05.05.02 Welcome to my website. Those of you who know me well, know that I have a tendency to avoid the personal in my writing. Since this is the first essay to appear on my website, I thought it might be appropriate to finally tell a little bit of my story in depth for once. Please forgive the sloppiness, I'm kinda thinking as I write. So… a lot of people think of me as Mr. Angry Asian Poet Man. That's cool. But I remember the time when I was one of those flaky, artsy, so-called progressives who thought I was better than my own people. Many of my friends were white, I only dated white girls, and I justified it by saying I was "different" from other Asians and that other Asians didn't accept me. While there may have been some truth to it, I made myself into a victim to the white liberals who were all too ready to hear my sob story - and I conveniently left out the fact that I had internalized racially stereotypical views about Asians. I used any bad incident or sour interaction with an Asian as an excuse for why I didn't like or connect with many Asian people. Truth is, there were things I did and said and believed that alienated me from my own people. I saw my own people as monolithic - business minded, materialistic, conservative, etc. - while seeing white people and other people of color as individuals. I bought into the selfish, bourgie notion that I was personally uplifted and my people just had to catch up to my enlightened ass - and until then, I would have nothing to do with "them". What a crock of bullshit. White people and a couple of other sellouts really nurtured this internal racist that was tearing me apart - there was always a level of unspoken discomfort in me, a person who was uncomfortable with my own kicking demons of hypocrisy - but it was easy for me to submerge these feelings because so many people validated me. Ask for white people's pity, play the victim role, claim that the ones who oppress Asians the most are other Asians, and you will be rewarded. Before you think that I'm just a spolied, whitewashed artsy Asian from the suburbs trying to be radical, let me tell you that I was raised in Phillips, where my parents still live. Rather than trying to describe Phillips, go here and read about it. That corner that the article talks about, 25th and Bloomington, that they say is plagued by crack and prostitution? That's where the Super America is, (which used to be a 7-Eleven way back in the day) where I would walk to buy Icees, canned soup, candy bars, soda pop, chips. That's literally my block. More info re: Phillips There was some cool stuff happening in Phillips too - The American Indian Movement started there, for instance. And me and my friends had some good times there. Rather than describe Phillips as gangsta rap album come to life or an idyllic community of poor people, I'll just say that Phillips was a complicated place for me to grow up. And the main purpose of me bringing up my 'hood is this: if an unsheltered little ghetto nerd like me can be raised in a neighborhood where the majority of people are economically broke people of color and STILL manage to come out whitewashed, thinking about my case is a compelling argument about racial roles in our society, and how pervasive the pressure to assimilate to whiteness is. Admittedly it also had to do with my own weakness and hypocrisy, my ego and laziness. But when I walked the whitewashed path, I had a lot of help. Why? Model Minority, pull self up by bootstraps mythology. Vietnamese refugee boy from Phillips gets accepted on full scholarship to one of the most exclusive and prestigious private liberal arts colleges in the nation. Wooooo. He is also 'socially conscious', has spoken and organized rallies and community functions since High School, and became a spoken word artist before spoken word really caught on. He trades in his Raiders cap for a bandana and starts hanging out with whites and Blacks. A couple of token Native Americans. Believes it when Blacks tell him that they are more oppressed than he and his people are. And deep inside, he thinks he's better than other Asians, tells other races that Asians are conservative and unhip and oppressive. Dates white girls that are "different". Claims that he can't date Asian women because they remind him of his sisters, even though the vast majority of Asian women he met didn't look or act anything like his siblings. I was a white progressive's wet dream come to life. And all that time, I hated who I was. I knew I was making excuses, lying to myself and to everyone else. And the fight that came later, the fight to reclaim myself, was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. And it's still hard. But that little voice inside of me, the one that hated myself for not speaking out, that knew I was a hypocrite because I called myself a progressive yet had no real interest in working with my Asian American community? It's gone now. For all that it's worth, I'm at peace with that side of myself, and I feel like a whole person. I understand that I am a part of Asian America, a legacy that is both absolutely about me and my choices, and which is also about far more than just me. I understand that I must be personally at peace and well informed, but that's just the first step - there's so much work to do in our community. A friend of mine recently presented a very inspiring speech to Asian American students - in it, she stated that one of the most insidious and damaging effects of racism is that it can prevent us from loving the ones closest to us - our families, our communities, our own people. I really relate to that point. So many things in her speech resonated in me. How even so-called progressives and activists can internalize racist views about our own people, our own families. I was one such person. Which is perhaps why it bothers me so much to hear other Asians generalize about Asians while treating white people as individuals. When I hear a brother or sister who has been screwed over by numerous white people, yet had one or two bad experiences with an Asian and has written off all Asians, it's frustrating because they see Asians as monolithic and whites as individuals. It's infuriating and hurtful because I was there, I remember how easy it felt to make those excuses, how willing and eager people were to hear me generalize negatively about my own community, how uncomfortable I was in my own skin. I blamed my own community for my discomfort, my feelings of isolation, used any excuse to absolve myself of my assimilationist ideals and tendecies. I hid things under the surface well. At the core of me, I believed that I could never be happy with another Asian person. Both because I believed that other Asians were not as good as me, and that I was not as good as other Asians. A strange and hurtful contradiction. And I'm writing this personal essay now because, in my friend's speech, she made another point that really resonated with me, something that I've been thinking on for a long time. Sometimes we activists can be self righteous, removed, pointing fingers and not thinking about the very human process that goes into self love and community love. Some of us assume that the sisters wearing lipstick and carrying a Prada bag are a lost cause, that the brothers who spend their free time and money on import cars could not possibly comprehend revolution. But we are all a people in this Asian American community. It doesn't mean that we have to all agree and that we have to change our opinions to be palatable, but it does mean that we can't afford to be snobby and write off entire populations of our people because we have no faith in each other. And I'm getting personal and telling my story in the hopes that people who are going through the struggle that I went through can feel me, and know that you're not alone. Tangent: using "I" this much in a piece of writing makes me feel weird. But there are positives. Things may not be rosy all the time, but I have benefitted so much from the energy, compassion, inspiration, empathy, and love that is in the Asian American community. Yeah we got problems, but who doesn't? I'm in it for the long run. And there's a lot of work to do, inside and outside of myself. Asian America, I love you. Peace.

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