My Asian Privilege

Photo by munshots on Unsplash

March 2021 Update: In the wake of the Asian American hate crimes, I wrote a partner piece to this article: My Heartache as a Model Minority: an Asian Female in San Francisco

I am a racist. I grew up in a racist culture and I am actively working on becoming an anti-racist. For most of my life, as a female I’ve been aware of sexism and I am an active feminist. Yet as an Asian, I’ve been lucky to not experience much racism towards me, while unthinkingly exhibiting racism towards others. Writing this is uncomfortable. I’m worried that I might offend or say the wrong thing. And this is better than silence.

I am an immigrant. I grew up all over the world, often as an “other,” not from the color of my skin or my gender, but from a sense of not truly belonging here. I’ve lived in Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong, where my race has been that of the majority. I’ve lived in the Netherlands and England where my race is the distinct minority, and I have little to no racial memories of those years. I currently live in San Francisco. Most of my working experience has been in California and in Silicon Valley, where Asians are as prevalent as white and are considered part of the majority. Yes, I’ve experienced some rare racism in the form of hurled insults from passersby, or a tokenism when I visited my white boyfriend’s tiny town in western Colorado and I was the first Asian that some had ever seen. But throughout my life, I’ve experienced far more sexism than any form of racism. I’ve been privileged.

Growing up in Bangkok within the culture of my upper middle class family, racism towards others is a casual fact of life. White supremacy is dominant, and I grew up within this commonly accepted cultural understanding of the hierarchy of races:

1. White is best. Western is best.
2. East Asian is good. We are Asian, and here’s where we fit.
3. Brown is not-so-good. We are better than Indians, Muslims, Mexicans (the blanket term used for anyone Latinx).
4. Black is at the bottom.

I was privileged to attend Stanford University. My parents were horrified that I was dating a white man, because he was non-Asian. Yet they accepted it because white is best. Tiger Woods, already a celebrity, attended Stanford at the same time. He is half Thai and half…