JE#3A

I think any social science 'doctor' would have diagnosed me with cultural schizophrenia for just about my entire life. A Chinese American born in Hanford, California, where the demographics can be bluntly put as a brown community ruled by white folks. Most of the community, I would say is of Central or South American descent, and with the my hometown's main source of income provided by the hundreds of acres of farmland, this comes to know surprise. Let me give you my own general stereotype of an Asian (cause they all look a like right?): Timid, pale, smart (at least in math), technologically savvy, and hey let's throw in the fact that they should know how to read Chinese. The American stereotype that has bounded every ethnicity of at least the 'Far East' to these few and many other stereotypes runs rampant in this nation.

I can not tell you how many countless times I have been subjected to the aforementioned list. "Hey Johnny, you can read Chinese right? What does this say?" "You speak Chinese? Say something, anything!" People often overlook me as an individual just based on my physical characteristics, and clump me into the rest of the Wayne Chungs out there. This has stuck me very emotionally to the point where I constantly have to push myself to be different. I hardly hung out with 'Asians,' I don't care what's going on in China, and I certainly don't care what your fortune cookie said.

But alas, I love my family members still residing in Hong Kong and Taiwan. I love my cultural heritage and still have a lot of pride left for my family's lineage. I love my language, the food (well any good cuisine really), and I love the fact that as an academic scholar, I subsequently represent my ethnicity/race in UCLA's demographic category. This may have been a bit of a rant as oppose to a journal entry, but I hope it shows that all the craziness mentioned above just shows what I really am, a cultural schizophrenic product of the United States of America.