How it Feels to be a Yellow Me
?I am Asian but there’s nothing more interesting about me other than the fact that I’m kind of taller than the average Asian and the fact that my family doesn’t actually eat rice every night for dinner.
?When I was growing up I had no idea about the differences in race. I hung out with all the white kids, black kids, brown, grey, purple, color didn’t matter to me at all I thought we were all the same. My best friend throughout elementary and middle school was white. When I played basketball all my friends that I played with were colored. A large number of my friends were yellow just like me. When we were younger I felt like we were all the same. We all celebrated the same holidays and had did the same activities such as riding bikes, playing tag, and going to school. We all felt like brothers.
?Weekends were always a delight for us as we were going through elementary and middle school. It gave us time where our parents let us play together and we would always play tag and play fighting with sticks until it was dark out. We would then play man hunt in the dark and chase down cars on our bikes as they were going down the street. I always looked forward to the weekends. Life was carefree, not worried about school or the future. I was never discriminated from the other kids in my classes for being Asian and I didn’t feel like I was any different from anyone else.
?This completely changes when I turn fourteen and my parents told me we were going to move to Parkland and go to a different high school from those that I grew up with. On my first day of high school, I was no longer the kid that everyone knew and was friends with, the one that everyone knew well enough that they regarded me as one of their own, I was just another Asian in the crowd and for the first time in my life I felt the difference.
?I’m not ashamed of who I am in the least part. But the first couple weeks in this new environment the group of people I began talking to was very different from the ones I was used to. I started out by getting to know and talk to other Asians similar to me as they seem easier to get along with. Also the stress of doing well in school began sinking in as I tried harder in these years in high school than I’ve ever done in my entire life; it seems people are surprised and disappointed whenever they meet an Asian that isn’t excelling in math and science.
?It also seems that Asians aren’t that prominent in sports either as I was the only yellow person on the swim team, an activity I’ve done well at and always enjoyed doing. The first thing many people seem to ask me is “can you say something in Chinese?” and “can you help me with this math problem?” I was never truly ashamed of these things as I was proud of my culture and my excellence in school.
?It was then when I got to sophomore year that I began to realize that wasn’t so different from others. When I signed up for my first AP class there were a great mix of different people in the class and it wasn’t because I was Asian I feel different it’s because I try to succeed and try hard to take a challenge.
?Inside I thought of myself as the same kind of person as everyone else but with a different appearance. I can’t change anything about this and isn’t a hindrance, it’s my personality and what’s inside that truly matters. It was a divine force that put me in this body and I might as well make the most of it.