KAGC Student Spotlight: Joseph, Clark
The Korean culture I took for granted growing up because of its abundance was all I could find myself clinging onto as I found myself surrounded by a much larger majority of people who did not look like me.
I’ve grown up in a childhood of privilege. I was born in Southern California to parents of Korean descent who established themselves as successful immigrants to America long before I was born, and we lived in a nice Orange County neighborhood surrounded by other successful immigrants from around the world, but mostly also from Korea.
Growing up in the abundance of this comfort and diversity made it feel like the norm. Most of what I saw in my community were successful immigrants who were easily fitting in, and I didn’t learn much else that was different about the immigrant experience from school history lessons. We didn’t talk about the Chinese Exclusion Act, the internment of Japanese Americans, or about the further racial tensions of which Asian Americans found themselves in the middle. Life was good where I grew up, and I didn’t think about what life was like outside this bubble for immigrant families elsewhere, let alone about what kind of history there was for my family and others before I was born.
The mentality that my parents have shared with me is that they do not want me to go through the same hardships they did. This makes perfect sense on the level of parents who want their child to live more comfortably than they did, but I’ve found that history feels covered up when not discussed. It’s made me falsely believe that hardships of the past are irrelevant because of a perceived completed progress, so I find it important to not cover up or flatten out troubled histories, especially when problems of the past crop up in new ways during our present.
I first came to these realizations when I left my comfortable Southern California bubble to attend college at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Korean culture I took for granted growing up because of its abundance was all I could find myself clinging onto as I found myself surrounded by a much larger majority of people who did not look like me. I never thought about the idea of fitting in during my childhood because it came so naturally, but I found myself in college constantly thinking about this. For the first time, I felt that immigrant moment of being plopped somewhere completely foreign. It made me wonder, what other hardships are immigrants and their children facing when living in a place where they feel they do not fit?
When I returned to Southern California after my first year of college, I had the opportunity to work with a community that lacked representation in our government. I connected the dots and made the conclusion that this was an important issue. How do people fit in if they don’t have a voice in the public sphere? In the summer of 2017, I found myself in one of the roots of my immigrant community, Koreatown, Los Angeles, where an open congressional seat was being campaigned for by a Korean American candidate. There were no Korean Americans in Congress at the time, and I found myself helping many Koreatown residents vote for the first time. We didn’t win that election, but I am proud that we provided many people with an entryway to have their voices better heard by assisting voter registrations, often for the first time in their lives.
Now that my understanding of Congress and key issues of our community have deepened over the past three years, I look back at that experience with a different perspective and more questions. It was certainly thrilling at the time to see someone of Korean descent run for a seat in Congress. But, learning about Rep. Jimmy Gomez who went onto win the seat in 2017, I’ve come to realize that it’s not so much what the candidate looks like, but what they stand for. More importantly, it’s how much we engage our elected officials and how close we work together, rather than how close we resemble in physical appearances.
It was shortly after this experience that I was able to connect with other Korean American college students interested in political representation and public policy at the 2018 KAGC U Leadership Summit. The students there broadened my perspective by sharing about their upbringings, their own community issues, and their diverse opinions on what work there’s left to be done for our Korean American community. The summit was also an opportunity to hear about all the Asian American history that wasn’t offered to me in school. Excluding Chinese immigrants in a misguided fear of the foreign. Holding Japanese Americans in suspicion for their ethnicity. Korean Americans in the middle of tragic racial tensions without government response during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. How can I continue to live comfortably after learning about this past, its connections to the present, and all that my community is facing outside of my bubble?
The answer is, I can’t. The only way I can continue to live in comfort is if I am able to utilize my privilege and resources for those who do not have either. I have not succeeded if my community has not succeeded, and there is much work left to be done not only for my Korean American community, but also for all those who lack representation in setting forth their priorities onto the public policy agenda. It is only when all people have their voices heard that we can truly include everyone in the moving forward of this country. We must not be silent on reiterations of racism that continue to appear, and we must not take for granted our status as Americans who deserve to be treated as such. As a mentor at KAGC has shared with me, advocating for these issues does not have to be a job or career, but is rather a consistent practice in our daily lives. I’m thankful to have become informed about my Korean American community, and I will bring these lessons with me wherever I go.
I find it important to not cover up or flatten out troubled histories, especially when problems of the past crop up in new ways during our present.
Joseph is a senior at Clark University, where he will be graduating this summer with a degree in Political Science and a minor in English. Joseph joined the 2018 KAGC U Leadership Summit, where he connected with 58 other students representing 32 universities across the U.S. to learn about the history and status of the Korean American community. Joseph will be beginning as a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School this fall.
Click here to learn more about KAGC, the largest nationwide network of Korean American voters, and its upcoming 2020 National Conference, for a rare opportunity to share the Korean American identity, discuss the key issues of our community, and get our voices heard, counted, and reflected in public policy.
