I’ve already written extensively on how an individual doesn’t get to pick his or her parents: you are stuck with the family and opportunities you are born into. I’ve noticed this to be a recurring theme in this blog: maybe I’m just not satisfied with what was bestowed upon me, but I think that’s a pretty common feeling too. A person shares similar genetics as their kin; however, the choices one makes in life are not predetermined by genes alone. You are not destined to repeat the same actions as your predecessors. I think this is especially true in a society like America where freedom is cherished and protected.
Growing up, my parents exerted a very authoritarian form of upbringing that is common amongst the Chinese. There’s a saying that a person’s parental style reflects the government that that individual was raised under or inhabits. If the government is authoritarian, which the Communist Party of China is, then the parental style tends to be more authoritarian. Thus, I never placed blame on my parents for raising me the way they did; they were just doing what was done to them.
However, we are not in China, and I am, technically, not Chinese (anymore) either. Chinese is–primarily–a nationality, not a race or ethnicity (though some consider it to be the latter in certain context). As a child who was not educated to read or write Chinese and who has abjured my Chinese citizenship, I am no longer Chinese. If anything, I am Asian American, a much broader category of people than the Chinese label. To keep implying that I’m Chinese–and some people still do–is ignorance. In America, the entire Asian community seems to have melded together, which makes complete sense because most of us don’t really speak our native tongue, nor are we fully engaged in our culture of origin. This is a melting pot, after all.
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