Nathan Kim

My Experiences of Being Raced and Doing Ethnicity

When people ask me where Im from, I tell them this:
I was born in South Korea, on a U.S. military base in Pusan. We (my family) moved to
Hawaii for a short while, and then five different places around the Bay Area, California for the
next ten years. For eight years after that, we lived in Virginia. This comprised late elementary
and high school. Afterwards, I left for Grinnell College in Iowa, while my parents and sister
moved to China. Ive spent about three years in Iowa, and one in China.
What they might mean with this question is what my ethnicity is. Yet, I feel that even this
question fails to get at anything about me, much less how I would prefer to be treated. We
learned a bit about the power the process of naming has this semester, and how naming a
subject locates him or her with a hierarchy. For people of ambiguous race, naming has a more
varied effect. Im interested in how this phenomenon is affected by geography, and how even
the tools we use in class can play into essentializing race narratives when we neglect to see
each locality from the ground up. While Im not racially ambiguous, calling me Korean,
American, or Asian would prove to be grossly inadequate, reliant on the context.
Place me in a room of Koreans, and youll find I become an American here when I dont
speak the same language. Put me in China, and theyll call me Korean first, and then an
American. Put me in America, and Ill be called Asian. Around a bunch of Asians in San
Francisco, Im Korean. So then, what am I? What should you call me? I have no right answer. If
anything, the question begs the same in return. We can unite in identifying with our differences,
and become aware of our privileges more easily if we recognize our complicity as individuals in
generating larger social dynamics labeled as -isms.
Lost in Translation: Meet an Asian Man
I chose this as my title in order to frame the topic of my video. The entirety of the film is
meant to contrast with perceptions one might have of what an Asian is. I must emphasize that
when I say an Asian, I mean, meet me--a person raced as Asian or really, non-white-blackbrown-red. Thus I am attempting to portray an absence, and not a presence. Asian only works
as an identifier provided the speaker sees it as a foreign other. I address an othering audience,
and attempt to confront them with their preconceptions through cognitive dissonance.
Motivation
Im trying to queer the race narrative surrounding ethnicity, race, culture, and religion by
providing a narrative that is not essentially good. I want to complicate things, as they often are in
our daily interactions. And this is not an entirely hostile act, though there is that element to it. I
want the viewer to also look at their own life in scrutiny, to recognize and internalize this feeling
of separation from others, and to then be able to look at others with the same respect for how

they would like to be seen. We have categories of race, ethnicity, and gender that no one really
belongs to in or for themselves. Thus, disidentifying on the personal level with ethnicity
becomes central to understanding each other. Ethnicity as a personal identification is still as of
yet, biological. It isnt the result of anything you do. Race and ethnicity however can be strong
political identifications, as it by definition labels a group of people treated and seen as uniform.
This line needs to be more explicitly drawn as the U.S. population becomes more homogenous.
Storyline
I start out with two clips repeating the phrase where are you from to frame how the rest
of the footage might be interpreted. Everything but these two clips are my own film recordings,
taken from a first-person perspective.The America segment of the childrens video is repeated to
emphasize how strange it is that the countries of America and Australia should be represented
by white men. Americas characterization is a man attired as a cowboy, located presumably
somewhere in the midwest, judging by the presence of a barn in the background. The other two
countries are shown in traditional dress. So, the question Where are you from?, might in
reference to America and Australia be additionally, How the fuck did you end up over there?
and What the hell are you?
The last half of the video refers to the symbolic and literal ocean of difference between
my grandparents and parents generation with mine. It is first referenced with idyllic footage of
Grinnell in real time, fluctuating with footage of China as a time lapse. Both of these are from the
window of my room, representing this divided notion I have of home. I sleep and eat here, but
my parents live there. The next scene is of the ocean, the waves on the beach suggesting the
transient nature of memory, especially when traumatic. The overlaid scenes are from the
Korean War, the aftermath of which is largely what motivated both sides of my family to relocate
several times. I am still feeling the reverberations of conflict, but it is more like the gentle lapping
of the relatively calm water.
Im at a concert in the last scene interrupted with footage of me walking, suggesting in
part the nature of being a subject of experience. This segment is not linear, to suggest being in
multiple places at once in my mind, constantly flitting from past to present.
References
Im also referencing the theme of globalization from Fugitive Denim, and addressing
some of the issues Ive had all semester with our textbooks emphasis on assimilation theory, it
being inherently white-centric.
Conclusion:
While I would have liked to be able to talk more about my family history, it wouldnt fit in.
What I want the viewer to take in by the end is a lot more than they are comfortable with, given
the common use of the initial question where are you from? The film itself should serve as a
tabula rasa of sorts, since we all generate narratives from juxtaposed elements. Thus it
becomes a vehicle for scrutinizing our own experiences and subjectivities in reference to race.