![]() ![]() Chen wrote about it for the New York Times Magazine in a much shared article this past June. The “wrong Asian” phenomenon, or what I like to call “alllooksame-ism,” has been around for as long as different groups of people have been coming into contact with each other. Of course, we never acted on this hypothetical bid to avenge what has become a standard, everyday micro-aggression for most Asian Americans and people of color. The punchline was always the same: “I’m not Shelly, I’m Tammie, you racist!” The imposter was to reveal her true self once she had been misidentified. We hatched a plan to have one petite Asian friend pose as another petite Asian friend and interact with the staff. Through a stroke of college kid brilliance, we transformed this particularly British strain of ignorance and lack of exposure to diversity into a joke that I have told for years. Two of my Black classmates, both of whom wore their hair in braids, had also been referred to by each other’s names in more than one instance. When I relayed the incident to friends, I soon learned that Christine and I were not the only two “ethnic types” in the house that had been confused. If anything, Christine looked more typically hapa in my opinion, and she was half Japanese, whereas I was half Chinese (an obvious distinction in my mind). But aside from the fact that we both had dark, almost-black hair and relatively fair skin, I didn’t think our faces looked much alike. One of my classmates was named Christine and she also happened to be half Asian. Why would they call me Christine? Then it dawned on me. ![]() I don’t even remember whether I corrected their mistake. Then one day another administrator in the house said, “Hello, Christine!”Īt first I was perplexed. Strangely, when I popped by to say hello she sometimes called me Christine. ![]() I felt sheepish conversing with her in putonghua despite having spent the previous six months in China. The woman at the front desk was a grad student in the Chinese department who spoke flawless Mandarin. I lived in a house with thirty or so other college students and watched the English garden in our backyard bloom from my window that spring.ĭuring the week, a few staff and faculty members also worked out of the house and managed operations for the program. Looking back on that time in my life brings back many wonderful memories. Junior year of college I spent six months studying abroad at Oxford University. ![]()
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