Connecting with Other Asian Americans
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Part 4 of the journey to becoming a confident, secure Asian American.

Once you learn to appreciate yourself in all your Asian American glory, you are ready to appreciate similar qualities in other Asian Americans. Shared experiences and values are at the heart of friendships, so you’re well equipped to relate with other Asian Americans, most of whom have gone through the same struggles and the same awakening into the need for their own identities.

Meeting Kindred Souls

As we discussed, most Asian Americans who have grown up in America go through the same painful awakenings to the need for their own identities. You will have more success finding friends among those who are as far along as you on this evolutionary path. Trying to relate to an Asian American who remains white-washed (for lack of a better shorthand) is like trying to talk to a cigar-store Indian. They will look at you with a blank gaze, wondering why some foreign-looking person is trying to get their attention.

The easiest ways to find big groups of the right Asians for friendship is to join one or more of the many Asian American organizations proliferating in virtually every American city of any size. Some are professional associations, some are charitable, some are political, and some are just dedicated to getting Asians together for a good time, be it basketball, dim sum, ski trips or just plain partying.

You will seldom enjoy a more heartening experience than attending your first meeting of any Asian American organization. Imagine a whole room full of people who not only share your experiences with the identity issue but embrace you as a prospective friend without veiled reservations about the wisdom of forming a lasting relationship with someone of your race and culture! That sense of unconditional acceptance is enough to bring tears to the eyes of a former banana!

No human being can completely escape the issues of personality, culture and politics, but the one huge advantage of being a member of a minority made to feel so thoroughly “outside” is that Asian American affinity is much stronger than the bond between members of race-neutral organizations. That powerful mutual empathy and sympathy does minimize the cattiness, snobbishness, competitiveness or clanishness found in any groups of human beings (or lower-order animals, for that matter). So regardless of whether your social game is smoking or sub par, you will feel mostly a warm embrace from the other members.

If you aren’t a joiner but still want Asian American friends, you will have to take the initiative. Just find someone you’d like to have coffee with and say, “Hello!” Casual friendliness probably isn’t a hallmark of most adult Asian Americans (though I know of many exceptions, including me). But I have approached enough Asian Americans to know that one who takes the initiative to make an approach always finds a warm response, without the wary reserve triggered by an overture from a random stranger. After all, we all share membership in an exclusive club of people who have been mocked, ignored, maligned and generally disrespected for much of our early lives. We’re practically brothers and sisters before the exchange of a single word. Surely we can be friends!