On Racism Within the Asian American Community

Managing Opinion Editor Edwyn Choi ’27 argues that discrimination within the Asian American community towards other Asian Americans is not only hypocritical but rooted in historical trauma.

At Amherst, students and faculty alike will often ask me whether I, as a person of Korean ancestry, am part of any cultural associations on campus — usually referring to either the Asian Student Association (ASA) or the Korean Student Association (KSA). When I tell them that not only am I not a member, but that I actively avoid such organizations, I’m often met with confusion or surprise (my reason, in brief, is that both remind me too much of my childhood Korean-Catholic Sunday school.)

I’m not here to argue that associations such as ASA or KSA are bad (in fact, they’re necessary spaces on campus) or to diagnose these innocent questions about my club involvements as racist. But the idea that Asian Americans are obligated to be in touch with their roots can manifest as an ugly discrimination towards others in the community who aren’t as connected to their Asian identity — betraying a deep anxiety over cultural loss, rooted in historical trauma.

What I mean by people who aren’t perceived to be as “Asian” are those who never felt a strong connection to their ethnic origins, or who simply don’t feel the need to display it through external interest groups. I make this clarification because I’m not referring to “self-hating” Asian Americans: people who suggest Asian people and Asian culture are inferior as opposed to merely being indifferent or private about their heritage. While that’s a separate discussion, I’ll add that hatred towards one’s roots can also come from a place of pain — whether it’s something like the “lunchbox moment,” which can make people feel embarrassed about their culture; or the recent uptick in discrimination during Covid.

Returning to the topic of cultural obligations, I have met other Korean students who will greet me in Korean and point out our shared heritage in a joking manner, something along the lines of, “We need to band together.” Literature professors will often ask me how my ethnicity and heritage have affected my experiences reading literature. These types of interactions are innocuous and create community — in fact, I enjoy them. Where these attitudes become ugly are when they are used to exclude people from Asian American communities, typically by other people of Asian descent. I have heard students suggest that certain people aren’t “Asian enough” to hold board positions in cultural clubs solely because they couldn’t identify a common Asian food or couldn’t speak their heritage language well enough, ignoring their place of upbringing and the communities they’ve interacted with. Others suggest that biracial Asian people aren’t really Asian just because one of their parents was white, or that interracial couples aren’t “cute.” Online (though not at Amherst), people capture similar sentiments through terms such as “banana” and “coconut,” describing those who have “Asian” features on the outside but are “white on the inside,” that they have betrayed their roots (though this word isn’t just wielded by Asian Americans against other Asian Americans, either).

It should be immediately obvious why these attitudes are harmful. They suggest that something is wrong with a person simply because they don’t harbor the same level of attachment to their ancestral country as others in the community do (even those who grew up lacking access to these communities in the first place). They reduce people to nothing more than their “original” country, ignoring their agency to build their own identities: what languages they were supposed to speak, what clothes they were supposed to wear, what food they were supposed to eat — who they were supposed to be.

In fact, it’s oftentimes assumed that any disconnect from one’s ancestral country is automatically a terrible thing. But I have met plenty of so-called “bananas” and “coconuts” who are content with their mixed identities, even if they grew up speaking their parents’ language at home and English at school, learning about American history, or adopting the term “Asian American” (or even just “American”) for themselves. I am not, however, suggesting that all groups of people who have lost touch with their roots shouldn’t care, only that cultural assimilation is not always a bad thing. In a country that has had centuries of anti-Asian legislation, however, minorities have endured their shared struggle by becoming closer to both each other and their roots. Children of Asian immigrants often straddle an awkward line, where they oftentimes feel neither completely Asian nor American and yet are referred to as both. Curricula rarely explore Asian American history beyond the surface level, even at Amherst, where the Asian American and Pacific Islander studies major was only introduced last year after decades of activism.

With that in mind, to love one’s “Asian side” with as much fervor as possible is to preserve these communities and cultural roots, because a life without either (or rather, with a weaker love) is terrifying. To criticize others for failing to show similar displays of attachment (whether it’s not knowing a staple meal or dating interracially) is to protect these vulnerable communities, to impart these centuries of trauma and intergenerational discourse onto those who may have found belonging elsewhere. We must recognize that simply by the virtue of growing up somewhere incredibly far away from Asia we have somewhat lost touch with our roots, no matter how hard we try to maintain a connection — that Asian Americans will try to exclude other Asian Americans from certain communities for being “less Asian” is hypocritical.

I realize that these exclusionary attitudes are not held by the majority of the Asian American population at Amherst (as well as the rest of the world). But this discourse is not uncommon — most Asian Americans will be able to recall someone who displayed prejudices similar to the one I just described, even among teenagers and young adults today. We might roll our eyes when we hear someone spout these opinions, yet shrug them off because we’ve heard them before, which normalizes this discrimination.

Let me be clear: There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving your roots. It’s important to find belonging through your past. It’s important to love yourself, too. But we should not be so blinded by our love that we can’t see identities aren’t static: They mix, overlap, and are the culmination of an ever-changing history — it’s inevitable that there will be people who love their roots a little less than others do. And yet, failing to understand why certain people might act as gatekeepers for their communities can be as detrimental as the gatekeeping itself — it prevents any sort of conversation whatsoever and merely leads to resentment. There will also always be people who hold their people’s history dear to their hearts. As members of the Asian American community, we should not only mind our language but understand that these spaces — whether it’s a meeting for a cultural club or a table at Val — are designed for everyone. Perhaps it’s better if I put it another way: The label “Asian” and the cultural baggage that comes with it does not belong to just one type of person, nor is every person of Asian descent obligated to inherit it, either.