Asian stereotypes are everywhere. More often than not, if you see an Asian American depicted on the screen, you’ll also see an Asian stereotype. These stereotypes are unrealistic and offensive, but unfortunately they often fall under the popular radar and go unnoticed and unquestioned. One of the most pervasive Asian stereotypes is that Asian Americans are foreigners who cannot be assimilated. Because Asian Americans are racially and culturally distinctive from the American mainstream, so / and they have been widely seen as unable to be absorbed into American society. According to this view, anything Asians do is thus inherently “alien” to America. For instance, mainstream TV and movie often portray Asian Americans as being “unassimilated”, or having “exotic” qualities like martial arts ability, accented English, and a propensity (嗜好) for eating strange things. The problem in my experience is that these few portrayals end up being what people expect of me, and other Asian Americans, too. When people look at me, they expect something that I am not – they expect an exotic “other” that doesn’t belong “here”, that is, in the United States. I often encounter people who assume that I’m either an immigrant restaurant worker or an international student at the local university – two things that place an immigrant or foreign identity on me, even though I’m an American citizen and have been living in the US my entire life. The stereotype of Asian Americans as foreign or “other” is embedded in American culture and passes by unnoticed. My identity as an Asian American becomes invisible. It creates a divide between who I am and how I am perceived – it’s like my US citizenship status is dictated by my appearance and my ethnic background. How do we fix these things? We should become more aware. We think about them and talk about them. We maybe even yell about them. We acknowledge how these representations make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves, or, in the best cases, proud to be who we are. As people of color, we should fight for the right to our own identities and who we are. It’s an ongoing process: think, talk, yell, and fight.