I came to America in 1962 as a bride, having married an American I had met at New Asia College in Hong Kong. My knowledge about American society was miserably thin and vague, but I did hear bits and pieces about racial prejudice in the South against its Black citizens, who were not allowed to mix with its White citizens. On the bus, the Whites sat in the front, the non-Whites in the back. Because I, as a Chinese, was considered “colored,” I would have had to be seated separately from my White husband. I thought then, since my husband and I were not going to live in the South, that that would not be a problem for me. But after living in New York for a few months, I was called “Madame Butterfly” at a dinner table by the frowning grandmother of my husband’s college friend. I pretended not to hear her.
That was 59 years ago. Since then, my Asian appearance has attracted unwelcome attention, even living far away from the American South. For more than half a century, I have lived in an affluent town in New Jersey, in a Victorian house with a garden and yard which slopes down to the street. After we moved in, the house was egged and racial epithets scrawled on the sidewalk. A store clerk referred to me as “you people.” Once when I gardened near the street, White youths in a car yelled at me to go back to where I came from as they drove by. Twice I have been accosted in parking lots by young Whites screaming racial obscenities. As a result, I learned to wear a big floppy hat and large sunglasses to cover my face whenever I leave home or garden. Another time when I was out without my hat in front of my home chatting with an African-American landscaper, a car screeched to a stop, and a White woman ran up to us and said that she wanted to hire us to work in her garden. After learning that I was the home’s owner, she concluded that I must be a Republican and asked me to join her to work for her candidate. When I told my White American friends that my children were being bullied in school for being half Chinese, I received a reply neither of outrage nor indignation, only a dismissive excuses that “children are mean sometimes.”
For decades I treated these events as one would the annoying flies and mosquitoes of daily life. But for the past four years, during Trump’s presidency, I experienced increased rejection, rudeness, and the feeling that I was being viewed as an alien in my own country. Simply cashing a check became an unpleasant experience at the bank where I had done business for decades. I was made to stand for twenty minutes after I gave the cashier all the documents he asked for, including my bank card, check book, and driver’s license. They were apparently not enough, as the cashier checked and double-checked the computer screen that clearly showed that my accounts more than covered the withdrawal. As he continued to scrutinize, I asked if there was something wrong, but he did not answer; instead, he called for the bank’s manager, who came out, looked me over, then peered at the screen with the cashier. I waited, puzzled, feeling that I was being singled out. After they finally gave me my cash, I asked the manager why I was being so rudely treated. He replied that it was for my benefit, since there were so many clever crooks these days. So, I was left to conclude that my Chinese face must have been the reason I looked so clever. More recently, a sheet of paper covered with handwritten, childish gibes was dropped through my mail slot. I was quite shaken by the personal invasion, and even though it turned out that it was a prank by local children, the awful feeling of having been targeted has not left me, particularly since I have been targeted before.
Having lived in America for six decades as a legal citizen, I now feel as foreign as when I first came to this country. I had learned to keep my silence, but reading about the recent anti-Asian violence that I believe can be traced back to the words of former President Trump, I want to add my voice against those attacks and the prejudice that underlies them. I want my fellow Americans to hear our anguish, with empathy and without minimization. It was heartening for me recently to hear the outrage and anger from my friends when I told them about the paper through my mail slot and how it had shaken me. Nevertheless, for the first time since I can remember, I have been asking myself whether I am still an alien in a foreign land, rooted precariously in thin soil, subject to exclusion or even physical harm by the cruel wind of discrimination. I know, though, that I am just one of millions of Asian-Americans who believe that our beloved America is our home, a country to which we belong and fiercely love.
