Because of My Race
Author’s Note: This was written and orally delivered for the annual Reeve’s Speaking Contest at The Peddie School in 2020. The speech won runner-up and explores themes regarding my identity crisis with race and ethnicity.
Because of my race, I am yellow-skinned.
Because of my race, I have small eyes.
Because of my race, I am good at math.
Because of my race, I do not understand English.
Because of my race, I eat dogs.
Because of my race, I am not truly American.
Because of my race.
MLK once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” We have yet to approach that goal. As a kid, when adults tried to get to know me, they said, “Hi! Where are you from?” instead of, “Hi! What’s your favorite color?” It was then that my seven-year-old mind comprehended that I was treated differently because of what I look like. I wanted to tell people that my favorite color was green and not that I live in Shanghai but I’m American and Taiwanese but I’m ethnically Chinese. When people heard that, they would ask, “Where’s Shanghai?”, “How do you like America?”, “How can you be from three different places?”, “How are you American?” or classically, “How is your English so good?” I’ve also had my fair share of “So, where are you actually from?”’s. I felt like I was shoved into the spotlight and I had to deliver the information that these people wanted. These people already had an assumption about who I was: a smart, asian kid with a thick accent. I didn’t blame them for their curiosity, it just pestered me that I had to explain my entire family history for someone to understand “where I’m from '' when others get by saying that they were from one specific town. Because of this early on exposure to stereotypes and prejudice, I’ve been inflicted with questions about my own identity.
As time passed, I became more keen to answer the question “where am I from?”. I had lineage all over the world. My great, great grandmother was dutch. Apparently. My guess is that my family just wanted to be associated with white people. Well, that was until a couple of years ago when I took the 23 and Me DNA test and found out I was 95% Chinese. And the rest of the blood was Asian with maybe a bit of caucasian. In Fifth Grade, I told this Dutch girl that I was 1% Dutch. She didn’t know what to say when she looked directly at an Asian girl. Another contributing factor to my identity turbulence was that I looked half white in elementary school. The local Chinese people would look at me and assume I had a white father, always asking “你從哪裏來？”, Chinese for where are you from. When I told them I was from Shanghai and that my parents were both asian, they were bewildered. Some people thought I was adopted or my mother remarried an asian man. These Chinese people didn’t accept me as I was because they assumed I was foreign, but according to my DNA test, I’m 95% Chinese. In my so-called “motherland”, I was an outsider. These small incidents built up and perplexed me even further.
One summer, a group of obnoxious Shanghainese tourists sent their kids to the same golf camp I always went to. The girl my age wore Gucci head to toe with sunglasses that covered half of her pale face and complained every second about how she was too hot or too tired. I don’t hate people often but I despised her. The other campers associated me with those Shanghainese because I also lived there. They assumed that all people who lived in China were like that. If one person was rude, maybe their entire country of 1.5 billion people were also rude. It was unfair. I did not want people to correlate me with those rude Shanghainese. So I started telling people, “I live in Shanghai, but I’m actually not from there.” They’d go “so where were you born?” I’d reply with, “Shanghai.” “Did you move out of Shanghai?” “No.” “So you are Chinese?” “Ethnically. But I’m American and Taiwanese.” “Taiwanese?” “My great grandparents immigrated to Taiwan. I’m also less than 1% Dutch.” The conversations would be a perpetual spiral down a pathway to find my identity. To be frank, I still don’t know where I’m from but I have three cultures I affiliate myself with.
Hello everyone, I am Zoe Chao. I am a sister, I am a daughter, I am a friend, I am an athlete, I am an actress, I am a writer, I am Buddhist. I am Chinese, I am Taiwanese, I am American. Yes, I am Asian, but that doesn’t mean anything. I am blessed to celebrate Chinese New Year, Thanksgiving and Taiwanese Father’s Day all in one year.
When Asians first immigrated to the US a century ago, Americans thought of them as disease-infected pests who were illiterate, in other words, “mongoloids”. Many white people believed they were superior to these new immigrants, yet still advertised America’s best trait as the Melting Pot. Now, Asian stereotypes have developed to the “model minority”. Studies have shown that many infamous universities like Harvard give lower personal rankings to Asian applicants because of the stereotypical smart asian. I have a smaller chance of getting into college just because of the color of my skin. In an episode of Family Guy, Peter was reminiscing about a math test. While other students pulled out their calculators, Peter pulled out an Asian child and proceeded to say, “C’mon do math!” Though this may seem funny at first, this is an example of how Asians are dehumanized in the American Culture. Family Guy portrays Asians as some sort of robot, a calculator that can talk. We have to stop defining people by stereotypes. I may not know where I am truly from but I do know that I cannot be defined by the color of my skin or the size of my eyes.
Because of her race, she couldn’t sit at the front of the bus.
Because of his race, he was called a terrorist.
Because of her race, she couldn’t go to school.
Because of his race, he didn’t get accepted to college.
We can reach Dr. King’s dream. Take a look around the room. Every person has something different to offer, and race has nothing to do with it. Each and every one of you is unique, beautiful, and truly one in 7.8 billion. One of you might become a future leader of the world or a famous athlete, one of you might become a successful business woman or a software engineer. It doesn’t matter what race you are, but who you are and who you want to be.
I am asking you to treat me the same, as you would everyone else. To refrain from assuming my personality based on the color of my skin. I might not know where I am truly from, but I know that I am me. Even though voices have been nagging at me my entire life, that still cannot prevent me from being my authentic self. It doesn’t matter what nationality, ethnicity, or race you are, because you are you and nothing can change that.
