Opting Out of the Black-White Binary

THE CIVIL RIGHTS movement. #BlackLivesMatter. Racial reconciliation. It would be easy for me to imagine the words of Eliza in the musical “Hamilton” and sing, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative.”

At first glance, those statements, movements, and conversations might be mistakenly boiled down to division and brokenness between two Americas—one black, one white.

But I’m neither. I’m “yellow.”

I didn’t choose to erase myself in history, but it’s what I learned. Asian Americans weren’t erased from American history as much as we just didn’t exist in the Plymouth Rock story of East Coast immigration, with its emphasis on Europe’s poor and hungry “huddled masses.” We learned that “assimilation” was as much about becoming “white” as it was about becoming “American.” We learned that the civil rights movement was a fight for equal rights for black Americans, with little connection to “others” like myself. There was no category for someone who looked like me unless it was Oriental, chink, or gook—racial slurs I first heard as a child on suburban playgrounds (and still hear as an adult), slurs tied to a history and wars I knew very little about. In America, race is a social construct divided most simply between black and white.

I also learned that the best I could hope for was to become a model minority, an “honorary white” who would never be considered a “real” American.

So I just didn’t become one. In an act of rebellion, I chose not to become a naturalized U.S. citizen until a few years ago. In the process I learned what it means to opt into a binary conversation with a different, clear, defined perspective. I needed to learn who I was, created as a Korean-American woman carrying God’s image. I needed to learn that Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Esther weren’t blue-eyed or blonde.

I also needed to learn about Angel Island in California (the Ellis Island of the West) and to read more than a few paragraphs on the internment of Japanese Americans. I needed to discover Yuri Kochiyama and other non-black and non-white Americans who fought for civil rights. I needed to learn that as a Korean-American woman, I actually was connected to the civil rights movement, that I have benefitted from it.

I could not enter into the black and white conversation until I knew I wasn’t (and didn’t want to be) white and didn’t need to play oppression Olympics with black Americans. I needed to reject becoming an honorary white or an honorary black person (and I write that with caution, understanding that to be black in America is a dangerous personhood). I needed to reject the American dream as much as I needed to reject any desire to be seen as “woke.”

I don’t blame Asian Americans who are reluctant to get involved the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration reform, or politics more broadly. The present day can look very binary. But, because of my friendships and relationships in the binary and beyond, I cannot be silent.

Instead, I invite my fellow Asian Americans to learn about our place in America’s past so it can inform our present. I learn from my black, white, Native, and Latino friends in order to fill in the gaps of our collective history. Gaps in the black-white binary narrative limit our collective understanding. How can we build a better world if we don’t know all the stories we can include?