Reckoning With Our Otherness

By Lily Liu Chan

At dinner last Thursday night, my 13-year-old son asked me if we should be careful when going outside.

“Because of COVID?” I asked. 

“Because we’re Asian,” he replied. 

My heart sank. Could this be why he was anxious about returning to school? And how should I answer his question? As a Chinese American family in West Los Angeles, we had never grappled with this issue in our family before. We live in a racially diverse neighborhood that resembles a Benetton ad. My son went to an LA Unified dual language elementary school, a school which his 11-year-old sister still attends. There, the children learn Mandarin alongside students who are not only Asian but also white, Black, and LatinX. The families share a common desire to learn Mandarin and, by extension, to learn about Chinese people. When my daughter graduates from fifth grade this year, she will continue studying Mandarin in middle and eventually high school. That these schools are public can be seen as a testament to how Chinese language and culture have been embraced by our city. Overt racial discrimination is not something my children have experienced.

I, on the other hand, spent much of my childhood in a small town in Georgia. At school, my brother and I were accused of bombing Pearl Harbor and called names so vile they can’t be printed here. By age 6, I had come to see my race as something that could be weaponized and used to dehumanize me. I alternated between meekly keeping my head down and brazenly challenging my tormentors. Neither one stopped the bullying. When it became physical, I would fight back, but I would always be the only one who got in trouble. 

Shortly after my 14th birthday, my family relocated to Singapore, where blending in eluded me still. There, it wasn’t my race that set me apart. It was my American accent. Outside of the bubble of my expat community, people would stare as soon as I opened my mouth. My experiences of discrimination continued.  

Moving to Los Angeles in the mid-90s felt like coming home. Suddenly, neither my race nor my cultural identity were my most salient features. I naively allowed myself to believe that I might be living in a post-racial America -- as far as Asians were concerned. Now, years later, it’s dawning on me that I may have raised my children to also feel this way. 

I have never shied away from discussing issues of race and identity with them. They have attended protests in support of women’s rights, against family separation, and in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. They are familiar with the idea that in American society, there are people treated as an “Other.” Until recently, however, they have not been forced to reckon with their own perceived Otherness. To be honest, many of us haven’t. 

In the minds of many of our fellow Americans, Asian Americans occupy a space that falls somewhere between that of white and Black Americans. We are not a monolith, but we are often seen as one, a “model minority” composed of hardworking, well-educated people who have secured our place in American society by dint of our college educations, mortgages, and 401(k)s. These things allow many of us to move within spaces that have historically been reserved for white Americans. As non-white members in a country birthed on the backs of people of color, many Asian Americans believe that any approximation of whiteness is tantamount to success. We may never look white, but those of us who fit the model minority myth are able to sample some of the privileges granted to white people. We are, in a way, “passing” for white -- something Asian Americans would only aspire to do in a society built on the premise of white supremacy.

But “passing” only works in the absence of scapegoating. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an avalanche of negative attention on Asian Americans. With so many lives upended in dramatic ways, many Americans are looking for someone to blame, and the result is an alarming increase in acts of violence against us. Many of our fellow citizens view this as a new challenge for us, but it is anything but. Our history of subjugation in this country began long before COVID. In 1882, America passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to halt immigration from China and the naturalization of Chinese citizens. To this day, it remains the only piece of legislation designed to target a single specific nationality. Less than a century later during World War II, our government orchestrated the mass internment of over a hundred thousand people of Japanese ancestry. Most of those who were imprisoned were American citizens. It is appalling how few people are aware of these state-sanctioned injustices. Is it any wonder that so many Americans are surprised by what is happening to us now? These hostilities remind us that no matter how much we strive for the American Dream, we are and always will be seen as the Other. 

When my children asked me if being Asian could endanger us, it occurred to me that I had never spoken specifically of our own perceived Otherness to them because until now, we hadn’t had to. Whether I was aware of it or not, I had been raising them in this space of “passing.” As an Asian American mother in this new era of discrimination, I’m realizing that in order to explain to my children what’s happening in their reality, I have to reach back farther than the events of the last year. Past the recent shooting in Atlanta, past the months of racist messaging coming from the White House, and past the first echoes of the pandemic. It’s time to share my own Asian American journey with them, as well as the history of other Asian American immigrants.  

I don’t have easy answers for my kids. When they return to school in a few weeks, can they expect that their race will now be seen as a liability? If so, what do I tell them? They know that their Black and brown sisters and brothers have been oppressed because of the color of their skin, but here in Southern California, they have largely been insulated from this same reality. This insulation is disintegrating before their very eyes, and they are looking for answers.

My job as their mother is not to tell them that everything will be OK. Nor is it to ask them to pretend that racism doesn’t exist. My job is to educate them. It is time to explain to them that as Asian Americans on the Westside, they have enjoyed a particular kind of privilege, the kind that comes with a form of “passing.” But they must also learn that this privilege is tenuous, that it is not real, and that it depends on circumstances out of their control. Only then can they truly comprehend why attitudes towards us have shifted so rapidly. Having this understanding will not make them any less American or any more Asian, but it will help them reflect on how we have come to be in this unique place in our cultural history. Hopefully that will give them the grace to handle any challenges that may greet them as they return to school and, indeed, as they continue their lives as Asian Americans.

— Lily Liu Chan is a writer, photographer and mother of two living in Los Angeles