You Are Not Better Than Me, But You Have Bettered Me
This morning, I watched a video produced by HuffingtonPost featuring Kevin Kreider, an adopted Korean-American, and his experience growing up. Here is the video, and my response to it. I originally only posted it on my Facebook, but decided it was important I start sharing my voice beyond my Facebook friend group. If my thoughts and experience can help others feel less alone, and more empowered, then I have a responsibility to share it with a wider audience.
This was exactly the experience I had growing up except as a girl, so I also got comments like:
You’re pretty for an Asian I guess
I’d sleep with you if I went Asian
You have big boobs for an Asian
Me love you long time
Do you like cream of some young guy
Is it true…that Asian pussies are smaller because Asian penises are
Like Kevin Kreider here, I had so many identity issues and self-hatred and insecurities. I was told there were things wrong with me and that I was inferior most of my life growing up by the people around me, including random white strangers at the mall. Sometimes they were adult men, who’d make references to their time serving in Vietnam or Korea and “killing my kind,” while looking at me and licking their lips, when I was still a child. I spent a lot of time wishing I was white, wishing I was anyone else but myself, and thinking if I could just get another chance in another body that wasn’t mine. I thought about disappearing. But my sense of responsibility and family honor kept me from harming myself seriously. Certain friendships saved me. People who saw me for me, as a whole human being with complicated thoughts and feelings of my own.
But the micro aggressions and racist taunts I endured so much of my life, while giving me a form of PTSD, have also helped me become an even more empathetic and compassionate person who will stand up for all marginalized people suffering from others’ hatred and small-mindedness.
It’s also shaped me into a more committed and passionate person who is going to live my best life with no apologies! Fuck it! Yes, I will be fabulous, yes, I will love myself, yes I will shine! We all deserve happiness and comfort in our own skin. For every person who called me a chink or gook, or shouted Ching Chong Chong at me, or pulled at their eyelids while chanting racial epithets, asked me about my private parts, asked how I was so good at English (yes I will use my immense vocabulary because I adore language arts), my continued enjoyment of life and success was due in part to you. The wounds and cuts you inflicted upon my soul have scarred me but also made me stronger. I will no longer shrink to make you comfortable with my presence. Instead I am building a foundation, a platform, and will lift up others who need to also step into the light. You are not better than me, the jig is up. But you have bettered me with your sharp words and actions and honed me into a warrior for equality.
