WEBVTT

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My name is Canwen, and I play
both the piano and the violin.

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I aspire to some day be a doctor,
and my favorite subject is calculus.

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My mom and dad are tiger parents,

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who won't let me go to sleepovers,

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but they make up for it by serving
my favorite meal every single day.

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Rice.

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And I'm a really bad driver.

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So my question for you now is,

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"How long did it take you
to figure out I was joking?"

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(Laughter)

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As you've probably guessed,
today I am going to talk about race

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and I'll start off
by sharing with you my story

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of growing up Asian-American.

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I moved to the United States
when I was two years old,

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so almost my entire life
has been a blend of two cultures.

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I eat pasta with chopsticks.

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I'm addicted to orange chicken,
and my childhood hero was Yao Ming.

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But having grown up in North Dakota,
South Dakota, and Idaho,

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all states with incredible
little racial diversity,

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it was difficult to reconcile
my so-called exotic Chinese heritage

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with my mainstream American self.

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Used to being the only Asian in the room,

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I was self-conscious at the first thing
people noticed about me

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was, that I wasn't white.

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And as a child I quickly began to realize

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that I had two options in front of me.

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Conformed to the stereotype
that was expected of me,

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or conformed to the whiteness
that surrounded me.

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There was no in between.

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For me, this meant that I always felt
self-conscious about being good at maths,

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because people would just say
it was because I was Asian,

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not because I actually worked hard.

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It meant that whenever
a boy asked me out,

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it was because he had the yellow fever,

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and not because he actually liked me.

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It meant that for the longest time

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my identity had formed
around the fact that I was different.

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And I thought that being Asian
was the only special thing about me.

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These effects were emphasized
by the places where I lived.

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Don't get me wrong.

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Only a small percentage
of people were actually racist,

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or, even borderline racist,

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but the vast majority were
just a little bit clueless.

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Now, I know you are probably thinking,
"What's the difference?"

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Well, here is an example.

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Not racist can sound like,
"I'm white and you're not."

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Racist can sound like,

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"I'm white, you're not,
and that makes me better than you."

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But clueless sounds like,

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"I'm white, you're not,
and I don't know how to deal with that."

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Now, I don't doubt for a second

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that these clueless people
are still nice individuals

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with great intentions.

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But they do ask some questions
that become pretty annoying after a while.

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Here are a few examples.

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"You're Chinese, oh my goodness,
I have a Chinese friend, do you know him?"

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(Laughter)

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"No.

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I don't know him.

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Because contrary 
to your unrealistic expectations,

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I do not know every single one
of the 1.35 billion Chinese people

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who live on Planet Earth."

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People also tend to ask,

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"Where does your name come from?",

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and I really don't know
how to answer that,

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so I usually stick with the truth.

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"My parents gave it to me.

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Where does your name come from?"

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(Laughter)

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Don't even get me started

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on how many times people have confused me
with a different Asian person.

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One time someone came up to me and said,

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"Angie, I love your art work!"

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And I was super confused,

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so I just thanked them and walked away.

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But, out of all the questions

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my favorite one is still the classic,
"Where are you from?",

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because I've lived in quite a few places,

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so this is how 
the conversation usually goes.

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"Where are you from?"

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"Oh, I am from Boise, Idaho."

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"I see, but where are you really from?"

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"I mean, I lived
in South Dakota for a while."

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"Okay, what about before that?"

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"I mean, I lived in North Dakota."

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"Okay, I'm just going to cut
straight to the chase here,

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I guess what I'm saying is,

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have you ever lived anywhere
far away from here,

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where people talk a little differently?"

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"Oh, I know where you talking about,
yes I have, I used to live in Texas."

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(Laughter)

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By then, they usually have just given up
and wonder to themselves

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why I'm not one of the cool Asians
like Jeremy Lin or Jackie Chan,

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or they skip the needless banter
and go straight for the,

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"Where is your family from?"

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So, just an FYI for all of you out there,
that is the safest strategy.

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But, as amusing
as these interactions were,

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oftentimes they made me
want to reject my own culture,

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because I thought it helped me conform.

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I distanced myself
from the Asian stereotype

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as much as possible,
by degrading my own race,

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and pretending I hated math.

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And the worse part was, it worked.

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The more I rejected my Chinese identity,
the more popular I became.

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My peers liked me more,
because I was more similar to them.

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I became more confident,
because I knew I was more similar to them.

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But as I became more Americanized,

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I also began to lose
bits and pieces of myself,

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parts of me that I can never get back,

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and no matter how much I tried to pretend

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that I was the same
as my American classmates,

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I wasn't.

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Because for people who have lived
in the places where I lived,

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white is the norm, and for me,
white became the norm too.

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For my fourteenth birthday,
I received the video game The Sims 3,

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which lets you create your own characters
and control their lives.

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My fourteen-year-old self created
the perfect little mainstream family,

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complete with a huge mansion
and an enormous swimming pool.

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I binge-played the game
for about three months,

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then put it away and never
really thought about it again,

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until a few weeks ago,

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when I came to a sudden realization.

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The family, that I had custom-designed,
was white.

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The character that I had designed
for myself, was white.

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Everyone I had designed was white.

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And the worst part was,

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this was by no means
a conscious decision that I had made.

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Never once did I think to myself

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that I could actually make
the characters look like me.

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Without even thinking,
white had become my norm too.

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The truth is,

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Asian Americans play a strange role
in the American melting pot.

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We are the model minority.

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Society uses our success to pit us
against other people of color

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as justification
that racism doesn't exist.

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But was does that mean
for us, Asian Americans?

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It means that we are not quite
similar enough to be accepted,

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but we aren't different enough
to be loathed.

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We are in a perpetually grey zone,

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and society isn't quite sure
what to do with us.

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So they group us by the color of our skin.

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They tell us that we must reject
our own heritages,

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so we can fit in with the crowd.

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They tell us that our foreignness

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is the only identifying 
characteristic of us.

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They strip away our identities one by one,

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until we are foreign,
but not quite foreign,

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American but not quite American,

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individual,

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but only when there are no other people
from our native country around.

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I wish that I had always had the courage
to speak out about these issues.

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But coming from one culture
that avoids confrontation,

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and another that is divided over race,

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how do I overcome the pressure
to keep the peace,

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while also staying true to who I am?

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And as much as I hate to admit it,
often times I don't speak out,

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because, if I do,

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it's at the the risk of being told
that I am too sensitive,

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or that I get offended too easily,

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or that it's just not worth it.

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But I would point,
are people willing to admit that?

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Yes, race issues are controversial.

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But that's precisely the reason
why we need to talk about them.

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I just turned eighteen,

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and there are still so many things
that I don't know about the world.

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But what I do know
is that it's hard to admit

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that you might be part of the problem,

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that, all of us
might be part of the problem.

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So, instead of giving you
a step-by-step guide

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on how to not be racist towards Asians,

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I will let you decide
what to take from this talk.

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All I can do,

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is share my story.

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My name is Canwen,
my favorite color is purple.

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And I play the piano,
but not so much the violin.

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I have two incredibly supportive,
hardworking parents,

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and one very awesome ten-year-old brother.

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I love calculus more than anything,

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despise eating rice,
and I'm a horrendous driver.

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But most of all,
I am proud of who I am.

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A little bit American,

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a little bit Chinese,

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and a whole lot of both.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)