Unveiling childhood racism

An Interview with my Cousin Stephanie: Part 1

Tap. Tap. Hey. Hey. Testing. Is this AAPI mic still on?

Are we still trending? Am I still going to get hired for jobs now that it’s not May? When does Prime and Hulu take down their “Asian voices” category? Asking for a billion friends.

As much as the social media manager in me wanted to get this article up in May (🙄), I quickly realized I needed to treat the following interview with my cousin with lots of care and love — a place I hope you read it from.

Last month, my cousin Stephanie wrote a gut-wrenching article about her struggles growing up as a mixed kid, outside Atlanta, Georgia. This spring, when eight people (6 Asian women) were murdered at spas in city the she was raised in, something broke open inside of her too. Hitting close to home is one way to put it, but truly, like many of us who have similar pasts, this news started to dredge out pieces of our childhood that have been left alone for too long.

Growing up, Steph and I had a lot in common. Our father’s are brothers who married white women (our moms were so much more than that of course, but, for context). We were roughly the same age. We got bullied — a lot. We attended religious institutions we did not believe in. We know the US pretty well. (She lived in the US for most of her youth, I have been living in America for most of my adult life.) But we never spoke about any of it. Really, at all, until this month.

Me, second from left, and Steph, far right, at my family’s church in Markham, Ontario

I’m not really sure why Steph and I didn’t trade war wounds at the dim sum table, but I have a couple of ideas:

1) We were raised in the late 90s - early 00s. You know the time, when everything was either drenched in Calgon-by-the-sea or shellacked over with lip smacker gloss? Tiger Beat Mag touted sandy haired surfer boys, beauty mags pumped out the same version of “the girl next door,” and all the right beauty tips for all shades of beige. There weren’t open letters or hashtags, or memes that told white people to be our allies. I can’t speak for Steph, but those years felt like we were lucky enough to hang, it would be social suicide to speak your mind.

2) We were “grateful” we weren’t our parents/grandparents; they had it way worse. PLUS they never complained about it. Seriously though — someone called you a bad driver at school? Cringe at your lunch? My dad had to survive high school in Toronto with the name Hung. His parents worked until their hands bled to make it in a new and foreign country. Do you think they complained about some sticks and stones teasing? Anything I could bring to the table felt small in comparison to their strife.

Well, we’re talking about it now. So here’s my first interview with Steph. Part II to follow next week.

---

Coco: So how did your parents (my uncle and aunt) meet? Where were you born and where were you raised?

Steph: I was born in Scarborough, Ontario (Canada), but I grew up in Alpharetta Georgia. It’s where I lived between the ages of 4-14 years old.

My parents met at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia , but didn’t go on their first date until much later.  Dad had graduated and was living in Toronto and my mom had moved there and asked him to show her around. They had my brother and me and we eventually moved to Georgia for my dad’s work. My mom was working,  but left her job to move to the US to support his career. His job required him to travel 5-6 days a week and someone had to stay home with us so she became a full-time mom. She wasn’t given a work visa with the move and our school went from 7-2PM which didn’t align with most job shifts so she couldn’t work. 

We all had visas and then became  Permanent Resident Aliens. If you want to be citizens after 10 years you can apply, but we were told that you could only get dual citizenship if you were born in the US first and we weren’t willing to give up our Canadian passports. It made us feel like for America it was all or nothing.

 At that time, I was worried about making the right decision and forms didn’t make it easy. There always felt like there was an intimidation factor in messing up the right path or getting the paperwork wrong. I remember we were stressed out living there towards the end.

Coco: So this is what shaped your childhood right off the bat! Talk about straddling identities so young. So, I have to ask, you moved back to Toronto at age 14. Was there a difference between how American and Canadian kids treated you?

Steph: I really want to be aware of my own biases here. I grew up in an area of Georgia that felt pretty racist. But I want to be careful not to generalize US and Canada. There is no clear “this vs. that,” things were really hard in Georgia, but it wasn’t better in Canada either. Racism has followed me everywhere.

I did find there was a big cultural difference and it had a lot to do with how school is set up there. In Canada my elementary school went from Kindergarden to Grade 8. Our grade 8 class had about 20 kids in total which meant that we took every class together and had the same teacher for everything. Middle school in the US was just grade 6-8 and it was a lot larger than my high school in Canada. We had lockers, choices of classes, packed timetables. It was full on high school but you’re so young.

[Elementary school & middle schools are generally combined in Canada: 1st Grade - 8th, some are Kindergarten - 8th]

In the US, the collegiate prep attitude starts early. Everyone was all about sports and they were very patriotic towards any home team. I get it, everyone is finding their identity. The groups were a little different and very defined. IE: Skaters, the Jocks. My brother was really into rock music and “identified” as a skater. When we moved to Canada he started going down the Kappa tracksuit and sports car route.

I did notice in the States, there was a divide between black and white kids. Then there was “any other race,” and everyone else. It was very tough to see that. We lived in a predominantly upper middle-class neighborhood. There were tennis courts and pools. It had that gated subdivision “elite” feeling. I remember driving downtown to Atlanta and being shocked.

I admit, I left the states with this subconscious idea that if I was alone and a black man was walking towards me I should cross the street. I never was taught that in school exactly, but it was engrained in me at such a young age. I had to unlearn that when I was a teenager.

Just a fraction of our large family of amazing women. Steph is on the top row, far right in a pink dress. My sister, Dakota is bottom right in pink as well. I am between them.

Coco: What did it look like when you moved back to Canada?

Steph: I had a tough time. I went from a big middle school to the smallest school ever. It was also a very religious school (I’m not religious). Bullying started happening because I crossed a lot barriers. There was religious discrimination. I don’t remember any other Chinese students in middle school.

After middle school, I ended up going to a Catholic High School to stay with my mother’s wishes. It did not go well. The area we moved to was predominantly Italian. If my brother and I were just white it probably would have been fine, but as we were mixed we were out of luck. 

He started getting in trouble in the year before I attended, so when I arrived, teachers seemed to “prepare for me.” One took me aside once completely unprompted and said, “If you cause trouble like your brother, you’re out.” The bullying that I had in middle school followed me here and I was attacked at school and surrounded by 5 kids. Luckily my mom had the foresight to make me take Karate lessons so I was able to defend myself.

Unfortunately, because none of their punches landed, I didn’t technically qualify as being assaulted so the school didn’t take any action to support me.

I ended up getting my grades up to attend an International Baccalaureate program which is “intense high school,” — almost like a first year at University. Kept my head down and got out.

Guess what, it was another Catholic school. I still didn’t feel capable to tell my parents I didn’t want this, and I was grateful to leave the first school. This school was coincidentally all Asian kids. Like 90%. But then that was a new conversation. Kids would be like, “Oh! You’re mixed? She’s mixed too!” Then they’d go on speaking Chinese to one another and there I was, a minority again. I felt like I couldn’t win.

Steph admits she went through a “Fast and the Furious” phase too

Coco: Did you feel like people were just quick to put you in a box?

Steph: When you’re mixed, you’re not put into a box really with anyone. You might think: Asian AND White? Great! You get two! But realistically, you don’t fit into either.

For the majority of my childhood I felt like I was on an island. I didn’t feel supported. All mixed kids were thrown into the same box, but our cultural backgrounds were so diverse it sometimes felt hard to relate to each other. But we bonded  on the fact that we identified as ambiguous together and related to being “othered.”

Coco: Did you find a school that was at least a bit better?

Steph: Third year of high school. I left that IB program because my French wasn’t good enough. (Because I left Canada in those second language years, I missed out on French. And in the US they hadn’t started Spanish as a second language yet).

Plus the IB school didn’t want me there. Really. I asked questions they didn’t like.

Coco: What did you do to piss them off?

Steph: So, we had uniforms, of course. I threw in a little color here and there, or double up on socks! (Gasp!) One blue sock under a white sock. They hated that! In science I’d ask about evolution. I consistently asked teachers about religion vs. science and they’d get defensive and tell me to pray. I hated that too! Such a non-answer. I could tell some teachers knew they wanted to tell me something different but couldn’t speak freely. That was the worst feeling. So I moved schools.

Coco: Ok so tell me about this third year of high school…

Steph: It was Richmond Hill High. A pretty average school. Super mixed. Very multi-cultural. Low to middle socio-economic backgrounds. This is where I relaxed and could make friends with more people. But — My parents were now worried about the “wrong crowd.” Their thinking was: more money in a school = better education = a better life. I found the opposite was true. I felt like this school acted as an equalizer. There were so many mixed race kids and because of that no one really cared at all where you were from.

Coco: Can we recap these years real quick? How many schools is this?

Steph: In total, I switched 5 schools in 5 years because of the US/Canada move, bullying, and nonstop racism.

Coco: Can you share any stories about some of these events in your life?

Steph: So remember when having crimpy hair was in? I wanted to do that so badly. But my hair doesn’t take to curls well since its so fine , thick and straight. My mom braided my hair for 3 hours one night in the tiny braids all across my head. She worked so hard on them so I kept them all day, which means I went to school with them. One of the girls at school (white and blonde), kept pushing me and teasing me. I said stop, shoved her back. I got pulled out of line and got told off in front of everyone. This teacher called me a hoodlum and a dyke and said she wouldn’t tolerate that behavior and I’d be kicked out immediately if she caught me stirring up trouble again. I knew it was because of my hair. 

In high school it was less teachers and more the kids treating each other with that kind of disrespect. I sensed the media was creating a divide.

Coco: How did you protect yourself from feeling attacked?

Steph: This evolved into me wanting to be friends with everyone. I tried to be “Steph” instead of Asian or White. I tried to keep myself looking a certain way.

Then, when it came to dating it was garbage. It was really bad.

Coco: Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Steph: I was trying to seek a community where people were kind and universally loving. But, what ended up happening was I started attracting more racism. Because instead of speaking up and saying “that’s not cool,” in certain situations and walking away from bad relationships, I stayed quiet. I figured if I just stayed neutral with these friends/people/boys and showed them I was “good enough” they could one day change their minds on their own.

Coco: Can we keep going? Do you have an example of this?

Steph: Yeah, so my first boyfriend was Afghani. As much as I felt like I was progressing into a world where cultural differences didn’t matter, I didn’t realize that well, it did. His mom barely spoke English in front of me (she’s bilingual). She didn’t like me because I wasn’t Muslim. I was over sympathizing other people’s plights instead of my own. I was more focused on their discomfort. I dated this boyfriend for over a year and found out that I was a secret to most of his family because he knew they would not approve of him dating me. I only found out because his uncle popped over when I was visiting and he made me hide in a bathroom.  He was so focused on his own discomfort there was no room for my hurt to be acknowledged. All I thought was “it must be so hard for him to date me and not be supported by his family”.

If you’re young and just starting to date, and every person you’re meeting is treating you in a discriminatory way — that’s all you know — you get to a point where you feel like it’s never going to change. So, I was trying to change the system, or change their  attitudes by being so kind and accommodating they had no reason to think badly of me or my race. I stayed with people that were terrible for me. My self-confidence and self-worth took a hit. 

I started to feel like I wasn’t going to get love unless I dated a mixed-race person with my exact same heritages.

Coco: Did you ever go to your mom with any of this stuff?

Steph: I unfortunately didn’t for a long time and it’s because I misinterpreted my parents actions when I was younger. Recently I dated an Israeli man, and I was really worried my mom was going to be rude to him because she was not nice to my first boyfriend.

I said: “Look Mom, you have to be nice to this man [even though he’s Israeli].”

And she said: “What? I don’t care where he’s from!”

I brought up my first boyfriend and she said:

“Um, you don’t deserve to be someone who hides you in a bathroom.”

Can you believe I had the wrong idea about my mom for 15 years?! This whole time I thought she was racist. But I realized it was only because he didn’t treat me respectfully. It had nothing to do with anything else. Can you imagine if I didn’t have that conversation with her?

Stephanie and her family

---

Our interview occurred via video call. Copy edits by Stephanie Yip and Coco McCracken. June 11th, 2021.

Join Steph and I next week as we continue our conversation. We get a little more in-depth about navigation the dating world as half-Chinese, young women. We peek at how her parent’s interracial marriage in the 80’s set a new bar for our family.

Thank you endlessly to Steph for stepping up and sharing this story. It takes a lot of bravery to discuss these memories around race (and religion) in a public setting.

But with each word, we’re stronger.

Onward.

xx

Coco.