As a senior international student at the College, I spent more than three years acculturating myself to the standards and perspectives of my white domestic friends. It took some time to realize that the frustration I had didn’t stem only from their disappointing participation in discourse related to race, but with their refusals to engage with my racial and cultural identity.
Some people who I called my best friends for three years continuously failed to show up. Whether it was to multicultural events, panel discussions or just being present in conversation, they demonstrated a lack of effort in looking past their standards. What that meant for me, was three years of adjusting myself to meet their standards through erasure of my Japanese identity. In other words, it was three years of pretending to be a white American girl.
It wasn’t too hard at first because I arrived in the United States thinking I was basically one anyway. I’d gone to an American school, which meant I spoke English without an accent and had been surrounded by American classmates. In my head, I was essentially one of them. But the more time I spent with my white domestic friends, the more I realized the glaring gap that existed between our cultural identities. As those months turned into years, I realized that the attempts of bridging this gap had become a “me” problem, rather than an “us” problem.
There were various Netflix comedy specials cued up in my list and dozens of SNL comedy sketches opened in the tabs of my browser, for the sole purpose of learning more about their standards of humor just to be comfortable within conversations. Because every time I didn’t understand a reference, or every time they cracked a joke that I didn’t find funny, I was reminded of how I was the “other.” But how many Japanese shows had they watched?
The answer is always not enough. When I showed them a funny clip from a show back home, it would be followed with, “I’m sure it’s funny if I understood it.” The point, though, is to try to understand it. Because that’s what international students are doing every day. We’re trying to understand the jokes, we’re trying to understand American culture, we’re trying to compromise our cultural identity to ingratiate ourselves within the United States.
But let me ask my white domestic friends this: why have some of you found yourself incapable of engaging in discourse about my racial and cultural identity for the entirety of the time we’ve been friends? Were you friends with me, or with the part of me that was “American?”
I specify white domestic friends, because I have found that the domestic students of color have been more willing to engage in discourse about cultures outside of their own. I assume that this difference lies in the white domestic students’ comfort of being the norm. Why actively situate oneself in a position of discomfort, where one is forced to learn from others about foreign subject matter, when one is privileged enough to expect others to accommodate them instead?
I’ve found that students of color, who have already experienced marginalization, are more willing to look beyond their bubble. Domestic students of color are also part of the people who acculturate themselves to the white norm after all.
My white domestic friends need to question why they haven’t been asking me about my identity and experiences with identity translation in the United States. Is it because you didn’t know how to ask? Or is it because you find it easier to be friends with people who are like you?
Meg Itoh, an Editor in Chief for the Voice, can be reached for comment at MItoh18@wooster.edu.