My Brush with Bigotry in The Big Apple.

Last weekend, my best friend from college and I were sitting on a bench outside a frozen yogurt shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While we were catching up, we saw the usual cast of characters stream by: tattooed couples fresh into their first semester at NYU, bro hipsters getting home from the gym, several waves of late twenty-somethings, a group of eight guys and girls who were somehow all the same height—5' 5", a guy who pulled up in his limited edition Audi, and people who stopped to take photos of the car.

One group of three guys stopped by our bench to finish their cigarettes. The shortest of them came over, half-smoked cigarette in hand, and asked us if we knew where a certain bar was. We gave him directions and then he started hitting on my best friend, asking her how old she was, and did she want to join him and his friends at the bar. After that, he turned to me, perhaps thinking that the fact that he neglected to also compliment me needed to be explained, and said, “I mean, with you, like I have a certain type, you know, and I have to be honest, I think you’re ugly because you’re Asian.”

You’re probably thinking I punched this guy in the face, right? Actually, the only thing I managed to do was mutter, “I’m glad you know yourself.” Yeah. I know. Someone I don’t know came up to me and called me ugly, to my face. Then he told me it was because of my race. And I just sat there both because I didn’t know what to do and because my first thought wasn’t, “Go to hell,” it was, “Ugh, not this again.” Someone had told me the week before, at a party, that his friend didn’t think Asian women were attractive. Out of the blue. My best friend was with me that time, too. I was speechless then as well.

Why didn’t I have anything to say? I’ve been thinking about that.

Part of me thinks I didn’t know what to say or do because I was in shock—of all the comments and micro-aggressions people have made over the years, no one has flat out told me they think I am ugly because I’m of Asian descent. So that was a new one. I was also confused internally; as much as I was disturbed by what he said, I was a bit relieved that he didn’t fall at the other end of the spectrum—men who like me or fetishize me because of my race. On top of everything, I found further injustice in the fact that in the moment, I felt the pause fell on me to say something to defend myself or change his mind, but all I could think was, “This is New York F*cking City, where people hail from hundreds of places around the world. This doesn’t happen here!” How do you explain to someone you don’t know and will never see again that race shouldn’t make or break perceived attractiveness, intelligence, warmth, etc.? It feels like an overwhelming task.

I’m going to be twenty-six later this year, and I spent twenty-one of those years—seventeen of them in suburban California and four at Yale—procrastinating the sometimes painful work of self-acceptance by trying to blend in. After five years of living in New York City, a place that doesn’t let you run away from who you are, I’ve embraced what I look like and how that’s shaped who I am. It seems, however, that some people will probably always have an issue with how I look.

While I have more answers for myself about my relationship to my racial identity, I’ve never been more confused about what to do when I come across people who have never cared to understand. I am sure that better people than I have changed hearts and minds about the matter at gatherings across the country and around the world, but at this moment, I’m still struggling to figure out what the best response is to people who just have to share their bigoted thoughts. If you have one, let me know.