Becoming a Secure Asian American (Pts. 1 - 4)
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Secure Asian Americans aren't born, they're self-made.

A reader asks:

“How do you transition into being a self-confident Asian American if you currently think of yourself as a pathetic white-washed Asian, a lost person?

“I don’t seem to fit in anywhere — not with FOBs, ABCs, or any other category. How do I become friends with other Asians? I feel like an outsider wherever I go. I’m slowly coming out of denial and finding that I don’t feel respected by people I used to think of as friends.”

Two things I’d like to point out. First, you’re further along than many Asian Americans who never acknowledge this sense of alienation almost everyone feels at one time or another. Second, the feelings you describe are experienced by most Asian Americans — in fact, most human beings — making the transition from the childhood security provided by family to the world of adults at large.

Nevertheless, the problem is a real one, and there are steps you can take to address it. You’ve taken the first one — recognizing the problem. The second one you will have taken by the time you finish reading this — recognizing that most Asian Americans share the same problem.

Childhood Acceptance, Adult Alienation

How is it that we grew up with Whites but come to feel so alienated from them? Many Asian Americans grow up in predominantly white neighborhoods, as I did. Little kids sometimes make hurtful racial remarks, but at that age racial discrimination is of the superficial variety, little more than explorations of observed differences. Most of the time kids tumble around together like potatoes in a sack, with little consciousness of racial barriers. As they enter adolescence their dawning awareness of physical and cultural differences are reinforced by attitudes gleaned from parents, society and the media.

Childhood ties often survive the transition into the teen years and even into college. It’s when we start focusing on careers and finding prospective mates that the sociological implications of racial and cultural differences loom larger, shading our interactions with even old childhood friends. It’s at this point that many Asian Americans become aware of being excluded from conversations, dates, parties and other activities and intimate confidences and conclude that it’s because of their race.

This perceived discrimination isn’t imaginary. We live in a society in which some people are genuinely free from racial prejudice, but most continue to perceive real barriers to interracial mating or even racial competition in the economic sphere. Some even feel a strong visceral aversion to the idea of “their” women or men mating with members of another race. Inevitably these feelings will influence the attitudes of at least some members of even the oldest groups of childhood friends. A consciousness of that reality is what ultimately opens an unspoken rift with friends of other races.

Are there Asian Americans who never experience this subtle but very real alienation from Whites (or friends of other races) as they reach adulthood? There are always exceptions, but they’re rare.

To the extent true acceptance is achieved among a group of friends of other races, it is generally achieved in adulthood when all members of the group come together as equals with so much respect and kinship with one another that the racial and cultural differences become trivial. That kind of acceptance isn’t possible with someone perceived as less than secure in his own racial and cultural identity. Such a person would always be seen as an inferior, and by definition inferiors can’t expect to be treated as an equal.

Sadly, I have seen Asian Americans who accept the role of an inferior within a group of Whites. There is no repairing that situation. Best to start over.

So what is a “white-washed” Asian American to do? How does he become confident and secure in his identity as an Asian American?

In a sense this entire site addresses that issue. Goldsea articles reflect the sensibility and perspective of confident, secure Asian Americans. In particular, the Identity channel shows the many real challenges we Asian Americans face in becoming our own man or woman.

But for those who like their answers cut and dried, I will address the specific question of how to become a confident Asian American in my next column.