The Real Racism

By David Pan | Friday, April 21, 2006

Originally Published May 28, 1997

One of the first friends I made at Dartmouth was “John.” We had been on the same DOC trip section and soon became good friends. Both of us were Asian, but he had grown up in California, where most of his good friends were Asian as well. I had gone to school in suburban New Jersey where most of my friends were white. It was in a conversation during Freshman Orientation that I learned how different we really were.

“Dave, man, I hate it here at Dartmouth. I wish I was going to Stanford or UCLA or something. There are no Asian people here. White people are okay, but I just don’t want to talk with them, you know?”

I was shocked. “Well, it really doesn’t bother me all that much.”

“Yeah, but you went to prep school in Jersey. You didn’t have any Asians in your school anyhow,” pointed out John.

“That’s true, but I didn’t spend that much time with the kids in the Asian community at home. We definitely had AP there.” (For those not familiar with Asian separatist vernacular, AP stands for Asian Power or Asian Posse. KP refers to Korean Power or Korean Posse.)

“Why didn’t you?” “Well, the kids that were big on AP wanted everyone to be all or nothing. If you were Asian, you couldn’t occasionally hang out with Asians and spend the rest of your time with white people. You had to spend all of it with Asians. It’s as if you’re a member of a club that dictates who your friends are.”

“Yeah, but that’s not so bad. At least you would’ve been friends with Asians. It’s not like we should talk to other people all that much. You were making connections with your own people, which is what you should be doing—I can’t believe you weren’t big into AP.”

I was stunned. “Did you hang out with anyone except for other Asian people in high school?”

“No. Things don’t work like that back in L.A. You have the twinkies, or sellouts, and you have pure Asian. Pure Asian believes in AP4: Asian Power, Asian Posse, Asian Property, and Asian P***y. You’re lucky you aren’t from L.A. You probably wouldn’t get along with people there if you didn’t hang out with Asians.”

“Wait . . . what are twinkies?”

“You know, man. yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Just like you.” He laughed.

Before I arrived in Hanover, I envisioned a blue-blazered sea of Anglo-Saxon prep-school boys. Even though I had spent high school at a largely white prep-school, my experiences there had done little to mitigate my fears.

After my first year here, I’ve learned that it’s not Dartmouth’s white population that’s racist or exclusionary, but rather it’s the organized minority groups themselves. At the beginning of this year, I was given a Big Brother by the Dartmouth Asian Organization (DAO) to help me get settled, was put on the Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF) mailing list, and invited to numerous exclusively Asian functions. In the abstract, these seem to be ideal ways to help freshman adjust to a new school. In reality, however, such practices have quite a different effect.

I met with my Big Brother once. I quickly got to know my tripmates and hallmates, so I ignored DAO, the ACF, and all the other Asian organizations that had tried to enlist me. I didn’t want to associate myself with any group yet—I wanted to make friends on my own terms. The last thing I wanted was to be force-fed friends because they had similar skin pigment.

I soon discovered that I had effectively blacklisted myself from Dartmouth’s Asian community by ignoring these groups. One evening, I decided to stop by a predominantly Asian fraternity on campus to visit a friend there. Arriving at the door, I was greeted by a drunken brother.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Dave Pan. I’m supposed to meet someone here.”

“Oh, you’re Dave Pan. Sorry dude, we don’t allow sellouts in the house.”

“What do you mean, sellout? I just want to talk to my friend for a few seconds.”

“You’re Asian. You’re supposed to hang out with Asians. From what I understand, you don’t like Asians. You embarrassed of your race? Look, you’re either with us or against us, and it seems that you’re not with us.”

Distraught, confused, and upset by my rejection, I walked away to the slurs of “whitebread” and “sellout.” I wandered home in a daze, my mind full of questions. What does it mean to me to be Asian? I was born in Taiwan, keep in good contact with my relatives back there, and visit every few years. I am fluent in Mandarin, possess a thorough knowledge of Chinese history, observe my ancestors’ traditions, celebrate Chinese holidays, and love my heritage. But am I somehow relegated to being a “twinkie” because I’m not an Asian groupie?

You aren’t an Asian because you hang out with other Asians. Such illogical, superficial segregation has split the United States, and indeed Dartmouth as well, into a turbulent sea of minority groups all clamoring for their own vaguely self-defined rights. Earlier this year the Daily Dartmouth published a cartoon poking fun at the stereotypical nerdy Asian study-nut. DAO and Korean American Student Association (KASA) immediately demanded retribution for the racist attack. Their clamor soon escalated into a call for an Asian-American dean.

I wonder what an Asian-American dean would do. The College already provides an extensive selection of Asian Studies courses and supports DAO and KASA. Are there special Asian academic or social needs that I didn’t know about that a special Asian-American dean could provide? DAO and KASA claimed that a full-time dean would lend credibility to being “Asian.”

DAO, together with many other minority groups, perpetuates a segregated campus. No longer is there a society of whites that attempts to exclude minorities, but it is the minorities themselves that are divorcing themselves from society. In twenty or thirty years, these will be the same people that complain that people don’t accept them. How is society supposed to absorb people that refuse to even associate with anyone outside their own narrowly defined cliques?

To those who say that assimilation into society means abandoning your cultural identity, you’ve got it all wrong. Assimilation is not conformity. Rather, it is accepting others as the people they are, rather than basing friendships on skin color. No more hyphenated Americans. No deans for individual ethnic groups. No exclusion. No barriers between the races.

The Real Racism

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