I’m Asian. I grew up in Texas with mostly white kids. I did not fit in when I was in elementary school. We had a day in first grade where all the right-handed people put their hand-print on one side of the chalkboard and all the left-handed people did the same on the other. I was the only left-handed person. For a while after that, I hated that I was left-handed because I thought that if I was right-handed I would be like everyone else and everything would be better.

Back in my working days, there was a girl who made a point of reminding my coworker, Beth, and I (Beth being black and myself being Asian) constantly of the “American ideal of beauty” which in her view consisted of “blond hair and blue eyes.” That, among a host of other instances, led to Beth and I having this running joke at work: whenever something happened relating to the fact that either she or I were minorities, we’d laugh and call it a “minority day.” After a while, the joke became “every day is minority day” because these things seemed to come up constantly and sometimes you have to just laugh because its so depressing it makes you want to cry.

Racism, discrimination, bigotry…whatever you want to call it, is probably the one topic I have the hardest time talking about, but I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while since it’s been coming up frequently. Being a minority has probably been the single most determinative factor in my personality — not because of being Asian, but because of how people view and treat Asian people. I know many people view being Asian as being one of the “good” minorities; I admit there were many times I’ve been given the benefit of the doubt or a free pass when I’ve gotten in trouble that probably had to do with my being Asian. That said, it comes with strings — being viewed as an outsider, being judged by your affiliation with a group instead of as an individual, having to fight against each person’s pre-conceived notions of what you’re like, etc. For whatever benefits being Asian might confer, being a minority in general is just often a very isolating and frustrating thing.

A difficult reality is that even people who you like and who genuinely care about you often just don’t “get” it and can’t empathize. My white friends honestly just don’t quite understand, and even my Asian friends who have resorted to just being around only other Asian people don’t entirely understand either. Adding to the issue is that being a minority is different depending on what type of minority you are. Therefore, someone who is gay or black has had to deal with certain very different sets of issues and therefore still can’t entirely empathize with someone who is Asian and vice versa. As a result, being a minority can often be incredibly isolating and alienating.

Discrimination can be very subtle and insidious and many people truly believe that it’s just in your head. I go back and forth on this all the time — I’ve been told by people who know nothing about my work experiences that I just “seem” like someone who works very hard, but that leadership is “probably not your thing.” It’s not true, and I’ve had to convince myself that people viewing me in that light is not related to stereotypes about Asian people, but deep down I know they are.

And just when you think you’re going crazy, someone pulls you aside and that someone tells you that you’re right — that some group of people who you’ve never felt accepted by, who seemed to judge you the second they saw you — is entirely, completely, terribly, bat-shit racist and says horrible things about Asian people when others aren’t around.

This happened recently, and I didn’t know how to feel about this at first. I think I mostly feel relieved to know it wasn’t just in my head and that there is nothing I can do about it. Fact is, if you’re in your mid-twenties and at one of the best law schools in the country and are still openly bigoted around your other openly bigoted friends, there’s probably not much anyone can do for you or them at this point. Still, that people like that exist is terrifying, demoralizing and sad to me.

The fact that these people and the girl I mentioned at the beginning of this post are all people who come from areas with very few minorities and went to colleges that were white-heavy (probably around 90%) reinforces my view that affirmative action is truly the only way to combat racism. Humans are wired to identify patterns, even subconsciously, and they require education to make them actively think about whether the “patterns” they think they are seeing are the result of a combination of societal, historical and cultural circumstances, and they have to actively consider whether they’re subconsciously inadvertently placing a disproportionate amount of emphasis on physical traits (e.g. skin color) to categorize people and the patterns they think they see. The urge to simplify may be natural. I think it’s often useless to be angry about it; it is an inherent drive that causes us to use very visible and easily identifiable physical characteristics (such as race) to categorize people — it’s theorized to be a result of evolution and need to simplify an overload of information in a complicated world — but it doesn’t mean that it’s right or that we shouldn’t fight it.

Fighting that inherent urge to stereotype requires that people actively assess and force themselves to view people as individuals as opposed to members of a group. Unfortunately, most people don’t do this and don’t have proper education on minority issues. As a result, affirmative action — putting them in contact with enough minorities that it breaks the mold somewhat of what they think they know — is the only other real solution to a problem that is still very alive today, even among the well-educated.

I was teased a little by friends for jumping on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon, especially given my often vocal lack of interest in sports, but I’m sticking to my guns. Unlike many Asian celebrities who are only half-Asian or who seem to have distanced themselves completely from typically Asian characteristics, the guy was a role model for the many, many people who have had the typical second-generation Asian experience, who aren’t self-hating Asians, who have had to contend with similar stereotyping and jeers that he experienced, and who want to be successful and accepted on their own terms. He represents a very visible example of facing the world to view Asians in a different light and to reconsider their preconceptions, and I will never be embarrassed that I find this to be uplifting and that it gives me hope.

“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.” — Kofi Annan