Cultural Clash
by Larissa Lee, Special Contributor

"We must be as Mexican as the Mexicans, And as American as the Americans, And never lose ourselves in the delicate balance." -Edward James Olmos playing Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. in the movie "Selena"

My town has always prided itself on its diversity. At the beginning of each new year of high school, we would talk about how diverse our school was, what kind of effect it had on our community, and how we as young adults would benefit from this privilege. I remember sitting there in our school auditorium, and looking around me at this "diversity". Here's what I found:

- Kids sleeping in the back
- Kids talking
- Kids doing homework
- The Brazilian kids in one part of the auditorium.
- The Black and Hispanic kids in another part of the auditorium
- The Chinese kids…?
- The Asian kids…?

Some diversity. I'm bursting with pride.

The problem with my high school is the fact that we have a "diverse" community, (at least, more so than other schools in Massachusetts), but we have lost the essence of diversity. We do not mix well in my old high school. Every ethnicity liked to keep to itself. I'm almost sure that the Brazilians, by far the largest minority group in my high school, have already created some kind of strange sub-culture that the rest of my school cannot understand; likewise with the Black students and the Hispanic students. We were all separate, but coexisted together under the guise of diversity.

This is where, I believe, that the reader may begin to question the whereabouts of the Asian population of my school. Well, the answer is: nonexistent. Well, technically there was me (the only Chinese girl in the grade) and about 5 other kids in my grade, but in a class of 435, that is a very small percentage. (And if you were too lazy to actually get out a calculator, it's 0.0091954022988505747126436781609195% to be exact.) However, I am also not accounting for those Asian students who are in the ESL program. I have seen another 5 Asian students, who are in that program, but mostly they keep to themselves and the rest of the high school population rarely sees them.

So what's a lone Chinese girl to do? She's got to have friends and the sort right? So, I did what I could. I grew up white.

Have you ever noticed that for some strange reason, kids are so much less prejudiced than adults? They have a different, more simplistic way of seeing things that seem to fade as one gets older. When I began school, other kids, including myself, never questioned the idea of race. We were all content just to play at recess together. So, from an early age, I thought myself no different from all the other white kids. For a long time, whenever I looked into the mirror, I did not see my black hair or my brown eyes. Instead, I saw blonde hair, blue eyes and a pale complexion.

Not that growing up white was a bad thing though. I will never regret it for my closest friends are all white and I wouldn't trade them for the world. (Enough sappiness) But seriously, non-Caucasian people living in America need to have a healthy balance between their culture and the American culture. I will admit that I lacked or do lack this kind of balance. I never got to "hang out" with Asian people, merely because there were no Asian people to hang out with. I was always a little jealous of my Canadian cousin, Jess. We are very similar personality-wise but she grew up in a population where the majority of students are Asian. She had the chance to do a lot of things I wish I could have done. For example, I never got to share with other people the eccentricities of being Chinese. Sometimes I wished that I could trade stories with another person about Chinese New Year or trips back to Hong Kong or even have a chance (though this may be stretching it) to talk in Cantonese with someone else.

The ability to talk in Cantonese is probably one of the parts about growing up white I regret the most. I'll admit it; I don't know my own language well at all. The bits and pieces of Cantonese I know are from necessity (ex: bathroom, sleep, eat, and related words) or from what my mother yells at me when she's angry (probably where I get my understanding of the more colorful words in Cantonese). I am a passive listener, meaning that I can understand most of the conversation around me, but can do little to respond to the conversation. I just don't have the words for it, literally. This becomes a problem when I am speaking with my grandparents. I adore my grandparents but I can never say anything useful to them without someone translating for me. This obviously hinders the relationship I have with them. So the conversations I have with them are simple, like conversations you would have with a five-year old. "Frustrating" doesn't even begin to describe...

Jess didn't share in this frustration; instead, she had all the aforementioned things and probably more. However, she barely had any white friends. Flipping through her yearbook, we played the game "Where are the white people at?" It was just impossible to find any. So, in a sense, our situations are reversed, yet the same. In other words, both of us grew up in one culture with little exposure to the other, both of which are not ideal to me. An ideal situation would be where people were exposed equally to several cultures and to be comfortable in all of them. Of course, though, that would never be the case. I'm willing to just settle for being Chinese and American.

Well, enough about the past. Things have changed. I'm not in Framingham, Massachusetts anymore; I'm in New York City. Still, I find that life hasn't changed too much. My friends are still mostly non-Asian, because somehow, due to unknown circumstances, I am again living in a non-Asian community. My roommates and my floormates are nearly all non-Asian, more specifically non-Chinese. Again, I am the only Chinese girl. However, in reality, in the bigger picture, I am really no longer the only Chinese girl. I am one of hundreds, thousands. I see Asian people everyday, walking to class, in the hallways, in my scholar's group. It is comforting to know that there are other Asians out there, but sad to know that I am no longer unique. However, this is for the better. I need to finally come to terms with the Asian side that I have ignored for so long.