But I am Yellow

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The following article was written in response to recent discussions about race that appeared on my school’s newspaper, Maroon News. The article was written from the perspective of an international student from China. It was also submitted to the newspaper for publication. But in case it never gets published or only appears in a highly edited version, I have decided to publish the original article here.

Sometimes I want to be Black. Sometimes I want to be White. Unfortunately, I can’t be either because I am Yellow.

I wasn’t always Yellow though. Nobody called me Yellow when I was in China, probably because everybody around me was Yellow too – everybody except those naughty boys who spent so much time running round the school yard that their skin became as dark as coal or those pretty girls who wore so much make-up and lotion every day that their skin turned as fair as snow. But nobody called them by colors, either.

Colors are arbitrary categories put along a continuous spectrum. You can’t categorize people arbitrarily, so you can’t call people by colors.

Or maybe you can. At least that was what I learned when I first arrived in America. People here are known by colors. There are Black people. There are White people. There are Brown people. I was eager to figure out what my color was, because I was desperate to become part of the American culture.

So I asked around and people told me, “You’re Yellow”. But “Wait!” they added, “You can’t use that term though, it’s racist”.

I was confused. Why am I “Yellow”? And why is calling somebody Yellow “racist”? What does “racist” even mean?

Yellow people have yellow skins. But my skin is fairer than many White people’s (at least fairer than those with fake tans). Yellow people have slanted eyes. But I think my eyes are quite horizontal. And they are big, watery and pretty. Yellow people eat General Tso’s Chicken and Fortune Cookies. But I didn’t even know what those things were until I came here. Yellow people confuse “l”s and “r”s when they talk. But…l l l l l…r r r r r… See! I can tell the difference.

I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t find a single part of my body that is uniquely Yellow. (Don’t even try to make that size joke. Don’t.) Maybe it is EVERYTHING about me put together that makes me Yellow. But if it’s indeed everything about me, how could they be summarized, represented and conveyed by a single word?

Slowly, I figured things out. It doesn’t matter what my color is. The whole color thing is just an American way to promote racial diversity. And racial diversity is a big deal in America. If you are a company, a school or an organization who wants to succeed in America, you’d better make sure the photo banner on your website has a White person, a Black person, a Brown person and a Yellow person standing next to each other and smiling happily. If you have to use Photoshop, use it. Or else, people may start calling you racist. You certainly do not want to be called a racist in America.

Suddenly, I saw the genius in calling people by colors. Colors are great for categorizing people, precisely because they are arbitrary. They allow you to group people in any way you like so that you can say each group is totally different from another while all the members in the same group are extremely alike. After that, all you need to do is to pick one member out of each group and put them together. Ta-dah! You now have diversity.

With a simple trick, you managed to manufacture – no, fabricate diversity out of a single species whose members are all different from – or similar to – one another.

It’s easy. It’s smart. It’s convenient. It’s American. So I learned.

Nowadays I can identity what somebody’s color is with a single glance. He is Black. She is Brown. He is Yellow. She is White. I heard there are also Red people. But I have yet to meet one. That must be a rare color to have on your skin.

I feel like a psychic, seeing who people are – or what they are – with a single glance.

But I am still baffled by one little thing – I don’t see Black people very often. I am baffled because according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the American population is made up of 12.6% Black persons in 2010. However, in 2010, I went to a couple of bars along the Jersey shore, but I didn’t see the 12.6% there. I also attended a number of American house parties that year, but I didn’t see the 12.6% there either. I tried to find them in those fancy restaurants I went to, but nope, the 12.6% were not there either. Maybe they were hiding at Colgate classrooms? But I remember taking so many classes at Colgate where not a single person in the class was Black.

It’s partly my fault, I guess. Most of the classes I took at Colgate are Economics, Mathematics and Psychology classes. Maybe Black people are not supposed to be in those classes. But why not?

In 2010, I was fortunate enough to work with a psychology professor at Colgate. He maintained a face database of more than 100 Colgate students. At that time, he was working on a project that aimed to study how people perceive faces of different racial groups and I was put in charge of picking faces out of the database to create experiment stimuli. But I failed. I couldn’t find enough Black faces.

How many did I need?

6.

I needed 6 Black faces, but I couldn’t find them out of a database with more than 100 Colgate students, all smiling.

But I know that 12.6% number is not a lie. Those Black people are out there. I hear them when I turn to a Hip-Hop radio station. I see them when I watch an NBA match on TV. I feel them when I walk through certain parts of American cities and towns.

Sometimes, they are nowhere. Other times, they are everywhere.

Segregation. I guess that’s the word people use to describe this phenomenon. But the segregation between White and Black Americans seems so much wider and deeper than that between any other racial groups. It’s social. It’s economic. It’s cultural. It’s educational. It’s historical.

And people know that. Every time “race” is talked about in America, it’s almost always Black vs. White. That’s why I sometimes want to be Black or White just to know what it is like to be part of a conflict, what it feels like to be part of a problem.

Only if the problem were as black and white as it seems.

That was partly the reason why when the recent discussion about race first broke out on campus, I was nonplussed. Yes, Greek societies may indeed lack the kind of racial diversity that many people are hoping for, but how are they different from the rest of Colgate campus? More importantly, how is Colgate different from the rest of America?

And then the discussion turned heated. Response articles were written. Responses to response articles were published. “Racist” comments were posted online. (I still don’t fully understand that term.) Those comments were soon removed, as if they never happened.

It was then that I started looking around me. I am a student at Colgate University, one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in America whose campus is voted the most beautiful in the country and whose graduates make more money than even some of the Ivy League graduates. Why shouldn’t Colgate be different from the rest of America?

Like so many racial problems in America, maybe this one will eventually boil down to a Black vs. White problem. If so, maybe we should focus specifically on the relationship between Black students and White students on campus. But even that would lead to nowhere. The more we think in racial terms, the more we are admitting that one racial group is fundamentally different from another. The more we think in racial terms, the more likely we will become trapped in the racial deadlock America has been experiencing since…well, a long time ago.

What we should be thinking about is that one group of students on campus seems to be much happier and more satisfied with their Colgate life than another group. It just so happens that one of the groups is being called Black, the other, White.

But what would I know? I am Yellow after all. Whatever that means.