Rant: Rude Assumptions & Stupid Questions

"My curiosity comes above your comfort. You don't matter." 

I don't know why people always have to be so rude. Let's define rude: ignorant, unlearned, uncouth, inelegant, crude, undeveloped, and offensive.

I'm sure there are different cultural nuances between what's considered rude and what's considered offensive but acceptable. But I'm a full fledged American citizen. I know this culture like the back of my hand and from the inside out, I have every right to criticize it--and I know what I'm talking about.

Whenever people find out I'm adopted or try to do investigative work on their own (Why are your parents white? Why didn't your parents want you?), I end up getting the same damn questions.

How does it feel to be adopted? It's my life and it's normal.

How did it change your life? It is my life. 

How was it like growing up with white parents? You mean, my parents, who are white?

How is it being Asian? You know, like being Asian.

I tend to find that people actually don't care though. They want a sound bite or a cutesy little 60-minute-esque story arc pulled from your unwilling carcass and then they leave. And really, they don't even want that: they just want to hear their undeveloped, preconceived notions confirmed. Your life story just doesn't matter. There are some who claim that they are genuinely curious, but I find it unbelievably insulting that they believe their desires come above my needs. My feelings of belonging and safety in my own country are somehow superseded by this asshole who wants to run home to his family with a story in his pocket, Guess what? I met a transracial adoptee today. Call NPR. Call HUNY. Boy, do I have a story for you. Guess what? My life is not a journey for you to go on. My life is normal. Any attempts at making a Nature-styled documentary and instead of orangutans or killer whales in mating season, you have chosen the mysterious adoptee. Congratulations, you're an asshole.

But this isn't an adoptee-centric issue. It's just one of those human issues that some people are unable to rise above. When people have a miscarriage, they feel terrible. No shit, Sherlock. Yet, they are routinely bombarded with rude questions like How are you feeling? When a house burns down or a tragedy happens, the news reporter gets in their face, How did that make you feel? Tina Fey got bit by a dog on the face when she was younger, and throughout her life people stared at the scar and asked How did you get that scar? Why do people feel so fucking entitled to other people's personal business? I guess concepts like manners, being respectful, being polite, having a modicum of human decency, putting others above yourself, and just maybe not trying to instantly gratify every idiotic whimsical thought that floats into the potato skin you call a skull. But I have to know!

All people WANT to hear is some sob story they could find under some click-bait title on Facebook or YouTube. They want to have their racist beliefs in China confirmed. They want to believe that Disney's Mulan is a true story, where I need to bring honor to my family or own a talking dragon. They want to hear I was miraculously saved from making clothes at your favorite affordable clothing store and that I was saved from China's hoards of child laborers in their manufacturing factories. They want to hear sordid details about America too. They want to know my white parents are like, devils, or something. They want to hate on celebrities who adopt and because everyone in America believes their opinion matters, they decide that bullying my multiracial family is a way to ensure peace and social justice in the world. They want to hear that I live a "better" life now, without understanding that better is a relative term and to properly use it, I would have to have something to compare it to, and seeing as I have no access to evaluate parallel timelines and multiverses, I can't possibly conjecture how much better or worse my life would have been: but that doesn't really matter. They just want to hear whatever they want to hear. Perhaps my life is worse because apparently white people and Asian people can never love each other. Perhaps my life is better because America is better. Perhaps my life is worse because my birthparents aren't with me. Perhaps my life is better because people have already made up in their minds an entire Lifetime original special featuring me, my birthfamily, and a shit ton of propaganda on which to substantiate my earliest years of existence.

No one actually cares. It's like you're a walking, talking sack of content. Content for viral videos. Content for tear-jerkers. Content for bored, spineless individuals who are so hard-up for someone's trauma, they want to force it from you because they can. Because they've decided that you don't actually matter. They just want you to give up your entire life story so they can feel less bored for five seconds. 

When someone dies at a funeral, it's the same damn thing. The dead is dead. The survivors mourn. Yet, without a doubt, there are those people who want to know, "Was it painful?" or "Well, it worked out for the best, didn't it?" and even if the wife was murdered in cold blood, people still want to ask the husband, "Are you alright? How did she go? Well, she's in a better place now."

Something about someone's "Otherness" makes people feel like they're invincible. Whether they notice you're the only non-white person or whether they notice you're the only white person, people feel entitled to ask you everything under the sun. It's like your feelings just don't matter and the only justification for such a conclusion is that you're different! It's such a circular dilemma. Or, maybe, people could, for one second, think about how will this make them feel? Am I actually clever or have they encountered this question a million times already? Why do I really want to know? Am I expecting them to answer without allowing them the freedom to decline? 

My mom tells me that people just don't know what to do and panic. But then, what about adoptee questions. How is that a panic situation? Well, my mom thinks that people just magically become very, very dumb when they encounter something new. They just automatically help themselves to a serving of Entitlement, decide they're the interviewer, you are the specimen, and that you won't mind being Othered for a few minutes while they help their fill to what they deem Exotic and Fascinating.

Of course, this cuts both ways. College (undergrad) admissions is nearly an artform entirely powered by the concept of Storytelling and Otherness. It's in how you craft your life story, in ways that may perpetuate stereotypes or satisfy the ears of a majority white admissions board. Believe me, I've been on the other side of some of these boards and for all their brochure-diversity-loving-propaganda, there's a backbone of systematic stereotypes that runs the system. For adoptees, for non-white people, for immigrant children, for literally any "interest" group, you could find an organization, scholarship, or charity that could provide support to get you into college, at a price. There's a carved out storyline for everyone. Erase your existence and exchange it for a stereotype. I remember my own days of doing undergraduate college interviews. One interviewer was an undergraduate student herself who was no wiser or polite than anyone else. I felt that she was wholly incompetent in her job, fidgeted around, looking for something clever to say, and for lack of any evaluative skills, decided to dig around for one of those freak-show-filler storylines about my transracial adoption, despite the fact I had purposefully avoided mentioning it within my entire interview. How did being adopted affect me? As mentioned above, this question is so unbelievably stupid. That's like asking someone "How did not being aborted affect you?" or "How does being white affect you?" or "How does having a mouth affect you?" or "How does being a woman affect you?" or "How does your disability affect you?" 

All she wanted, in her small, white, liberal arts, myopic view of the world, "where white people rule the world, it's wrong but true, but also I'm better than you" is some narrative of me working in some rice field, getting raped by a factory worker or dying in a fucking alley. Maybe even a little bit about eating dog. She was completely unhappy about my answer that being adopted was just normal for me and I knew better than to ask her, "So, how does not being aborted affect you?" though it's really the same question. It's just as inappropriate and hurtful, apparently life-changing, with no substantial evidence from the multiverse to prove our biased conjectures of the what-if universes of the world.

My other undergraduate interviewer was a black man. He saw my parents, then me, then started off the interview with, "I'm black, my wife is white. I'm a democrat, she's a republican. So...considering your situation, elaborate on that." I was floored. If I had come alone. If my parents were Asian. If I were white. If he hadn't seen my parents. Would this have been my question? What if I simply wasn't comfortable with talking about my adoption? Just because you can see I'm adopted doesn't mean it's your fucking god-given right to rip it out of me! The audacity of the ignorant. There's really nothing quite like it. But I wanted to get accepted into that school, so instead of being able to redirect the question or perhaps say a thing or two about why adoption was normal for me, I just made up some bullshit about oh yes, diversity was very important to me...considering my situation...yes, yes, yes. Very true. The thing is, these interviewers were not asking out of curiosity. They were, but despite their stupid "open-minded" banners plastered on every space of privilege painted halls, they were driving at something. Something, perhaps so otherworldly and deep, that only a $70,000 a year tuition would grant me this deep and profound knowledge. 

Having graduated undergraduate college, I can say I would have rather gone to a state school, or a private school that was more diverse. This was just ridiculous. I go from living in a diverse public school district, where no one gives a shit that I'm adopted, even the teachers didn't care and they all saw my parents during back-to-school night, (not to mention my last name), to a place where apparently everyone has a fucking safe space except for adoptees. Adoption is complicated and in a place that teaches students that diversity is something fascinating, inspiring, and eye-opening, anyone Other (that is non-white) becomes relegated to a human zoo specimen. I was no more than an attraction at a overly expensive summer camp for some of these raised-under-a-rock kids. My skin color marked me as Other and therefore a target for rude questions because apparently, my feelings don't matter. 

Instead of allowing students to naturally make friendships, the school pushed people to "go outside their comfort zone. My first roommate was a black and boy, did I learn a lot!" Suddenly, you're just meat on the chopping block. How do you say this in your country? Are you from Hong Kong? Can you speak Korean? What does this symbolize? Ooh, teach me how to make dumplings! Even professors treated me completely different from any of my all white classmates, deferring to me on all matters of "Eastern culture" like I was a spokesman for the Great Wall of China. It was in the way their eyes would linger after discussing "the East," throwaway comments about those hardworking Chinese students, or just blatant to my face "is this considered offensive in your culture?"

It was also just mindbendingly awkward at times. One time, this Indian kid asked me if I liked matcha because I was Asian and when I wasn't quick enough on my response, because I just like matcha because I'm me, he got really red and embarrassed, trying to justify why it wasn't racist because he too was Asian. I didn't really care, but he was beet red. Another time, this really annoying white girl, we'll call Karen, kept saying she tried bubble tea in my presence with this look like she earned a badge or something. Or another teacher, we'll just call Betty, who made an extra point to talk about Chinese takeout in front of me, like I was going to raise my hand and say, my parents own that Chinese place or some shit. And because it is just too personal and painful to get into why they shouldn't have these high horse opinions on my life, my family, or my birthfamily, I just don't even correct them with my adoption story. It's not wrong to bow to me because I'm adopted by white people, it's wrong because you shouldn't just bow to people you think are Asian, period! It's not wrong to make comments about the Chinese work ethic and drive and culture to me because I'm not raised with a stereotypical tiger mom. It's wrong because it would be wrong had they done it to any of my Chinese and Chinese American friends too! Explaining all of this would not have helped me in that type of close-minded environment. So I just didn't. One professor was convinced I was married to my dad until I had to explain I was adopted at age one. A-W-K-W-A-R-D.

Betty (same teacher) kept trying to discourage me from working hard, making rude comments about my high test scores and making it clear her disdain for tiger moms in some cultures. Instead of encouraging me to try my best and give it my all, like all the other kids, this professor actively went out of her way to make me feel like shit because I was apparently unable to understand that school wasn't everything, despite what I was "raised to believe." I never corrected her about being adopted by a white, stay-at-home mom and white father who only want me to be happy, because I didn't believe her pea-sized brain could handle that kind of semi-intelligent, multifaceted, nuanced thinking. 

I'm reaching out to DNA distant relatives now and they're no better. They're asking all these nosy questions and expecting certain answers and it's just really annoying. If they just want to hear a racist playback of their unfounded hot takes, then maybe they should start a vlog. Or a blog.

Adoptees and people with cool stories often do tell their stories to HUNY or the media...and that's fine. If they want to. But you only have to travel to the comment section to see that it makes regular people feel entitled to judge your entire life story. You might not even be Christian, but suddenly, it was all in Jesus' plan. Or maybe your complicated relationship with your stepfather is pitted against what they believe your mother should have done. God. It is so nosy. It also makes people believe they are trained, master interviewers and that I would also want to spill my guts on a park bench because my life is worth nothing more than a self-aggrandizing post on Instagram about learning and inspiration. 

It's the "Where are you REALLY from?" question through a kaleidoscope. The same assumption and entitlement and rudeness that signals that you are Other...that your life story is owed to them, that ding ding ding, they have determined in their infinite wisdom that you are different from them and that means their desires come first. It's not an adoptee-only problem, but it is a problem that we run into a lot.