Asian American Stereotypes

Today, I am proud of my identity as an Asian American, but during my high school years it was difficult for me to be equally as proud of my race as I was my nationality. Growing up in a small town where in most circumstances I was the minority, it is not surprising that one facet of my identity that was often challenged was my race. My ideas and notions of my identity as Asian were challenged by stereotypes in school, where despite trying to keep my race a background characteristic, it was continually brought to the foreground by my peers.

Throughout high school, it became apparent to me that race was becoming my sole identifiable characteristic. To my peers everything from my appearance to my mannerisms screamed stereotypical Asian, but

As Jeenie Suk Gersen’s states in her article, “The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans,” academic success is not only an accredited attribute of Asians, it is expected. While not all of my classmates reacted the same, the fact that this message was delivered by students who had a high level of status in the class and that this occurred in the public sphere of the classroom, it reinforced the stereotypical image that I was assigned to both my peers and myself. These disparaging comments, in conjunction to the fact that I lacked people with whom I could identify with, made me feel alienated and as a result I felt little solidarity with my peers. As a result, I faced that same dilemma of how to “cultivate not just a sense of individuality but also ways to project ‘Not like other Asians’” (Gersen 2017) that Gersen concluded Asian college applicants face when applying to elite college such as Harvard. This connection between attaining individuality and detaching your race from your identity resonated with me because I struggled with this throughout high school and it was not until I was able to separate the stereotypes from my ideas about my race that I was able to better understand my social identity as