Being born in America by Chinese parents who grew up in Vietnam, I never knew who to pledge my allegiance to. My last name is a former Chinese name translated into Vietnamese. I speak Cantonese but grew up on pho noodles, dim sum, and Jersey subs. My favorite food is actually Mediterranean by the way and I like that being an American allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be.

But Americans generally dislike the Chinese because of Communism and the media, and they hated Vietnam for winning the war.

For a while, I disassociated myself from being Chinese because I was different from “them”. I did not want to be someone people hated. But recently, I’ve realized you cannot be an American without first having been something else. Without China, I would not be here to call myself an American. I cannot bring myself to hate my blood and try to make myself seem better because I love Big Macs or can read with a CNN America accent.

I see so many people out there who try to mentally wipe out their ancestral heritage and it pained me the day I saw a man tell another that he was not like him–that they were different, because he was Black and the other man was African. This man’s words signify he failed to see the blackness of his skin, the history of racism and slavery, and the African to his American. We cannot hate ourselves because colonization has taught us to do so. We cannot be Americans if we do not embrace our diversities and tend to the cultural roots we are given at birth.