The Complacent Asian (Genre #1)

For as long as I can remember I had to follow the “model” minority stereotype. The stereotype can be characterized as an Asian man or woman being smart, hardworking, docile, and self-reliant. Growing up in a semi-strict house has always been tough on me. It was hammered into me as a child to keep my head down, do my homework, socialize when you’re done with the mountain of work you have, and be respectful to anyone and everyone, despite how they treated me. My father was an example of the model minority. He worked hard his whole life to make a living for a stay-at-home mother and her three children, while also providing for his mother, and attended a prestigious Korean university. He installed all the characteristics of a model minority in me and my sisters. Moreover, he was not satisfied because he had to be complacent with everything that happened in his life. Working in Jamaica was not easy for my father, as a child I was never informed of his hardships but now I have learned the whole story. He was mugged, had his store robbed, and something that hurt him the most were the constant racist remarks that he received from the residents of Jamaica. He used to tell me that I should always show compassion to everyone, because one way or another the compassion will be given to me. For the longest time I followed what he said, I showed compassion for nearly my whole life until high school.

Coming into high school, I was excited like any other middle school student. High school is where people become young men and women, where we make friends, some that carry on for life, and where everyone is in it together, yes, I was a fan of High School Musical. However, my first year in high school I experienced my first stint with racism. For the first semester I was the highest performer on all her tests and on the first test of the second semester I received an eighty. An eighty is not a bad score on any metric, however, to my teacher it was, and he pulled me out of class and said, “I don’t expect a score like this from someone like you.” At first, I thought nothing of it, however, it got me thinking, he did not say “I don’t expect a score from YOU”, he said “someone like you.” The next day in class I felt like punching him or reporting him to the AP, but instead I followed what my father said to me, and it was to show compassion, so I ignored and moved on. A few months later, a black student in that algebra class asked if he could cheat off me on the midterm of the second semester and I had refused. After refusing, I was met with a flurry of racist comments such as him calling me a “chink”, “ling-ling”, which I had not heard of up until that point in my life, and “dog-eater”. These were some of the runs of the mill racist insults towards Asians, something that I have been hearing my whole life, however, this time it really hit hard which led me to get in my first ever fight outside of my fighting gym. Although fighting itself is not very enjoyable, it felt good to get my frustrations out. I was frustrated and disappointed in myself as to how complacent I was when I was encountered with racism.

A few years later, my junior year was plagued with news on Asian hate crime. The thought of Asians being assaulted and even killed due to something that we as the Asian American community of America did not do was appalling to me. What was even more appalling was the complacency of the Asians in my community and even in my family. I talked about this to my mother, and she told me to keep a low profile and not to stir up trouble. My community did nothing to commemorate the brutal killings of nail salon workers in Atlanta, or the countless elderly being assaulted in the streets. For too long the Asian American community was abused and not recognized for anything. Our issues were kicked down the road and seen as a secondary social issue that no one batted an eye to, not even members of the Asian American community even cared. We as a community are too caught in trying to keep an image that it keeps us from pursuing what we truly want as individuals. We must worry about our test grades, or what score we get on the SAT and ACT, or our unrealistic beauty standards, or overall being okay with the abuse that we take daily. As a community, we must step up and ignore these unhealthy societal standards set in place by and in general as Americans we must be accepting of everyone, because as human beings we must accept each other despite our physical appearances or anything.

A Rally Cry for the #stopasianhate Movement (Genre #2)

Dear Congresswoman Meng,

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic was tough on everyone in America. People lost their jobs, lost loved ones, and lost what it meant to be alive. For nearly two years, everyone was holed up in their houses to avoid a life-threatening virus. However, for Asians it was not just to avoid a life-threatening virus, but to avoid public scrutiny. A survey asking if people agree or disagree on whether Asian Americans are partly the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, one in five agree. In addition, multiple heinous hate crimes against Asians were committed during the pandemic, such as multiple Asian elderly folks being assaulted on the streets, multiple fatal and non-fatal shootings, and more. This leads to the model minority stereotype, which tells us to not lash out or just accept the situation that we are in. We have been taught from a young age from our own parents to be respectful, study hard, power through all adversity thrown at you, whether it be racism or not, and only rely on yourself because no one will ever come to help in this world. This was the cold truth that we were told from a young age, and why should we be complacent? As one of the largest minority groups in America we should also fight for our social justice. I know that as a fellow Asian, you must feel the same pain and strife that all of us are going through right now. We need to push for more legislation and respond to the Asian community so that we can make Queens a safer place for everyone.

I understand that most of what the Asian community wants, such as increased policing, is against the wishes of what the BLM movement has pushed for, so we need to be able to find a common ground, because at the end of the day we can not sacrifice the safety of one community because of the wishes of another. Please help me in breaking the model minority mold and end the cycle of abuse that we have been experiencing since the birth of the USA.

Sincerely,

Mark Kim