The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2021 33 groups. Fully 23.9 percent of Cambodian Americans live in poverty, and fewer than 15 percent hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. When we came to the United States, my siblings and I did not speak English; but the model minority myth led our educa- tors to believe that we needed fewer academic resources when, in fact, we needed more. A Multifaceted History The history of Asians in America is itself multifaceted. Most of us have learned about the disgraceful ways we Americans treated our Japanese American community during World War II, but not much else. “There are a lot of people who don’t know the history of Asians in America, and that essentially whitewashes our exis- tence from this country,” actor and prominent Asian American rights activist Daniel Dae Kim said in a recent Washington Post Live interview. Kim pointed to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded an entire race from this country until it was officially repealed in 1943. Further, Kim observed, the largest lynching in America, in Los Angeles in 1871, saw 18 Chinese people lynched at the hands of a mob of 500, none of whom served any jail time. More than 100 years later, in 1982, Vincent Chin was murdered. A Chinese man, he was attacked because people thought he was Japanese at a time when the American auto industry was failing; he was scapegoated, and his attackers never served a day of jail time. Growing up as an Asian kid in France had its share of adversity. I was always the only Asian student in school. Des- perately wanting to blend in with the French kids, I refused to speak Khmer to my mom in public and threw out the Cam- bodian food she prepared for me for lunch. When I came to the United States, a 15-year-old girl in high school, I thought I could start fresh in the land of opportunity, the big melting pot where everyone was American, no matter your skin tone. Within a few weeks, I came to realize that people in the U.S. still saw me as “other.” Even worse, I felt like an alien. I could not yet speak English and would never fit in in a school that was predominantly upper middle class and white. With a thick French accent, I didn’t quite fit a high school kid’s stereotype of an Asian foreigner either. Today, most people can’t detect my French accent, unless I tell them where I am from. What they don’t realize is that my high school experience in Minnesota was so traumatic that it pushed me to try my hardest to speak like a white American by watching countless TV shows, mimick- ing the words and sounds of my peers, and reading books any chance I had just to reach a semblance of belonging. Speaking Up As a collective, we Asian Americans need to raise awareness and make our stories and needs visible. It’s about speaking up, whether you are a witness or a victim. It’s about a proactiveness to learn and do better, volunteering, working with or donating to community organizers who have experience in these issues, taking bystander intervention and unconscious bias training courses, writing to your congressional representatives to support legislation that seeks to address this issue, or just having impor- tant race conversations within your personal networks. Stand up and speak out against anti-Asian racism, and be an ally. Remember that racial justice and anti-bias work exist beyond a Black-white binary. Donate to community organiza- tions that strive to make a difference in this field. Reflect on and identify your own biases. Do the uncomfortable work of educating yourselves and having tough conversations. Don’t be silent. n Remember that racial justice and anti-bias work exist beyond a Black-white binary. RESOURCES We Are Not A Stereotype A video series from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Asian/Asian American Children’s Books A collection of titles from Lee and Low publishers that highlights the diversity of Asian and Asian American identities.