GUEST COLUMNIST: The 'double consciousness' of Asian Americans

Won, a friend of mine from high school, shares with me the dream of becoming a writer. During the many English classes we went through together, we saw that every great writer has a theme, a central subject around which he builds his oeuvre of work. For Stephen Crane, it's the constant striving toward pure, unadulterated reality. For Norman Mailer, it's something called American Male Animism. And for a guy like Dr. Seuss, well, I guess you'd say it's just having fun. Being aspiring writers, we couldn't help but speculate one night on what ideas we would attack and develop in our future books. While I sat thinking, Won paused for only a moment and said, "I want to write not about being Asian, but looking Asian." Although she went on to illuminate what that theme meant, she didn't need to. I immediately knew what she was talking about. Being an Asian person in America, you get the idea that there's certain baggage that comes with your black hair, yellow skin and epicanthul folds. At home, my parents always told me that despite my accent, my education and my accomplishments, I could never cover up my face. To everybody else around me, I was different and I had to work even harder to get around that. Growing up as the only Asian in my kindergarten class, the only Asian on my wrestling team and one of two at my prom picture party, that lesson became reinforced. In a predominantly white community, there were times when I was on the lookout for even the slightest instance of prejudice; I was hunting for it. It became so crazy sometimes that I could have sworn that I was treated differently at the corner pizza parlor than the Caucasian kid in the varsity jacket. Reading W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, I learned that DuBois' central theme was that the black people of his time were plagued by a "double consciousness," the mentality that they were only as good as the white man said they were, that they saw themselves through the eyes of the white population. I flinched when I read this. Could this idea be applied to Won's theme of looking Asian? For a moment, I thought I could legitimize my feelings through the words of a renowned academic. But a few minutes of thought shook the luster off that idea. The Asian-American community at the turn of this century is not the African-American population at the turn of the last. We are not a people only a few decades removed from slavery, mired in economic disaster, deprived of education and living under the scepter of a racism that was as real as it was bloody. In fact, we are quite the opposite. Asian Americans are atop or near the top of almost every indicator of economic and social well-being, from average annual income to Internet access penetration. Our kids are well-represented, even over-represented, at top colleges. And if there is a pervading stereotype of us, it is that we are a hardworking people, the epitome of the American work ethic. This has led me to reconsider the lessons my family has taught me all of these years. Although all of the signs point to it, do I dare say that the only disadvantages Asian Americans face are those they place on themselves? Is it safe for me to say that all of the askance looks I've received, all of those supposed episodes of prejudice, were a result not of a DuBoisian "double consciousness" but of a hypersensitive self-consciousness? Is it too soon, too dangerous for Asian Americans to let go of that security blanket of insecurity that has, perhaps, driven our people to fight for and obtain equality? I'm only 19, I've lived in the suburbs all of my life and I go to a college where the hangouts are Xando and Steve Madden. I haven't seen the world like Dr. DuBois did. I can't answer those questions for my entire ethnicity. But I can for myself. So I have decided to work with a clean slate. I've thrown away the baggage that supposedly comes with Asian-American territory. On that rainy night with Won, sitting over mugs of hot chocolate slowly turning cold, I never came up with my signature literary theme. I was too intrigued by Won's idea of looking Asian to ever think of one. But now, four years later, I may have found mine. It's called being American.

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