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When I started kindergarten was when I realized that I was part of other cultures that were not
American. From that point on until my early teenage years, I tried very hard to distance myself
French, Korean, and Vietnamese culture as much as possible and try to be more American.
Throughout elementary and part of middle school, most of the students and teachers alike would
constantly poke fun at aspects of my culture. From speaking in gibberish in what they assumed
my language sounded like to mockingly bowing down to me, it made me feel that my culture
was degrading and inferior. There was even a point in elementary school where my classmates
and even my teacher didnt refer to me by my first name but called me Vietnam instead.
However, the main thing that made me want to be more American was that the majority of the
people that would be racist against my culture were non-Americans. I felt like they particularly
made fun of my culture, but all these non-Americans also did the same thing to other cultures
that they were not a part of. It made me have this mentality that the only culture worth anything
was American culture because nobody demeaned any aspects of American culture. Every single
country around the world paid attention to American culture, but hardly any paid attention to
another country. This attitude led me to forego French and Korean which were two of the three
languages that I spoke fluently prior to English. I couldnt avoid speaking Vietnamese because
that was the only language my parents could comprehend. I would never watch a movie or show
that was not American, and the only type of music I would listen to had to be in English. It was
to the point where the only aspect of my culture that I retained was the food. However, I hardly
knew anything about my culture besides the food and language. Five years old was too young to
really know the culture and that was when I started to feel embarrassed about my culture, so I did
not bother to know more about it. Not only did my ignorance and revulsion made me despise my
own culture, but it made me feel indifferent to other cultures. Even though I did not detest

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cultures that I did not belong to, I still felt like American culture was superior, so regardless, it
was still a very racist outlook.
It was not until 8th grade that I met someone in school who was so open about their own culture.
Jieun and I sat next to each other on the first day of math class because we were the only two in
there who did not know anyone else. She was born and raised in South Korea, but she is of South
African and Thai descent. In addition to English, she could speak Korean, Thai, and Afrikaans. It
was pretty common to hear her speak in one of her tongues in public to other students who could
speak it in the class. She liked that her first name sounded very foreign and the fact that she was
part of so many different cultures. I actually thought it was interesting that she was so diverse,
but at the same time, I was not curious about her culture nor did I want to know more about it.
During that class period, she kept on complaining about how my iPod was filled with nothing but
American music and that I should listen to something else. Foreign music was something that
never crossed my mind, and it didnt sound appealing to me at all. Ive never listened to anything
but American music my whole life, so I did want to listen to at least one foreign song just to hear
what it sounded like.
I browsed through Jieuns YouTube channel when I got home from school to look through her
favorites and see what type of music she listened to. About eighty percent of the videos were
Korean music videos which Ive never watched before in my life. I randomly clicked on one
called Tell Me by Wonder Girls. Because of the title, I assumed that the song would be sung in
English, but there was only one line in English in the chorus. It sounded like a modern pop song
with a fast tempo, and the dance choreography was interesting with an innocent cutesy schoolgirl
concept to it. It didnt sound like anything I expected it to be, and I was even more surprised
when one of the girls actually rapped. For some reason, I thought rapping was something that

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only American singers did. It bothered me that I could not understand a word that was sung
because I used to be able to fluently speak this language, but I ended up replaying the music
video four more times anyway. I ended up watching other K-Pop groups as well such as Girls
Generation, Super Junior, and Big Bang, and I loved every single song that I heard. Even though
I couldnt comprehend anything, the beats were so catchy that I couldnt get it out of my head.
Every single music video had a dance choreography which made it more entertaining. I was still
stunned that I genuinely liked something from my culture that was not food.
? Because of Korean entertainment, I eventually started to learn more about other aspects
of Korean culture that I was ignorant of before such as its history, holidays, and traditions. I also
ended up being able to speak a little bit of Korean as well as writing in Hangul. Ultimately, I
started paying attention to Vietnamese and French culture as well as other cultures. It was to the
point that I had songs in twenty-four different languages on my iPod. Everyone in my group of
friends in high school were all of a different ethnicity from each other, and my roommate for the
past two years of college so far is Indian. My most favorite TV events now involve different
countries coming together such as Eurovision and the FIFA World Cup. If Im really bored one
day, I like to learn a random language and learn about a country I dont know anything about.
Whenever I stayed at my parents house, I would try to cook food of a different culture every
week.
Because I had the mentality that American culture was superior to my culture, it made me
feel the same way about other non-American cultures. If I couldnt respect my own culture, how
can I have respect for other cultures if I felt like American culture was the only one worth
knowing about? My ignorance and racism prevented me from bothering to know about another
culture. I was one of those people who let a few certain individuals completely skew my view of

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entire cultures. Ive missed out on so many things that I came to love, and all it took was a music
video from a Korean girl group to change my opinions.