My Racist Experience Growing up in England as an Asian Man

Today I would like to talk about my

experience growing up in England as an

Asian man. I'm actually only 50% Asian and

100% man. According to my DNA results, I

am specifically 48.7% European and

51.2% East Asian and Indigenous American.

But to keep things simple, I'll just talk

as if I'm an Asian man because, because

most people just think I'm 100% Asian

anyway. Whenever I tell people I'm

actually half white, they're very

surprised because they just don't see any

whiteness. In my face at all. So growing

up in England as an Asian boy and then an

Asian man has had its challenges and

difficulties. I think I first noticed that

I looked different to all of the other

kids at school when I was around the age

of 7 to 8. Before that, I never really

noticed that I was very different in

appearances compared to the other kids

around me, but as I started to get older,

the kids at school would start making fun

of the way I looked. They started to make

fun of the shape of my eyes, and they

started to say things like, go back to

China. And as you could imagine, this made

me feel pretty sad. I went from being

quite a fun-loving people person who

enjoyed hanging out with people and having

friends to someone who just started to

hate everyone around him. And in my

teenage years, I just started to hate all

of the other kids around me. I just really

despised everyone, mainly because I just

felt like I wasn't welcomed in my own

country. Everyone wants to feel accepted

and to feel welcomed in the place they

live in. When you start getting told to go

back to China, back to a country that

you've never even been to once in your

entire life, it kind of hurts. So as you

can imagine, going to school was a pretty

terrible experience for me, and almost

every single day I had to put up with some

kind of rude comment about the way I

looked. And when you're the only Asian kid

in a nearly 99% white school, it's pretty

difficult going to school and having a

nice time. So as you can imagine, I

started to really hate school, and I

started to get really bad grades. I

started to really fall behind in class. I

just had no interest in studying or

getting good grades or passing exams. All

I wanted to do was to go home and play

video games. At home, I felt safe. There

were no mean, horrible kids making fun of

my eyes or telling me to go back to China.

It was just really annoying how I couldn't

go one day without someone making some

kind of comment on the way I looked. So

after I finished school, I thought most of

these problems would not really be a

problem anymore and life would be great

again. And life did get a lot better after

school. There were no more kids to make

fun of the way I looked. And I never

really had any adults making fun of the

way I looked. But the one thing I did find

kind of annoying even after I left school

was how people kept asking me where I was

from. For example, when I was working at a

petrol station, sometimes customers would

ask me where I was from, and I wanted to

say I'm just from down the road, which is

where I live. I know what they meant.

They wanted to know what part of the world

I'm from because I look different.

Really, I want to say I'm from Maidstone,

which is where I was born, and I'm from

England, but I know that's not the answer

they're looking for. So I would always

have to explain to them how my mum's from

Malaysia, but she's actually Chinese. My

dad is English, so I'm half English and

I'm half Chinese Malaysian. It was just so

irritating having to explain the same

story over and over again. If I said that

I'm from England, I felt like they were

secretly thinking, no, you're not. So as

you can imagine, I started to feel very

anxious about the way I looked. And you

might be thinking, maybe I tried harder to

look more white or to look less Asian.

But actually, the opposite happened. I

started to try to look more Asian. So in

my late teens, at the peak of my identity

crisis, I got really into anime and

Japanese culture. I thought to myself,

well, if English people don't see me as

one of their own, then maybe the Japanese

people will. So I got really into anime

and Japanese drama and Japanese music,

and this weird thing happened where I

wanted to look more Japanese. So I started

to grow my hair longer, and I used a hair

straightener to make my hair really

straight because My hair isn't really like

100% Asian people's hair. I have kind of

wavy dark brown hair. It doesn't really

have the same texture as a Japanese

person's hair, and I really wanted that

kind of Japanese visual kei kind of anime

hairstyle. So I would spend hours and

hours fixing my hair every morning to make

it look more Japanese, and I would embrace

my Asian looks. I spent every day studying

Japanese really hard so I could learn the

language and speak the language for when I

would eventually get to my new home

country that I could call my home. And I

had this dream of one day moving to Japan,

living there, getting married and having a

family and living happily ever after. I

thought I'd be much happier living in a

country where I kind of look more like

everyone else does there. So I went to

Japan and I felt like I fit in more. I

never got any weird stares. I didn't get

annoying kids making fun of my eyes. I

felt comfortable that I fit in and I

looked like everyone else around me. And

it was nice at first. But then I started

to realize that deep down, I'm not

Japanese. Even though I spent years

studying the language and the culture

before moving there, I still didn't really

feel like I could fit in there as a

person. I didn't really feel like I could

identify as a Japanese person because deep

down at my core, I was still an English

person, a British person, even though I

may not look like a stereotypical one. So

even though I could communicate fairly

well with the Japanese people, I never

really felt like I could connect with them

on a deep level or an emotional level. I

just always felt like I was an outsider,

didn't really agree with some of the

cultural aspects or their ways of thinking

or their values. I guess you could say I

found it difficult to integrate into

Japanese society and to make Japanese

friends. I ended up feeling very lonely

and isolated in Japan, and I ended up

seeking out other Western foreigner

friends to hang out with instead. So I had

this friendship bubble of foreigners and

Westerners. We would just hang out and

speak in English all the time, and I kind

of started to think Why am I in Japan just

so I could be friends with foreigners and

Westerners? And then as one last attempt

to fulfill my dream of living in Japan,

to fulfill my fantasy of calling Japan my

new home, I went on Tinder and I got

married to a Japanese woman. And I

thought, okay, this is it. This is my new

home now. I'm now living in Japan. I have

a Japanese wife. I'm basically Japanese.

But after a few years of being married and

living in Japan, I realized that I felt

very miserable and very unhappy living in

Japan. I felt so homesick, so out of

place. I kept thinking to myself, what am

I doing here? Why am I in Japan? I don't

belong here. So I ended up really missing

home in England. And I guess that's the

weird thing about being mixed race. In

your home country, you feel like you don't

fit in because you look different. But

then when you go to another country where

everyone looks like you, you might feel

like you fit in visually,

appearance-wise, but then you don't feel

like you fit in personality-wise. And

everyone else has like a different way of

life and there's different values and you

don't really feel like you can connect on

a societal level. And that's the main

problem. You don't really feel like you

fit in, or you don't feel like you belong

anywhere. Because Japanese people, or

Korean people, or Chinese people are never

going to see me as one of their own. I'll

always be that mixed-race English guy to

Japanese or Korean people. I'm never going

to be Korean or Japanese because I'm just

not, and my way of thinking is just way

too different. And I'm never going to be

fully English because I just look so

un-English. I look so Asian, and so many

people just refuse to accept me as an

English person, so I'm just going to have

to come to terms with the fact that I'm

never really going to fit in or feel like

I belong anywhere, and I'm just gonna live

in isolation away from society with no

friends and not really feeling like I

belong anywhere, which is kind of a sad

way to live your life, I guess, but it is

what it is.