About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Nina Lam, of Huntington, a sophomore at Barnard College and summer fellow at Young Writers Project, writes from the perspective of being a Chinese-Iranian-American girl. She suggests that instead of “taking note of how race sets us apart and makes us different,” we move toward making race inconsequential in our lives.
Race card discarded
By Nina Lam
[P]erhaps, as a Chinese-Iranian-American girl
and a member of not one,
not two,
but three groups that were at one point oppressed,
I should not be saying this.
Perhaps, as a girl who was the only ethnic person
in her elementary school grade
besides the African-American boy
who was adopted,
I should not be saying this.
Perhaps, as someone who always wanted to go to an Ivy League
and who didn’t feel guilty
about playing the race card
on her applications,
I should not be saying this.
But all I know is that
it doesn’t seem like true acceptance
to continue to notice who looks like what,
to point out whose skin is what color,
or who comes from what place.
All I know is that
perhaps instead of taking note
of how race sets us apart and makes us different
we should be taking strides
to make race, in fact, inconsequential.
All I know is that
despite being proud of my heritage
and the cultures that make me who I am
I am so very tired of being immediately pegged
as that Asian girl.
Perhaps I should not be saying this.
Perhaps I should feel lucky
that colleges need to fill their Asian quota
and that my slanted eyes give the automatic assumption
I am intelligent, hard-working, and high-achieving.
Perhaps I should be infinitely grateful
that I grew up in mostly white Vermont
because it meant less blatant racism
and more awkward conversations with people who knew me
only because I looked different.
But all I know is that
I don’t feel so grateful
when instead of looking beyond the stereotypes
at who I truly am
I remain a member of three oppressed groups.
And all I know is that
it doesn’t feel so lucky
to be told I look like my eyes are closed when I’m wide awake
or to be questioned about my Middle-Eastern heritage
or to stand out like a sore thumb everywhere I go.
Perhaps I should not be saying this,
and perhaps I am over-thinking my own importance,
but instead of affirmative action
and assumptions about my intelligence
I think that I’d just like to blend in for once,
and be any other person.
Check out the August issue of The Voice, the Young Writers Project monthly digital magazine. Click here.
