Free Fallin’
I travelled around the country, when we could travel, with a project called Looking For America, in which we asked people, what does it mean to be American in your community? As soon as I’d board a plane headed for a place where I assumed I’d be the only Asian face I’d see when I arrived, I’d start looking around for people who looked like me. I assumed I would not be considered American in places where I did not resemble the majority of people. I assumed I would be asked where I was really from and that I’d be complimented for speaking English so well.
Seeing someone who resembled me on these trips always perked me up. When I encountered Asian-looking people in places I assumed were hostile to them, I wondered to myself what their lives were like. Why did they choose to live in these places? Did they feel like they belonged in the community? Were there others like us around?
It’s peculiar that I’d look for Asian faces to comfort me considering I’d developed a pattern of avoiding other people of Asian descent throughout my life. I feared the association with a group many considered not American would accentuate my own unbelonging so I adapted and assimilated to the norms I believed made me more American. When outside the comfortable bubble of acceptance I’ve created for myself, I am always extra chatty and friendly with the car rental desk attendant, the server taking my order at the local diner, the clerk scanning my snack purchases at the convenience store, so they know I speak unaccented English. I ask for recommendations for the best BBQ joint in town. If I am in a southern state, I sprinkle y’alls into my sentences. In my defense, I grew up in the South so that vernacular is not entirely contrived. I try to work in my penchant for classic rock music like the Eagles, Steve Miller Band, the Allman Brothers Band, Tom Petty. This is the soundtrack of my youth! My brother, who listened to New Wave and Punk, used to mock my musical taste and called my playlists redneck music. These attributes are embedded in me now and inseparable from my identity.
With the president stoking misdirected hatred for China these days, though, none of the things that make me “American” will matter and whatever assumptions I have held about my fellow Americans will start to seem less irrational as violence against people with Asian facial features increases. We will all be considered “Chinese,” though we are descended from Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, Pacific Islanders, Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian. We will be told to go back to where we came from. We will be accused of unfounded crimes. We will be battered, possibly murdered. I know it can happen because it happened to brown Americans after 9/11 and it has happened to every group of Americans that has not resembled the majority of Americans.
