The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2021

32 JULY-AUGUST 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The recent wave of violence against Asian Americans is a painful reminder that although we have been citizens for generations, and have made countless sacrifices for and contri- butions to America, we still face discrimination and the need to prove our loyalty over and over. This is the case whether we work for the public sector or the private sector or are independent businesspeople. As an Asian American officer, I can no longer remain silent, pretending to be invisible, a prisoner of the “model minority” myth that has done such great disservice to the Asian American community. My First Overseas Tour During my first overseas tour, my husband and I attended a welcome reception for newcomers at our ambassador’s resi- dence. As we chatted with a white senior-level military officer assigned to our U.S Mission to NATO and his wife, the much- dreaded “where are you from” question came up. Since we were in a room full of Americans, I answered that I was fromMinne- sota. The military officer pressed, asking where I was really from. I quickly understood that he was only interested in my ethnic background, so instead of telling him that I was born and raised in France, I said “Cambodian.” He nodded and stated: “That’s what I thought, because you have really strong features.” I must have made a face at the comment because his wife jumped in to clarify that her husband really meant that I was “really beautiful as an Asian woman.” I again winced at the comment, but decided to drop it because the couple was from an older generation, though I recognized at the time that their attitude was still unacceptable. The military officer proceeded to ask me what I did for a living. When I explained where I worked, he did not seem to understand. “Doesn’t that job require that you have a security clearance?” he asked. “Yes, it does,” I replied promptly. He then turned to my white American spouse, asking where he worked. When my husband noted that he was still exploring job opportunities, the military man was shocked: He could not process this information. Asian Americans are exhausted and frustrated by these types of interactions. The Model Minority Myth The Asian American community is often treated as a mono- lith that is either invisible or seen as “the model minority”— smart, quiet, family-oriented folks who keep their heads down and work hard. In reality, Asian Americans are extremely diverse—coming from different backgrounds, cultures, languages and socioeco- nomic classes. In the case of my family, for example, both of my parents were refugees from Cambodia who separately survived the ruthless Khmer Rouge Communist regime from 1975 to 1979. My mother gave birth to her first child (my brother) in a Khmer Rouge labor camp, witnessed her first husband being taken away in the middle of the night to be executed, lost her youngest sister to disease and starvation, and was then separated from the rest of her family when she had an opportunity to flee to France, where she met my father and had me and my sisters. When my mother eventually left for France with her 6-year- old son, she sold the few belongings she managed to hold on to to smugglers who helped her make an escape to a Thai refugee camp. By the time she and my brother arrived in France, she had only the clothes on her back. My father had had his own per- sonal struggles, fighting the Khmer Rouge from a hideout in the Cambodian mountains with no choice but to abandon his first wife and kids in a small village in the countryside. After years of economic and social hardship while trying to acclimate to a new language, people and culture in France, my parents had a second opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their children when my aunt sponsored us to the United States in late 1997 to be reunited with the rest of my mother’s family. I highlight the Cambodian story because this community has suffered unspeakable psychological trauma. Yet its struggles are completely overlooked because, among other things, the “model minority” myth about Asians erases critical differences among the various Asian groups. Today, Cambodian Americans rank among America’s poorest, with some of the lowest educational attainment rates when compared with other racial and ethnic The Asian American community is often treated as a monolith that is either invisible or seen as “the model minority.”