I’m an Asian American with Autism. Why the “Model Minority” Label Never Suited Me
Like most Asian American kids, I was told to get good grades and be respectful to authority. Unlike other Asian American kids, doing and saying the right thing was not always easy for me.
That was partly because when I was three years old, I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. My entire life, I struggled to fit in. Not just among my peers in school, but also with my family.
In light of the horrific anti-Asian hate crimes that have made headlines recently, I have been reckoning with the ignorance that I have been faced with, and how members of family added to the pain this ignorance caused me by discouraging me to feel any pain at all.
It is not in our nature to speak out when we are hurting inside. Even if we do, we are told to keep our chins up and move forward.
It is not in our nature to accept failure. Even if we fail, we are told that we have to rise above.
While each of these things sounds like a positive way to deal with adversity, going down these routes can lead us down a broken path in the end.
Once I was diagnosed with autism, I was put in behavioral therapy programs that were designed to help me overcome some of the social and behavioral issues often associated with the condition. While I am grateful for these programs, they only made me stick out even more when I first started going to school.
Now, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that little kids are racist, but leaving the brown kid alone at the playground is a form of discrimination. It certainly didn’t help that I was also the “weird” kid in school.
Whenever I went home, my parents showered me with affection, but the rest of the local Indian community looked at me with condescension. We were seldom invited to cultural festivals and gatherings, if at all.
Either way, I felt as though I wasn’t good enough to belong in my own group or in anyone else’s. Academically, it was basically the same story.
In high school, I was put in special education classes, but I was also enrolled in select “typical” classes. This put me in a lifelong conundrum of feeling like I wasn’t smart enough to live up to the academic standards often set for my Asian Americans peers.
I also gave my teachers a hard time. I got into fights with other kids at school, and acted out if I didn’t get the grades I sought after, the parts in school plays, or the friends and boys I wanted. I would act out because I wasn’t able to properly express myself. Nonetheless, I most definitely was not the model minority in those moments.
When I went to college, I befriended a group of people who seemed lively and fun. We partied together and they helped me get out of my comfort zone, but the fun didn’t last long.
Being in a largely Catholic college, I was mocked by these so-called friends for being raised Hindu and for different customs in my culture. An ex-boyfriend who I met through that group made fun of my parents’ accents behind their backs.
Yet I never spoke out and defended myself. I couldn’t speak out because I was told when I was younger to ignore hateful comments. I let this behavior persist and allowed it to create toxic and abusive relationships in my life.
Eventually, I learned that I do have a voice, and I can speak out when I and other people I know are being hurt. It’s the reason why I became a writer. I wanted to channel my anger and disgust with living in an intolerant world in a healthy way, by helping uplift both myself and others who have also been affected by discrimination.
