This Asian Face.

This face is an Asian face. It is an Asian American face. It is a Korean face. It is a Korean American face.

This face has been mistaken for Chinese. For Japanese. For Thai. For Italian 🤷🏻‍♀️

This face to its face has been told that I couldn’t possibly be Korean because Korean was not a thing. I could only be Chinese or Japanese because those according to him (this little white boy third grader in suburban Detroit), those were the only two “types” of Asian that existed.

I replied defiantly with a retort as convincingly as possible. Well, I am. I am Korean. Korean. My parents are from Korea.

It was a moment, one that persists in different forms, where one person’s ignorance negates another person’s existence, identity. In that one short encounter, I had to fight to prove my existence, an existence that was beyond this other human’s realm of knowledge (I can’t necessarily fault the boy. It was the 70s and it was suburban white America). I am a big fan of “when you know better, do better” and will happily presume this boy, now a grown ass man in his 50’s, is doing better. In fact, I’d bet a large sum of money that he’s eaten Korean food many times. Ok fine. Once. At least once.

From that moment I learned that I couldn’t just “be”. But that I had to “be something” that made sense to someone else. In the way that they saw it. The way that they understood it. Understood me. By looking at my face.

The body attached to this face has been followed, cat called with variations of “my China doll”, has been the unwilling observer of a man’s hard cock pulled out of his pants standing in front of me in an empty subway car on a Sunday morning.

Though I cannot say all of these (the second one for sure) and all of the other stares, low mumblings of shy yet horny men walking by are solely because of my face. But I do know that it’s a big part of the equation.

This face. This Asian face.

Asian faces are in increasing danger. Having an Asian face is more risky.

Why? Because through someone else’s understanding, Asian faces and Asian bodies are perceived as a threat. As a target. As a way to express some agency in a world turned upside down. Where people are looking for someone to blame because everything feels so fucking crappy. A way to express deep anger and fury because the ability to recognize and accept and deal with the full experience of being human has been lost. Fuses are short. Emotional fortitude is scant. Anger is scary. Someone is to blame.

How did we get to a place where punching and kicking a little old lady is even on the list of “ok I am just gonna do this now”?

Nowadays, in this [ fill in adjective of your choice here ] time of COVID, most of us are wearing masks. Which means most of our faces are covered. Which then means the attention to detail to seek out Asian eyes is deliberate. And requires a lot of effort.

These Asian eyes.

When I was in elementary school probably around the age of 10 or 11, I was bereft with the heaviness of a clear sense of otherness. An otherness defined irrefutably by my Asian face. At school. Around town. Nearly everywhere.

One afternoon I sat on the floor where I could see myself in the lower part of a mirror on the wall. In my head, I asked myself “how do they know?” over and over and over. How do they know by just looking at me that I am Asian, that I am different? And I stared. At my face. For a long time. Just stared and stared.

This sounds like an impossibility. How could I actually not know?

I mean I knew. But I didn’t know what specific part of my face was the tell. Again, I know. It seems absurd. But I’d never looked at my face that way because it was just my face. So I stared. Trying to decipher what single part of it signaled instantaneously to everyone around that I was different and therefore less worthy of acceptance and more worthy of ridicule.

Then I broke my stare and started scanning. Section by section. Forehead? Looks like everyone else’s forehead. Chin? Lips? Cheeks? Nose?

Eyes?

The most poignant part of this story is this. When I looked at my eyes, at this young age when the warm innocence of youth starts to struggle against the harsher reality of adolescence, I looked deep into my dark brow irises and the hardly perceptible black of my pupils.

And I didn’t see a difference. I saw two eyes just like everyone else I knew.

These Asian eyes.

That experience left me confused. And even sadder than when I started because through my own perception, my own understanding I couldn’t see a difference and the weight of the difference that someone else was seeing became so much heavier. And it was something I would have to simply bear.

And I have carried this weight with me my entire life. In every moment wondering how my being different would be measured, how it may be used in a way that would make me feel uncomfortable or threatened and how I might need to protect myself from it. Even more so around men.

Delaina Ashley Yaun
Hyun Jung Grant
Daoyou Feng
Suncha Kim
Soon Chung Park
Xiaojie Tan
Yong Ae Yue

I know now the difference. About my eyes. What they signal and the reactions they cause. And in the nanosecond when I know something is stirring, I brace myself.

It nauseating to think that I have been “lucky” to have not experienced aggressive physical violence. But I know its roots. It’s bullshit to call it luck.

Vincent Chin.

These attacks are deliberate. They are despicable. And, the aggressors, nay, predators of these gut wrenching attacks on Asian Americans look deliberately for Asian eyes.

These Asian eyes.

#stopasianhate #asianamerican #koreanamerican