tolerance" were terms often used in the early 90s for diversity.
Affirmative Action which required companies to hire a certain number of
minorities had created tension between the white majority and minorities.
As a Resident Assistant at Bentley College, I was invited to participate
in a course to help promote diversity on campus. It turned out to be one
of those experiences that pivots a person to the core. They taught us
that acceptance and tolerance were not good enough. For diversity to
work, we needed to appreciate and celebrate differences. Isn't that what
I had been doing? I have embraced, appreciated and celebrated different
cultures and fully assimilated into the American culture. So what more
was there to learn? It turned out, my life changing take away was that
the one culture I did not embrace anymore was my own. As a result of my
experiences, I had all but avoided being Chinese. I did not have any
Chinese friends and the one student group I never went near was the Bentley
Asian Student Association (BASA). Ironically, I would have spent much
more time with my now wife had I been an active member of BASA.
With the
realization that I had been avoiding my own culture, I began rediscovering what
it meant to be Chinese. I spent countless hours binge watching Chinese TV
Dramas on six-hour VHS tapes. I decided Chinese food was my favorite
comfort food, MSG and all. I spent time learning about Chinese history
and my ancestors' lives in China. I also realized then I ultimately
wanted to marry a Chinese woman some day because we would share the same
culture and values, and I would be able to go to dim sum and enjoy real chicken
fingers and not worry that my wife was going to freak out. I was finally
comfortable being Chinese.
So now I
was a fully assimilated American who is also happy to be Chinese. I figured it
all out, right? I was ready to help others with their struggles as Asian
immigrants. I was fortunate to have been asked to support diversity
efforts at work which led me to my first Ascend Convention. Ascend is the
largest non-profit Pan-Asian professional group whose leaders have dedicated
their time to cultivate Pan Asian leaders. I was moved by their passion
to give back and pay forward. Shortly thereafter, I began my own journey
of giving back and paying forward. I felt like I was the poster child of
what they were selling. After all, I had broken down all the stereotypes and
became successful in corporate America by not being afraid to speak up or stand
out. Or had I?
Shortly
after an Asian Awareness Program where I facilitated an introspective exercise
for a group of Asian professionals, I encountered my own challenges at work.
Through that experience, I realized that I still carried the weight of
suffering in silence as described by many of the participants in my session.
I realized in my own introspection that when it came to things related to
my own job satisfaction, I was more willing to let things go unsaid than to
become the squeaky wheel that got the oil. Humility is a tricky thing. It
is also the one Asian stereotype I traded in long ago to become popular.
I was humbled when I realize I wasn't as much of a poster child as I
thought.
So despite
30 plus years of living in this country, efforts of fitting in and not becoming
a stereotypical Asian man living and working in America, I still had Asian values
and beliefs at the core of my being. Some of those traits had been very
important to my success - value meritocracy and work hard. Other traits may
have prevented me from opportunities, work life balance and job satisfaction -
keep quiet and not cause waves.
So what's
next? This epiphany was not about going back to losing my Chinese
identity. It was about finding a new balance that helps me pull together the
best of what I've learned from growing up in this country and what I brought
with me from Hong Kong. It is about being agile and flexing between the
two. It is about innovating something new like Ming Tsai's East meets West
fusion dishes. It is about being bold and willing to do what my scared
ten year old self was not ready to do. It is time to stand up and be me, an
Asian American.
Stay
Cheesy,
The
Rambunctious Rat
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