Why is identity important?

I have always had a hard time identifying with the word Asian. As an Indian-American woman, I usually preface the term “Asian” with a hyphen and another descriptor. I find it a little difficult and uncomfortable to identify myself as just “Asian” or “Asian American” because most people don’t see me as “Asian.” The connotation of the word “Asian” is usually East Asian. I feel alienated by the terms even when it is the plain truth. I am Asian. I am Asian American.

These terms feel reductive for myself, almost like a lie. I find it a lot easier to label myself as “South Asian” or just “Indian” because it's never met with an opposition. I feel a certain kinship and comfort to the identification of “South Asian” that I have never had with just “Asian.”When I introduce myself as South Asian and Indian American, I force those around me to recognize my identity and a core part of myself.

For most of my life, I didn’t mind checking off the “Asian” box on forms and existing in “Asian” spaces that never highlighted South Asian culture. I thought I was the only person feeling this way. It wasn’t until I came to college at USC that I realized that this discomfort I feel with the word “Asian” and in “Asian” spaces isn’t just my isolated experience. Many different people feel the same way.

Feeling represented and comfortable with your identity is integral for your self esteem. Feeling out of place and without community can damage your idea of yourself. The truth is that the word “Asian” is an ineffective term and doesn’t properly represent over 40 different ethnic groups. This capstone project is my attempt to depict how the word “Asian,” and its connotations, falls short for the community it aims to represent.

Asian Ethnicities: How do Asians categorize themselves?

Group identity is defined by shared characteristics whether that be language, religion, race, culture, etc., however this isn’t necessarily the case for Asians. Outside of the continent of our origin, there is no real link that ties all Asian ethnic groups together, yet we are expected to act as one single group, work in solidarity with one another, and settle for this vague and ineffective term.

In America, the term is most commonly associated with East Asians, which include Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people, as they have been branded as the “face” of the race. South Asians, South East Asians, Central Asians, and Pacific Islanders are often disregarded and left behind this term because of its indelible connection to East Asian identity.

This is further perpetuated by interactions within the community. East Asians operate from a position of privilege in the dynamics of race due to a multitude of reasons. Colorism, general visibility, higher average socioeconomic class, and history of immigration all impact this position of privilege. The Asian American community, as a result, has a fractured sense of solidarity with multiple different groups harboring a sense of animosity towards East Asians and vice versa. South Asian, South East Asians, and Pacific Islanders are rarely recognized by East Asians as “Asian” let alone non-Asians.

"Asian" Identity in campus organizations with Sydney Tsai

On USC’s campus, the conversation of race and identity takes an entirely different shape. Students crave community and a sense of belonging and rely on cultural organizations to find this connection. However, for South Asian, South East Asian, and Pacific Islander students finding this connection can be extremely difficult as organizations are usually focused on East Asian culture. Students find alternative ways to get involved and try to find space for themselves in the community.

One such space on campus is the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly [APASA] which is an Asian affinity student assembly that is a part of USC’s Undergraduate Student Government. APASA is the umbrella organization for over 30 other Asian cultural member organizations on campus. The assembly organization provides funding opportunities for member organizations and hosts school wide cultural events.

Sydney Tsai, a senior student studying East Asian Languages and Cultures, at USC, is one of APASA’s current Internal Communication Chair’s. Tsai’s job is to be a liaison between member organizations that are a part of APASA and the APASA executive board. Tsai is one of many who have found community through the organization, but also notes the way the organization can be insufficient cultural connection for some.

Sydney Tsai. Courtesy of Sydney Tsai.

“We try our best to be considerate of different subsets of the APIDA identity and it's been better since I became an E-boarder. Especially this year, diversity has been a lot better since our [Director] slate is South and Southeast Asian dominant for the first time,” Tsai shared.

While diversity has increased on the leadership side, Tsai shared that maintaining and diversity on the membership side has been difficult for the organization.

“We do struggle with diversity in some aspects. I think that one issue that we have is that we lack Pacific Islander representation. I think that's really because even if we do outreach like asking people to apply for e-board, I kind of understand why they don’t want to [join] because there's no one like them there,” Tsai stated.

As a multiracial person who identifies with Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese heritage, Tsai understands the struggle of not fitting in with the general perception of Asian identity.

“I kind of always felt like that I didn’t fit in completely with one group or the other…It’s a little bit more common here [to see] people here who are like multiple different types of Asian, but back in my hometown…I was one of the only ones. Some East Asian communities also tend to be quite cliquey. Someone once told me I’m not a real Korean because I’m only half,” Tsai stated.

Tsai’s personal relationship with her Asian identity and being a part of the APASA E-board has led her to better understand the dynamics of the Asian community and why specificity matters in identification.

“Asian is just a little too broad for me because it encompasses so many different groups of people. I feel more comfortable [identifying as] East Asian because it's more accurate…If I just say that I’m Asian and I don’t acknowledge this level of privilege that I do have as an East Asian, it makes me uncomfortable,” Tsai shared.

Listen to the Linguistic Diversity of Asia!

Rumaisa Islam's adapting "Asian" identity

Tsai’s experience highlighted how the general perception of ‘Asian-ness’ hindered her from feeling comfortable and confident in her Asian identity. Rumaisa Islam's, a progressive degree graduate student studying Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology, connection to her Asian-ness has been impacted in the same way. It was only after entering college that Islam finally understood why she always felt so disconnected from her Asian identity.

Rumaisa Islam

Islam grew up in the San Gabriel Valley which houses over half a million Asian Americans. According to data aggregated from Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, the San Gabriel Valley’s Asian American population alone is larger than that of 42 other states and major cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. However, the population itself is East Asian, specifically Chinese, dominant.

“I’ve heard in the UK that when people say Asian the term usually refers to South Asians and here in California and America when people say Asian they are typically talking about East Asians. I feel like I was always fighting to remind people that I am Asian. I would get comments like this school is all Asian except Rumaisa,” Islam shared.

The term Asian has caused Islam confusion her whole life. Islam was born in Bangladesh and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was child. Growing up, Islam felt confused and puzzled when her American peers would refuse to acknowledge her as Asian and would find it ironic considering she was born there.

“I was born in Bangladesh and moved here as a baby. I am technically more Asian. I was literally born on the continent,” Islam remarked jokingly.

Islam comes from a Muslim family and her religious identity was another factor that made her feel isolated and ostracized in her community back home. From fighting against stereotypes and microaggressions, Islam felt that her religious identity was scrutinized by other Asians.

“Just as I was the only South Asian in my school, I was typically the only Muslim as well. The religious component of my identity is often where I felt the most ‘othered.’ From comments like being asked by a classmate in a group setting what ‘my thoughts on ISIS were,’ or hearing parents suggest their child exercise caution around me for being a Muslim, I grew to harbor an embarrassment and guilt about my religious background after seeing Islam consistently perceived as violent and aggressive.”

It wasn’t until Islam vocalized her feelings to others in college did she realize that what she experienced wasn’t just ignorance, but was actual prejudice and racism.

“One day we all came together and shared all our experiences on this topic and facing stereotypes or prejudice from East Asians…I’m now realizing I had faced a lot of weird and implicit and explicit racism or stereotyping and I couldn’t identify it…I definitely feel like I had an idea growing up that prejudice and racism only came from white people,” Islam stated.

Due to her lived experience, Islam finds more comfort in identifying as South Asian and specifically Bangladeshi. She finds power in the specificity of her ethnicity which is often ignored and underrepresented even within South Asian spaces. By introducing herself as specifically Bengali, Islam forces those around her to recognize Bangladesh and heritage.

“I'm really proud of the culture I come from and a lot of people just don't know. Even growing up people didn't really know. I feel even though in college I've met so many different people from different backgrounds, but even in the South Asian spaces I'm in, for example, I don't meet any other Bangladeshis. So I feel like I'm always really putting that first that I am Bangladeshi. I want you to know that that's where I come from.”

The "Asian" Immigrant Experience with An Nguyen

An Nguyen, a senior majoring in Narrative Studies, immigrated to Joplin, Missouri as a pre-teen from Vietnam. Nguyen’s experience with Asian identity is different than most Asian Americans because before moving Nguyen never had to identify as anything other than Vietnamese.

“I’ve lived both lives. I’ve lived as a Vietnamese person and now as an Asian American. I know that when I go back to Vietnam or when I was in Vietnam, when someone asked me what I am, I would never even think about identifying myself as Asian. I think we have to put ourselves in this box because we have no other category to be categorized in,” Nguyen shared.

An Nguyen

Nguyen comes from a low-income background, which is not a common one for Asians at USC. She often feels alienated from the USC’s upper middle class Asian population. Nguyen’s connection to the word Asian is really fractured. From feeling like an outsider at her majority white high school in Joplin to feeling out of place as an Asian person at USC, Nguyen struggles to find a place for herself still.

“The common misconception is that Asian Americans are usually more well off therefore they’re able to be more academically high achieving. I think that usually [refers to] East Asians and some South Asians, generally…When you look at statistics that include different ethnic groups, you see that the wealth gap between South East Asians and East Asians in America is huge. Most SouthEast Asians live near or below the poverty line,” Nguyen stated.

Nguyen’s passion is fitness and is an avid powerlifter. In the future, Nguyen wants to pursue this passion as a profession, but is hindered due to it being a stark contrast to what job is expected of her as a college educated ‘Asian’ person. This pressure is something that feels not only from her family, but also from her peers at USC.

“I’ve never aspired to be academically high achieving and get a nice cushy salary. Every time my relatives ask about my career prospects, I used to laugh it off like ‘I don’t know..” That made me feel like I’m always falling behind my Asian American peers because it is so clear to me what goals they’re going after. I always feel pretty lost about life. Sometimes I feel like there was a cultural value that I was just never able to be a part of or absorb,” Nguyen shared.

"Asian" Identity in Academia with Professor Indra Narayan Mukhopadhyay

Academia is another space where the overrepresentation of East Asian as entirely “Asian” exists. USC established its East Asian Studies Center in 1960 in order to provide education and research opportunities for students interested in the field of study. The center has multiple different majors and minors and a multitude of East Asian courses. The same can’t be said for other Asian sub-groups. The South Asian studies minor was only recently incorporated into the curriculum. The 2023-2034 school year was the first year students could begin to look into this field of study.

Associate Professor of Writing Indra Narayan Mukhopadhyay spent the last five years establishing the South Asians studies minor at USC and shared how the process came to fruition.

“I started my degree at the University of Michigan. I studied Sanskrit at Harvard and I did my Phd at UCLA. All three of those institutions have long standing program departments in South Asian Studies. In my training, I had the resources. I had professors and I had people to talk about my project and specialized collections and libraries. When I came here and saw that USC didn’t have anything like that, I immediately thought, ‘I need to do something’ and it took a lot of time,” shared Professor Mukhopadhyay.

Professor Mukhhopadhyay noted that academia and creating a designated South Asian Studies minor is directly related to representation.

“Creating a course of study for South Asian Studies helps with understanding culture and helps with representation. It helps being seen…I don’t know if at the academic level having Asian as an all encompassing term is helpful because in academia we look at nuance and specificity. We go deep into history and culture. It’s important to be looking at where the gaps are and where something is missing,” stated Professor Mukhopadhyay.

Predicting the future with Professor Caroline Valverde

In this capstone project, I delved into the multifaceted concept of Asian identity within the USC campus and uncovered the challenges of the broad categorization of the term ‘Asian.’ As uncovered in this case study of USC’s campus, the term “Asian” aims to provide identity, but fails to encapsulate the rich diversity of lived experiences. University of California, Davis Asian American Studies Professor Caroline Valverde emphasizes the need and importance of studying and researching ethnic groups within the label outside of East Asians to increase representation.

Professor Caroline Valverde. Courtesy of Caroline Valverde.

“There’s just a lack of work on these ‘others’ and you can go down this kind of hierarchy in the context of us… There's just this kind of hegemony or monopoly around East Asian Studies, which I think comes from the history of Asian Studies, and how there are just certain focuses like China [and] Japan. These groups tend to have been here longer. And so they were part of that movement for ethnic studies and Asian American studies so they set a tone,” Dr. Valverde shared.

When asked about what to do with the term “Asian,” Dr. Valverde was unsure herself. The term has a long history and many still identify with the term, however, it’s clear that the term needs more work and should be reconsidered.

“It’s okay to have ‘Asian’ as a general term, but there should be acknowledgement that it is just a placeholder. It should adapt and change as the world changes. I think asking these questions will definitely raise awareness and maybe, you know, those on the margins, can finally feel like something is being written about them,” stated Dr. Valverde.

Although this project didn’t find a definitive alternative to the word “Asian,” it illustrated to me the necessity of continuing to foster dialogue among all subgroups within the community. Being able to speak with a multitude of individuals from various subgroups and different personal identities broadened my own understanding of the diversity within the community. By embracing this diversity and embracing the idea that Asian identity isn’t monolithic, we can work towards a more inclusive and understanding community.

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