Hiding Heritage: The Fading Asian American Identity

 

Hiding Heritage: 

The Fading Asian American Identity

By Audrey Sears

JRN 100 News Reporter

 

When Filipina American Kristine Din attended an all-girls’ Catholic high school in Connecticut, she bore the brunt of comments and jokes from her peers for years. 

 

Bringing a traditional Filipino dish for lunch one day, Din faced judgement for her heritage in the white-dominated school.

 

“There was this one time I was eating pancit, and this girl said it looked like I was eating worms. At 15 years old, I didn’t even get angry, just confused. I kept thinking, ‘Well, what do your noodles look like?’” said Din. 

 

Din’s experience is not uncommon. Many Asian Americans report facing hostility and anti-racial comments on a daily basis, according to a 2016 article in the Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology Journal. 

 

To cope with or mitigate confrontations about their heritage, many have turned to hiding their culture and traditions, as stated in the 2023 Pew Research Center study on Asian adults in the United States. 

 

The study found that one in five Asian Americans have hidden parts of their heritage from non-Asians. Of that demographic, 38% were second generation immigrants, or U.S.-born children of Asian immigrants, which can be seen in the visual graph provided by the study.

 

Afraid of being judged by others, many Asian Americans hide the food they eat, clothing, or religious traditions, according to the study. Many even reported refraining from speaking their native languages in public or avoiding speaking entirely to hide their accents. 

 

“Although the stereotypes of Asians may have changed over the years, the prejudice and attitude that Asians will always be the ‘other’ or ‘foreigners’ has remained the same,” said Din, who is now the director of Intercultural Affairs at Stonehill College. 

 

Historically, Asian Americans have faced anti-Asian racism through changing stereotypes and current events. Dr. Stanley Thangaraj, an anthropology professor at Stonehill College and director of the campus’ Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice, is an expert on the ever-changing yet continuous attitude of pop-culture on the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) demographic. 

 

“In 1882, the establishment of the Chinese Exclusion Act, that meant Japanese and other Filipinx communities and other immigrants coming from Asia were trying to say they weren’t Chinese,” said Dr. Thangaraj. “Then, in 1942, with Executive Order 9066, the Japanese Internment Act, the discrimination against the Japanese community made Japanese Americans say, ‘We’re not Japanese, we’re American.” 

 

Dr. Thangaraj also highlighted that after 9/11 and especially after Covid-19, anti-Asian racism increased with stereotypes of terrorism against Middle East Asians and with the uptick in hate crimes against Chinese elderly following the height of the 2020 pandemic. 

 

The rise of the Stop AAPI Hate movement and the creation of the anti-hate group in March of 2020 was sparked by attacks against Asian American elders by anti-Asian racists, who blamed Chinese Americans for the Covid-19 pandemic. In that year the violence increased by 145% against Asian Americans in 16 major cities across the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino. 

 

Along with shame and embarrassment, the study highlights the issue of safety amongst the reasons as to why an increasing number of Asian Americans have turned to hiding away parts of their identity. Embracing one’s heritage may result in becoming a target of bullying or even a violent hate crime. 

 

For many, this hiding of heritage is a means for survival, and is learned from a young age. Immigrating as a young child with his parents from India, Dr. Thangaraj hid his heritage when going to high school. 

 

“The types of racist comments based off of Hollywood, like Indiana Jones, made me really embarrassed about my clothes, my parents’ accents, and my own accent. I tried my best not to speak Tamil in public settings and tried to keep my parents from speaking Tamil,” said Dr. Thangaraj. 

 

The highest demographic within the Asian American community that reported hiding parts of their heritage were adults between the ages of 18 to 29, but both Dr. Thangaraj and Din believe the overall number of Asians who hide their heritage to be much higher. They think that participants may have underreported because they believe themselves to be prouder of their ethnicity than they display in their actions. 

 

“I think there has been such an increase in Asian American pop-culture figures like Bruno Mars, but what this has done is allowed us to consume their products without consuming the politics of Asia,” said Dr. Thangaraj. “Unless we dive into the history and politics of the region, we will never understand what it is to support Asian Americans. We’ll just consume and view race through the palatable marketplace and pop-culture.” 

 

“Once we have the data and the stories then we can’t look away and pretend it doesn’t exist. So, then it becomes a matter of how we create spaces, programming, support, resources, opportunities, whatever is needed, that are most appropriate for Asian Americans and how they want it to be,” said Din. 

 

The study highlights testimonies of respondents, who remark their experiences hiding their cultural identity. However, many are still proud of their heritage and find joy in sharing it: 

 

·      “[W]hen I go to Cambodia and speak the language, it’s like connecting with an old friend … or meeting somebody from my past because so many of those ideas of what love is, of what it is to be part of a community, and even to live by example comes from having that language still alive within me.” –Early 30s man with Cambodian immigrant parents

·      “[T]here are going to be ups and downs. Definitely one of the downs is being labeled by other people for our differences. But one of our ups is that we have culture and language that we can always rely on; we have some diversity in customs and cultures that we could go back to. And if people are willing to experience these new differences, we can definitely pass it on and spread awareness of different cultures.” –Early 20s man with Korean immigrant parents