Written by Julie Lee (2023)

A Personal Reflection

I grew up in a medium-sized suburb in Atlanta, Georgia, known as Duluth. To most people’s surprise, Georgia’s top three languages are the following: English, Spanish, and Korean. For a state that has been consistently referred to as one of the racist southern states, we have one of the most diverse populations in the United States. I was always surrounded with people who looked like me, ate like me, and spoke like me. Astonishingly, it wasn’t ever difficult to feel out of place, even within a community that I was supposed to feel safe in. 

There were many moments in which I queried over the essence of my own existence. I would switch back and forth from different mentalities of disliking America because I knew people like me didn’t really belong but I wanted so badly to be considered “normal”. I distinctly remember having to present a poster of pictures that represented ourselves in my 6th grade language arts class. I stood up in front of the entire class with a poster decorated with Korean flags, food, musicians, and declared that I hated America. I received baffled stares, whispers, and smug looks, especially from my teacher who harbored a puzzled look. Understanding the ramifications of what I had just said, I managed to come up with some silly excuse of how I wanted to go back to Korea because I missed my family, hoping to lessen the extremity of my words. In some ways, those words still ring true to this day. 

My parents came to America as immigrants, as have many. Although given the chance to be able to return to Korea and a familiar life, there was an unspoken recognition that the opportunities given to me and my siblings would be much more immense in the States. Unfortunately, with the freedom and diversity of America came a heavy burden of hypocrisy and hardships. The classic, “Where are you from? No really, where are you from?” or “What is that food? That looks disgusting.” were not uncommon occurrences in my life. Being dragged along with other Asian students into an ESOL class, though my English was just as proficient as other Caucasian students, was just another seemingly normal incident in my life. Plenty of Asian Americans grew up thinking these situations were no more than ordinary. 

Then when the pandemic began, all of the orderly structure that America seemingly had shattered. In the past year, over 3,800 anti-Asian hate crimes have been reported, not accounting for the crimes that have yet to be reported. These acts of hate were definitely not normal and we were done serving the model minority myth attached to our identities from a country that only knew to hurt us. 

Being an Asian-American student at a privileged university in a relatively wealthy city has brought its own forms of relief and agitation. Though we are given many opportunities to be able to tackle this problem, we discover the deeper systemic nature of Asian/Asian-American discrimination that has rooted itself into America. The lack of conversation over Asian history as well as the stereotypes that establish our own existences are just a few of the many problems that have revealed themselves. I find myself constantly battling the rage that keeps building inside of me, but instead of making the same mistake I made in my 6th grade class, I’ve learned to take that rage and convert it into something else: strength. 

For a country that was built upon the principles of freedom and equality, there is a lot of hypocrisy that has unraveled the very own roots of America. With the events of the past few years, it’s been a draining sequence of incidents. Distressing conversations are being brought up and as agonizing as it may be to recognize them as real world issues, it is a responsibility upon everybody’s shoulders to drive this momentum. America is going through a change right now and we need to keep fueling this change. Change has not ever been easy and it definitely won’t be immediate, but I’m hopeful that these issues will serve as the catalysts and that we will soon be able to learn peace, in unity.