My racial awakening has been marked by the moment I began understanding Spanish. My parents are Korean, but I was born and raised in Argentina. Although I knew from a very young age that I looked different from the majority, this did not mean much to me until I heard the words “Go back to your country,” to which, to this day, I keep wondering where it is that I am supposed to go back to. 

Since then, being Asian meant, to me, “to not belong.” I responded to this sentiment with vigorous  efforts to prove otherwise by trying to assimilate with all my might throughout my childhood years. In a country where the main racial tensions occur between the “light-skinned” or “European-descendant” and the “darker-skinned,”  it was unclear to me where my racial identity fell in the middle of that tension. 

I thought Asianness was something that could be “cancelled” from one’s identity if enough effort was invested into it, just as a young person can try to act older by dressing a certain way, using certain words, and going to certain places. There are plenty of memories that come to mind as I look back to my childhood and recall moments of what Cathy Park Hong calls “racial self-hate.” In her book Minor Feelings, she defines this word as "seeing yourself the way whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy. Your only defense is to be hard on yourself, which becomes compulsive, and therefore a comfort, to peck yourself to death" (p.9).  

“Seeing myself the way whites see (me)” would look something like asking for a fork instead of chopsticks. My dad never forced  us to learn since he had not mastered the use of chopsticks either. But I was proud of being an Asian who did not know how to hold a niguiri with two sticks and poked fish with a fork instead. I would also wish there were no other Asians at the restaurant I was eating at. I would not speak in Korean to my family in front of my friends. I refused to take Korean snacks to school, instead I wanted Oreos and potato chips. I wished  Koreans spoke in a “lower” voice so we could go unnoticed in public spaces. I was embarrassed of Korean friends who spoke up against racism and pinned them as “too sensitive.” I felt  a sense of relief that my official legal name was not a Korean name, as it was for some of my friends. My racial hatred did not allow me to see the richness of my Korean heritage. Instead, I continued insisting I was strictly Argentinean and dissociated being Korean from my identity as much as I could. I remember the relief and the acceptance I felt when my White friends would reassure me by saying “You are not Korean, you are Argentinian because you were born here and you speak Castellano fluently.” My efforts to invalidate my heritage were validated by how “whites saw me”; they saw me as one of them - as an honorary White person. 

There are many dangers to being inadvertently and subtly hurt by one's own racial identity. As I realized later throughout my young adult life, I had started to see life in binaries - always asserting that there was a right and a wrong way of being. It started with the idea that it was okay to be White and somehow not okay (or maybe not enough) to be anything else, specifically Asian. I became compulsively hard on myself about things that were not related with my race, putting on myself unrealistic standards of how I should be. But the most dangerous of all, has been developing racial colorblindness (or a desire to be colorblind). I had to be colorblind or else painfully see how my family and others I love suffered mockery, overt or subtle  expressions of racism, and discrimination for being who they are. At the time, it seemed easier to choose to believe that if someone disrespected you, it was not because of your race but something else that could be changed. In a world in which every system is dominated by White people, White culture, White values, seeing color and the everyday injustices seemed all too overwhelming. 

It was not until I came to the United States that my perspectives on my racial-self began to shift. I was no longer a minority that stood out, there were in fact so many different people from so many different backgrounds in Boston. Koreans worked various professions representing a diverse range of industries. Some of my friends’ grandparents spoke English fluently and had been active members of their communities. People did not stare at me as I lived my everyday life, did not stare at my Korean friends, or at my grandparents who were gathered at a McDonalds in Flushing, Queens conversing in Korean and laughing like they were the only ones around. These everyday experiences brought me some comfort and lifted some of the weight I had felt on my shoulders trying to prove to others “how Argentinean I was” and how “not Korean” I was.

Once in Boston, I learned the word “Asian-American” and “Korean-American,” so I started identifying as such. But many of my friends said I was “Korean-Argentinean.” When I first heard that, I wondered what that meant to me and my identity. Did it simply mean I was both? Could it mean in any way that I was more of one than the other? Why did “Korean” precede “Argentinean”? Would people outside of my Asian community see me or treat me differently, or would I be considered an “Asian-American” by default? Was the fact that I grew up in Argentina relevant enough outside of being different and “interesting” or “unique”? I wondered, if people knew I was from Argentina, would they refrain from yelling “Go back to your country” at me, just like a White man did to a Chinese-American woman in NYC’s Chinatown? Or, would my  “Argentineanness” save me from being kicked out from a flight, like it happened to David Dao in the United Express Flight 3411? It struck me to think that no matter where I went, finding the right label to identify myself was a very important task, not for myself, but for how society would perceive me and hence, treat me. And by society, I mean the system. And by system, I mean the system created by White people. 

At the end of the day, no matter what I identified myself as, I was Asian and that is all the system could see and judge me by. I remember reading Joy Kogawa’s Obasan in high school. This novel tells the experiences of Japanese citizens living in Canada who were targeted for hate crimes during World War II. The main character in the story expresses her frustration: even though both Japanese and German communities were considered war enemies, only Japanese people were discriminated against. She came to the conclusion that it was because Germans could pass as Canadians, but the Japanese looked different. And that is exactly how I felt: I looked Asian and therefore that was how I’d be seen by the system and people; and whether I was from Argentina, from Korea, or from wherever else in the world-none of my self-identifying nationalities would allow me to escape from the biases that came with it. 

There are preconceived notions and biases against Asians and those narratives have been written by a White system but held by Whites and non-Whites alike. Not only did I see myself the way Whites saw me, but I also saw OTHERS the way Whites saw them. I was able to begin a journey of racial reckoning, but I did not realize the other part of the work that had to be done within me which was to dismantle biases I had held against other people of color. I learned about the death of Latasha Harris during a screening of a documentary about the L.A. Riots. Soonja Du, a Korean woman, owner of a small business had fatally shot Latasha Harlins as she had wrongfully accused her of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice from her store. 

The hierarchy and power relations existing in our society are primarily based on race, and it does not only involve Whites and Blacks. Part of my racial reckoning has been unpacking my own biases towards other people of color. Growing up, I have experienced discrimination and have witnessed how other members of my community have been attacked and treated unfairly. But as Soonja Du’s acquittal showed, the Asian narrative of docility meant that I did not live in fear of my livelihood, even if I took someone else’s. If I accepted how  Whites viewed Asians (for example, the model minority myth), I would also be accepting a view of Black people and other people of color the way Whites viewed them. 

As Black bodies continue to experience violence since Harlins’ death, becoming an ally to fight against racist policies that propagate systematic oppression of people of color is an essential part of my not-yet-finished racial reckoning. As I battle to deconstruct the way I have learned to see myself (from the perspectives of White people), I realize that I must simultaneously learn to deconstruct how I have learned to  see others dictated by White culture (particularly those whose voices have been silenced) by dismantling unjust, hierarchical, and oppressive narratives. 

Paola identifies as Korean-Argentinean. She was born and raised in Buenos Aires. She has lived in Boston, New York City, and is now teaching in an elementary school in Los Angeles. She believes in the importance of thinking and having constructive conversations that help dismantle prejudices based on race and gender. She is learning how to properly use chopsticks.