This is the 6th installation of the micah 6.8 series, in which I explore how faith influences our everyday life. If you haven’t read the other installations, you can start here: Part 1: never productive enough, Part 2: the food we eat, Part 3: the beauty we create, Part 4: the work we do, Part 5: the people we date.
I don’t think I’ve told these stories in writing before. They would come up when people asked me to share about struggles I had growing up:
never feeling like I fit in, being shy and nerdy even though I wanted to be cool and popular, navigating teenage friendship amidst moving to a new country.
They are narratives people who know me now respond to with surprise, “I would never have guessed that you struggled with friendship!”
Narratives I sometimes feel distant from, even though I know the integral role they played in shaping who I am today.
But with the recent discussion around racism, EDI initiatives and how we can foster a wider sense of belonging, I started thinking about these narratives again.
I wouldn’t say my high school was racist, but I do remember always being haunted by feeling ‘less than’.
That feeling is probably the closest thing I know to the sadness and helplessness that has bubbled up into the anger that looks like marching on the streets in protest.
I do not pretend to know what it’s like to be black in America, but I don’t think we’re supposed to. All we have are our own experiences to draw from, times when we can say, “I remember what it was like to feel excluded and disqualified.”
It’s these experiences that hopefully make us more open-hearted to the stories of others.
I also often shy away from talking about race, because it is such a heated topic of discussion and during the few weeks following the death of George Floyd, I felt like I didn’t have anything good to say that would add anything but noise.
But, as the heat has started to settle down and organizations are now putting in the hard work of following through their promises on diversity, I realized I did have things to say.
More on friendship than on race, but also the nuance of how my race influenced the way I made friends.
How, subconsciously, I disqualified myself from certain friendships because of the way I perceived myself – and others.
That instead of it being only the system or the other people that were racist, I too harboured the same sort of thinking.
I’m not saying that systemic injustices don’t exist. They do. But I get overwhelmed when I think about all the policies that should be implemented to right injustice.
All I know is that systemic injustice stems from people:
it’s the personal encounters we’ve had with people of a different race, the stories we’ve been told and the stories we continue to tell ourselves and others that perpetuate or break stereotypes.
So this is my story and why I think friendship is one of the most powerful but overlooked tools to achieve what all these EDI plans are really trying to get at.
I had tried to hide it for as long as possible, and for a few months I succeeded.
Sitting at the far back with my head buried in the thick Biology 11 textbook, I was safe as long as I didn’t talk to anyone.
The minute the bell rang, I hugged the red textbook to my chest and scurried out, keeping my head down as I blended in with the mass of loud high schoolers flooding the hallway.
But then, one morning, I got found out.
“WHAT?! You’re in Grade 9?? You’re like TWO years younger than me! You must be, like, so smart!!” She erupted incredulously.
“Wait, aren’t you in my Grade 11 Strings class? You skipped grades in that too? How is that even possible?”
A small crowd of disbelieving busybodies was now starting to gather around my table.
I had become an artifact of curiosity, the archetype of insane Asian intelligence.
This was what the guidance counsellor had warned Mom and I about.
“I’m afraid the social aspect will be hard for her, even though academically, you’re right, she does belong in Grade 11 Biology,” the counsellor had commented as we poured over the hefty binder of example course material I had done in Singapore.
She peered meaningfully at me over her tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, expecting me to fight for my right to be in Grade 9 Science just like everyone else, but I shrank back in silence instead.
“You should be proud of it!” Nathan exclaimed when he heard of my episode in Biology class, casually taking one last drag on his lollipop before slam-dunking it into the cafeteria trash can.
A piano genius who had somehow navigated the tricky space of being Asian enough to play cards with the F.O.Bs during lunch but also being cool enough to have white friends and call teachers by their last name (What’s up, Pavey!), Nathan had taken it on himself to help me culturally assimilate.
Nathan liked playing up the Asian identity, cracking jokes about how we Asians scored highest on the math competition or how predictable it was that we all played the piano or violin (and if you didn’t, well then you weren’t a real Asian).
I couldn’t decide if I found them funny or not.
What I did know was that I didn’t want to be lumped in the clique on the far left of the cafeteria that spent lunch playing Big Two and shouting across the table in Mandarin.
And that I wanted with all my heart to possess the effortless confidence that came so naturally to the born-and-raised Canadians.
I studied the way they joked offhandedly to the teachers as if they were buddies and bargained (successfully) to not have to complete their passé composé exercises on the weekends.
Or how the girls pulled off the “I woke up like this – flawless” look with their high messy buns and baggy sweatpants stuffed into Ugg boots.
If being not-Asian was cool, I wanted it.
In Grade 10, I finally took a class with the grade I was supposed to be in – Canadian History.
To this day, I’m not sure why Chloe and Steph started talking to me.
Maybe I just happened to be sitting next to them and they were curious to see what kind of prodigy I was. Or maybe they thought they could get high marks on team projects if we were a team. Or maybe they actually liked me.
I’m not quite sure.
Steph was half-Asian and Chloe and her were best friends from going snowboarding all the time together. I knew absolutely nothing about snowboarding, but I tried my best to listen patiently and ask pertinent questions.
I was careful not to say too much, though, because I didn’t want to blow my chances at a first “girlfriend” type relationship, the ones they talk about in the movies.
When they decided I was decently normal (I guess), they invited me to hang out with them at THE MALL.
I remember thinking it was somewhat of a pointless activity – wandering the stores and poking around at articles of clothing I would never buy anyways.
But, I guess the point was to comment on the clothing – what you would never wear in a million years (Aeropostale is just so, young), and what you would die for (you know, like, Abercrombie and Fitch hoodies).
By the time prom rolled around in Grade 12, I felt like I had finally made it.
(I had rid myself of my Singaporean accent, joined enough sports teams to be invited to the Athletic Banquet, and been asked out to prom by a dashing Dutch-Canadian. I was even cool enough to be one of the few Asians at Chloe’s pre-prom bash.)
Except that I hadn’t.
The day of prom, my hair was sprayed into stiff curls, my lipstick two shades of red too deep.
And when I look back on those prom pictures, I’m reminded of the girl I was trying too hard to be.
Apparently, this self-effacing self-consciousness stemming from an Asian background has been labelled the “Bamboo Ceiling” by researchers who study Asians in corporate America.
It refers to “an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership.”
Asians are taught to do their work with diligence, but not how to assert themselves – a skill that is caught (instead of taught) in the gyms and locker rooms of America’s high schools.
An intriguing article in New York Magazine titled, “What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends” writes:
“It’s simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and ‘pumping the iron of math’ is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things.”
So, when asked why it is that Asians represent only 1.5% of corporate officer positions in the Fortune 500 or that white men and women are 154% more likely than Asians to hold an executive role, the answer is more complicated than simply – the system is broken and racist.
The solution more nuanced than simply increase racial quotas of Asians in senior leadership positions.
The stereotype people hold of Asian Americans being high on competence (successful, intelligent) but low on social skill (nerdy, antisocial) exists because it is partly true.
Not that Asians are necessarily smarter, but we were simply subjected to many more extra math tuition classes growing up.
On the other hand, our Caucasian counterparts spent their childhood years playing on little league baseball teams.
But then, the stereotypes are reinforced because we hold them of ourselves and so, act in ways that perpetuate them.
So, while a lot of focus is currently being trained on breaking down the external systemic barriers, I am also curious about the racial stereotypes we ourselves hold.
Not just the negative ones we have of other races, but more so the ones we have of our own.
I know that my negative perception of Asians and the self-consciousness that resulted made me disqualify myself from more opportunities than I should.
I didn’t try out for the tennis or badminton teams in Grade 9 because I convinced my mom that everyone else was so much better in sports than I was, and deep down I was petrified of having to interact with the cool, white kids while half-dressed in the changing rooms.
I didn’t think I had a chance at student council because sure, I could get good grades, but who would actually listen to me?
Probably most unfortunate, I never became good friends with anyone in high school because I didn’t believe I would be interesting enough on my own if I didn’t talk about nails and boys and hang out at the mall looking at Abercrombie and Fitch hoodies.
Maybe nothing would have changed even if I had not let my racial self-consciousness get in the way. Maybe people would still have pigeon-holed me as that brilliant but nerdy immigrant from Singapore.
I guess that’s what racism is – when we pigeon-hole people into narrowly defined stereotypes instead of giving them the chance to prove that they have their own story too.
Also, high school’s just rough.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder how much of it was the system – the white supremacist bias that had heinously seeped into the consciousness of unsuspecting high schoolers – and how much of it was me and my own anti-Asian bias.
When I think about Jesus, I am struck by the way he made friends.
If he was like most of us, his friends would have been mostly Jewish carpenters.
But instead, his best friends were fishermen and tax collectors.
He regularly had dinner with Mary and Martha’s when it wasn’t normal for men and women to hang out. He asked a Samaritan woman for water, and spoke kindly to a woman caught in adultery.
And while we often fast-forward to the cross as the moment that changed the world, I think that when Jesus reached across race and gender barriers in friendship, this was him showing us the secret of kingdom transforming work.
I often forget that race and gender stereotypes are not a thing of our time. They are not new social justice initiatives that our generation has suddenly united to fight against.
In fact, they were a thing in Jesus’ time.
If I can be completely honest, I sometimes get frustrated by the limitations of operating only from one’s narrow cultural/gendered context.
We are expected to read all these books on inclusivity and the BLM movement so that we can operate from a place of “woke-ness” and enlightenment. But I feel unqualified because I haven’t read all these books and I’ve never been black or indigenous or queer and so I’ll never know what that’s like.
And yet, I am encouraged that Jesus could still hold onto his identity as a Jewish male, while reaching across that finite limitation to be a safe, welcoming space for the outcast of that society: a Samaritan woman.
He didn’t feel the need to not be Jewish. Or not be male.
But in his male Jewishness, he could still be friends with that Samaritan woman.
I think: what would it be like if we made friends the way Jesus did?
Not constantly feeling the need to apologize for his own limited gendered, racialized context, and still being a safe space for those who don’t share in it.
Deconstructing traditional societal perceptions (I mean, letting women be the first eyewitnesses to the biggest event in history?!) simply by the people he hung out with.
He was confident about where he had come from (unlike my Grade 9 self :P), but never arrogantly confident to the point of exclusion and supremacy.
I’m not sure how to end this piece.
I feel like I should make some grandiose statement on my conclusions on racism and a list of resources to become more educated.
But that’s not me, and if I don’t have answers, I’m not going to pretend like I do.
But hopefully somewhere in this rant of thoughts on my Asian heritage and how it stymied my ability to make true friends, but then my desire to be like Jesus in how he remained solidly rooted in his culture yet reached across to make unlikely friends, you got something from my tangled and nuanced take on racism, friendship and Jesus.
I guess I’ll end with going back to what I know: how I felt in Grade 9 and the things I would have said to that Grade 9 self.
I think I would have told her that there would come a day when I would learn to more fully embrace my Asianness, with all its idiosyncrasies. I would even move to China and live in a small village where I spoke more Mandarin than English.
I would have told her not to disqualify herself because of how she thought people perceived her.
I would have convinced her to apply for a student council position and to try out for the tennis team that year.
I would have told her that it is a good thing to have friends that look different from her.
Because if anything, this is where change starts – with the children on the playground, in the locker rooms and cafeterias of our high schools and all the spaces where we adults currently make friends.
I don’t know very much, but these are the things I currently do hold to.
