They like things called monkey bread and have traditions like turkey trots. What is a turkey trot? and do turkeys trot? What's a trot? They love Disney and will spend thousands of dollars on the brand before their kids turn 18. For some reason turning 16 is a big deal and so is spending an absurd amount of money at an end of the year dance at the end of high school. They get super excited about pumpkins; pumpkin pie, pumpkin lattes, pumpkin cookies. They think High School graduations are a big deal and they enjoy wearing ugly sweaters around the holiday season. They have 5 pillows on a twin bed when one only has 1 head. What do you do with all those pillows? and what in the world is a duvet?
As a full Asian (Taiwanese) child growing up in the U.S. I consider myself a third culture kid. (TCK) I'm not fully Asian like my parents are but I'm most definitely not white either. I grew up speaking 2 languages at once and learning both the imperial and metric systems in elementary school. I ate Chinese food for dinner every night but had hamburgers on the weekends. When learning about the civil war in elementary school. I wasn't sure which side I was on; after all, I wasn't black or white. My childhood was a hybrid of Gumby, Hello Kitty, coloring in the lines, and Chinese school. While the household I grew up in remained Asian; all external factors were of the west.
I grew up in a mainly white town but I went to a Chinese church and an almost fully Taiwanese Choir. It wasn't until college that I realized how different I was. It wasn't until then that I experienced blatant racism against Asians. Racism toward Asians is and has always been slightly different than racism toward other minorities. They generally comes as "complements" that surround either mathematic ability or martial arts. In Matthew Salesses' article titled "How the Rules of Racism Are Different For Asian Americans" he mentions that "…racism toward Asians is treated differently in America than racism toward other ethnic groups. This is a truth all Asian Americans know. While the same racist may hold back terms he sees as off-limits toward other minorities, he will often not hesitate to call an Asian person a chink, …or talk about that Asian person as if he must know karate, or call him Bruce Lee…"
To be fair, I was most likely the first Asian American person that these white people at my college had seen in their entire lives. I often found it amusing that the international students would think that I couldn't speak Chinese while the white students thought I couldn't speak English, when in reality I'm fluent in both. It threw off the Chinese students when I would laugh at their jokes from the next table and it threw off the white kids when I'd reply in perfect English. I realize then that I was in an even smaller minority: Asian American.
My 25th birthday was 2 days ago. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it but a friend of mine put together a dinner with a few of our mutual friends. As I get older, I start to appreciate the hybrid nature of my upbringing. My parents did the best with what they had. Having come from an entirely different culture and childhood, they did their best to instill their own values yet let us be white and do things they found completely illogical; like spend $200 on a jr prom dress. And even though they never understood Thanksgiving and always wondered why Chinese New Year wasn't a big deal to us, I know that they came here, almost 30 years ago, with $700 in their pocket, so that my brother and I could live the lives we do now.
And for that, I am thankful.
Even thought I still don't understand what a Turkey Trot is.
