A Decade In: My Reflections as an Asian American Teacher in Harlem in These Times

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As an Asian American teacher working in a public school with predominantly black and brown students, I’m placed again in a complicated racial hierarchy that doesn’t like to name itself. I am rather anomalous in Harlem, but as a teacher of the African American Civil Rights Movement, I am freakish. Once I referred to myself as a person of color, only to be greeted with an involuntary snort from one of my students.

To the the Dimly Lit Fusion Restaurant and To My People:

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Wait. I wasn’t sure. What kind of restaurant is this?

Just to clarify: I love Asian Fusion New York City-type establishments where’s it’s one stop shopping for the all things Asian and probably stir-fried. I’ve been to many an establishment in New York City where I enter the dimly lit foyer to some familiar pop music, sparking new tile glint and the table, black chopsticks rest upon a matching holder. The restaurant is so dark, you can’t see where your soy sauce container is. The waitresses yes the crap out of the diners and then yap away in Mandarin or Fujian to their bosses as they serve you the perfunctory miso soup and edamame.

Whenever you find a restaurant with a ‪#‎fobby‬ name of any kind, you know it’s owned by Chinese people. These are all over my neighborhood and all over pre-dominantly white neighborhoods: the Asian Fusion Take Out Upgrade owned by my people.

I’ve been to Italian restaurants owned by Chinese people and yes, to me, it seemed passable but not to my Italian American husband/partner/dude guy. So you know the rules. If the said ethnic says a said ethnic restaurant isn’t good; one cries “Inauthentic!”

But when you go to a Japanese restaurant owned by Chinese people, there’s this default belief that by virtue of the cooks being Asiatic, the food would fare better. Okay maybe a little better than that Chinese Parm…I mean Chicken Parm. 

What I don’t get is this: why don’t these Chinese people just make really good Chinese food and stop being fake sushi chefs? I’m not arguing that Chinese people can’t be sushi chefs, of course, gastronomy is universal. Rather, there’s a deficit of real rib sticking good Chinese food in non-Chinese markets. What are we afraid of?

I think humanity would really benefit from my people just getting real with others.

Make that Fujianese or Cantonese food, but make sure it’s good. Be proud and charge like the Japanese and Koreans do.

Turn up the lights! Keep the tables sticky and leave the bone on the meat! I want menus scribbled in Chinese and I want the shame to wash over me as I point desperately at it. Humanity!

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Here’s some Chinese! Although I don’t think anyone that would actually know how to read the characters who go here to eat.

Alas, make those changes but  keep my Bento box lunch special on the menu though: chicken teriyaki and fried shumai. Soup. And a fortune cookie.