Am I American Enough?

"Can you see like everyone else?" asked the Caucasian girl who peered at me with grotesque awe. "Of course I can see like everyone else!" I snapped angrily. The memory is as clear to me today as it was that day in fifth grade when this girl had questioned my sight. It was the first time I ever truly felt different.

When I got home the first thing I did was look in the mirror and stare at myself. Who was this girl in the mirror? In my classrooms my peers did not look like me. My slanted small eyes that lacked a fold was clearly Asian, and I hated it. In the self-esteem hell of middle school all I really wanted was to be just like everybody else. In the end something always reminded me that I wasn't caucasian and that I never would be. Sometimes it would be the faint but unmistakable scent of kimchee in my house or the first day of school when teachers had difficulty pronouncing my foreign name, Eun Young, shrinking in my chair I would mumble to just call me by my American name, Joyce.

I was angry at my parents for choosing such a strange sounding name, it wasn't American enough and because of it I could not feel American, which at the time I thought to be American was to be just like everyone else. So I did the best I could to deviate from being "Asian" from dying my hair to a lighter brunette to watching American classics such as The Simpsons, hoping that somehow these material items would cover my true identity

Urbandictionary.com, a website that gives user defined explanations of slang, has multiple meanings listed under whitewashed that shows a range of emotions attached to the word. Some define it as a "derogatory term used to describe a minority who has assimilated with western society.

The 'whitewashed' person does not necessarily abandon his/her culture but rather embrace others beside his/her own." While other definitions have an angrier undertone. "To be assimilated into the North American society, forgetting your own language and culture and tries to act like a white person to gain acceptance." Tu Vu, a sociology major at Cal State Fullerton, believes a main influence in a minority's desire of acceptance is derived from media. "Our society, although a melting pot of ethnicities, still sees white as the majority. Therefore those who are in positions of power, who control what we see and hear, have media targeted to a white America giving minorities the idea that the only acceptable way to behave is 'white'."

What exactly does it mean to think or behave in a white manner? How would it be different from acting Native American, Hispanic, or Laotian?

Sonya Barrett, who is both of Korean and European descent has never felt the need to isolate one part of her culture as her identity. "It's never been an issue for me. I've grown up with an integrated culture where it's always been normal in my family to have Korean and American tradition and there has never been conflict between the two."

The only difficulties Sonya says that she has encountered has been about her atypical looks. "The only problem, I guess you could call it, that I've had is that I don't really look Korean. When I go to a Korean restaurant or anywhere affiliated with Korean culture, people will sometimes give me looks when I'm with my mom."

There are only two requirements to be an American citizen, to be born in the United States or fill out an application to become a citizen. Yet somehow many of us still have it ingrained that to be American is mainly to be of European descent. In an October 2008 issue of Time, a headline read "Is Barack Obama American Enough?" The headline was a reflection on the minds of everyone that election year. How does race define how we see American? The article goes on to say that Hilary Clinton's campaign manager, Mark Penn, had encouraged the candidate to use Obama's "lack of American roots" and "limited" connection to "basic American values and culture" to her advantage yet in no way insinuated that any other candidate be attacked in this manner.

Obama was born in Hawaii, moved to Indonesia when his mother married her second husband, and resided there until the age of 10 where he then returned to Hawaii and was raised by his grandparents. Barack has spent his whole life as an American citizen and a majority of his life living in the United States yet his citizenship came into question.

A November 2008 article in the Oakland Tribune noted that many felt the election reflected a new America, one in which barriers of color were being eliminated and brought a broader definition of what being American means as people of many backgrounds came together. Barack was ridiculed for his un-American name, Barack Hussein Obama, but that did not make him less American. The Clinton campaign released pictures of the president-elect in Somali tribal clothing in order to insinuate he was not a true American. He stopped wearing the American flag pin because he felt it had become a replacement of "true patriotism" and vowed to reflect his patriotism with his actions and words. Our future president Barack Obama is a great example that we are not Americans because of our appearance or our names but by our ideals, our actions, and in our hearts.

On my sixteenth birthday I began to research legal name changes. It was the Korean part of me that I wanted to get rid of the most. As I began to do my research a little voice in my head kept asking "But are you doing this for the right reasons?"

There are many times in our lives that we wish we could change who we are. I tried to become someone else by attempting to discard the Korean side of me. But no matter how many colors I dyed my hair, colored contacts I wore, forks I substituted for chopsticks or valley lingo I spoke, my Korean heritage will never disappear. That day in the fifth grade when my peer had questioned my ability to see I felt angered because it made me feel foreign and unclear about myself. I can see more clearly than ever that for the longest time I had lost myself. In searching for a false identity I had shut my eyes and when I finally chose to open them I saw the truth. Being Korean is just as much a part of me as my family and the hometown I grew up in and embracing my history would not make me any less American.