I am not your Asian stereotype | Canwen Xu | TEDxBoise

Bad driver. Math wizard. Model minority. In this hilarious and insightful talk, eighteen-year-old Canwen Xu shares her Asian-American story of breaking stereotypes, reaffirming stereotypes, and driving competently on her way to buy rice.

Canwen Xu's slogan for life is “Canwen can win.” Born in Nanjing, China, she moved to the United States when she was two years old, and since then has lived in some of the whitest states in the country, including North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho. A senior at Timberline High School, Canwen is passionate about politics, and is the national membership director and Idaho state director for the Young Democrats High School Caucus. Also a programmer, she started an all-girls computer science workshop called Code For Fun and received National Runner-Up in the 2014 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing competition.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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

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

My mom and dad are tiger parents,

who won't let me go to sleepovers,

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

Rice.

And I'm a really bad driver.

So my question for you now is,

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

(Laughter)

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

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

of growing up Asian-American.

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

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

I eat pasta with chopsticks.

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

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

all states with incredible
little racial diversity,

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

with my mainstream American self.

Used to being the only Asian in the room,

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

was, that I wasn't white.

And as a child I quickly began to realize

that I had two options in front of me.

Conformed to the stereotype
that was expected of me,

or conformed to the whiteness
that surrounded me.

There was no in between.

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

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

not because I actually worked hard.

It meant that whenever
a boy asked me out,

it was because he had the yellow fever,

and not because he actually liked me.

It meant that for the longest time

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

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

These effects were emphasized
by the places where I lived.

Don't get me wrong.

Only a small percentage
of people were actually racist,

or, even borderline racist,

but the vast majority were
just a little bit clueless.

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

Well, here is an example.

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

Racist can sound like,

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

But clueless sounds like,

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

Now, I don't doubt for a second

that these clueless people
are still nice individuals

with great intentions.

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

Here are a few examples.

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

(Laughter)

"No.

I don't know him.

Because contrary
to your unrealistic expectations,

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

who live on Planet Earth."

People also tend to ask,

"Where does your name come from?",

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

so I usually stick with the truth.

"My parents gave it to me.

Where does your name come from?"

(Laughter)

Don't even get me started

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

One time someone came up to me and said,

"Angie, I love your art work!"

And I was super confused,

so I just thanked them and walked away.

But, out of all the questions

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

because I've lived in quite a few places,

so this is how
the conversation usually goes.

"Where are you from?"

"Oh, I am from Boise, Idaho."

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

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

"Okay, what about before that?"

"I mean, I lived in North Dakota."

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

I guess what I'm saying is,

have you ever lived anywhere
far away from here,

where people talk a little differently?"

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

(Laughter)

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

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

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

"Where is your family from?"

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

But, as amusing
as these interactions were,

oftentimes they made me
want to reject my own culture,

because I thought it helped me conform.

I distanced myself
from the Asian stereotype

as much as possible,
by degrading my own race,

and pretending I hated math.

And the worse part was, it worked.

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

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

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

But as I became more Americanized,

I also began to lose
bits and pieces of myself,

parts of me that I can never get back,

and no matter how much I tried to pretend

that I was the same
as my American classmates,

I wasn't.

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

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

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

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

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

complete with a huge mansion
and an enormous swimming pool.

I binge-played the game
for about three months,

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

until a few weeks ago,

when I came to a sudden realization.

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

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

Everyone I had designed was white.

And the worst part was,

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

Never once did I think to myself

that I could actually make
the characters look like me.

Without even thinking,
white had become my norm too.

The truth is,

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

We are the model minority.

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

as justification
that racism doesn't exist.

But was does that mean
for us, Asian Americans?

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

but we aren't different enough
to be loathed.

We are in a perpetually grey zone,

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

So they group us by the color of our skin.

They tell us that we must reject
our own heritages,

so we can fit in with the crowd.

They tell us that our foreignness

is the only identifying
characteristic of us.

They strip away our identities one by one,

until we are foreign,
but not quite foreign,

American but not quite American,

individual,

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

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

But coming from one culture
that avoids confrontation,

and another that is divided over race,

how do I overcome the pressure
to keep the peace,

while also staying true to who I am?

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

because, if I do,

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

or that I get offended too easily,

or that it's just not worth it.

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

Yes, race issues are controversial.

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

I just turned eighteen,

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

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

that you might be part of the problem,

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

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

on how to not be racist towards Asians,

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

All I can do,

is share my story.

My name is Canwen,
my favorite color is purple.

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

I have two incredibly supportive,
hardworking parents,

and one very awesome ten-year-old brother.

I love calculus more than anything,

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

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

A little bit American,

a little bit Chinese,

and a whole lot of both.

Thank you.

(Applause)