How I Rediscovered my Ethnic Heritage, Why I Continue to Rediscover it

I just finished reading Edward Gilbreath’s Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity. Good quick read. I’d highly recommend it.  One quote stuck out to me since I teach at an evangelical Christian college: “At an evangelical Christian college, you either adopt the idioms and conventions of the wider culture or you go someplace else. In fact, many of my fellow African American students did. By my sophomore year, there was almost a complete turnover in minority students.” Gilbreath recalls his own journey as a black man in white evangelical culture – attending a predominantly white Christian college and his own rediscovery of his ethnic heritage.

I grew up in SF and into my teen years my closest “school friends” were Asian (mostly Chinese) or white. My “church friends” were all Korean because I attended a Korean church. Although my high school was composed of mostly Asians (50% Chinese alone), the “cool kids” still tended to be white (we didn’t have cool black kids b/c we didn’t hardly had any). As an Asian male you generally have two options if you want to be cool: 1) Be a gangster; 2) Be white (when I was in high school cool white meant preppy). The movie Better Luck Tomorrow (BLT) explores this issue extremely well. Me a gangster? I couldn’t if I tried. So I wore a letterman jacket, not a Starters jacket. Penny loafers instead of Air Jordans. But as the movie BLT portrays, it is difficult for even the most extraordinary of Asian males to break into the cool white crowd (dynamics tend to differ somewhat for females). E.g., I lettered in cross-country, not football (our football team sucked anyway – in my 4 years in school we won a total of 3 games).

In my 20s my interests and concerns turned toward the church. I began to be intimately involved in Korean-American ministries. Here though I and many others would face the frustrations of working under 1st generation leadership and feeling marginal in relation to the American church. The way I saw it, the white church was the promised land free from all the problems plaguing Korean American ministries. So when I moved to Chicago Sarah and immediately joined a white church. Throughout our 5 years there we flip flopped. We left the white church to join an EM (English Ministry within a Korean Church), then left to join another white church, then finally settled at an Asian American church. What made Sarah and I finally leave the white church altogether was the birth of Micah. Usually the 1st Sunday that a newborn is brought to church is a big deal for the parents in our church experience. We were accustomed to approaching the parents newborn, congratulating them, if possible holding the baby, etc. Our pastor announced that it was Micah’s first day at the church. But at the close of service hardly anyone approached us.  We then realized that we could stay at this church for years and still be strangers. That was o.k. for us as a married couple since we had friends outside the church but now that we had children we wanted a church family. And I had been tipped off by an Asian friend at the church, who even served as an elder, move away and express that his friendships were going to be minimal even though he had been at the church for years.

My oldest brother lives in Korea where he teaches at a seminary (it’s in the Lim blood). I visited in the Winter of 05 for his wedding. That trip was transformational. I visited Korea once before in 84. This was pre-Seoul Olympics, pre-World Cup. And I was a 12 year old brat who was only interested in video games, toys, and ice cream. I had a miserable experience and left with the impression that America is always better. This time was much different. Korea has changed dramatically – it is now highly industrialized. Technology there easily rivals what is available in the States. Their megachurches are models for American church planters. But it wasn’t so much the bling bling that impressed me. What economic success has brought to Korea is the freedom and confidence to assert their own identity in fashion, music, film, etc. Certainly there is a still a chasing after Western influences (e.g., academically the country still looks to the West), but by no means is the country longing for all things Western. Going to the new National Korea museum in Seoul had a powerful effect on me. I had been to the Asian Arts Museum in SF as a kid, but this was solely devoted to Korean history, culture, and art.

Now I teach at a evangelical institution and one of my projects for the upcoming year will be to help start an Asian American fellowship/club. My concern is for students who may be like Gilbreath – assimilating merely out of social survival. My goals for the club – to provide a safe place where you can be Asian. It took a village for me to earn my PhD. My family, churches, private donors gave so that I could complete my degree. So I have a communal responsibility in my job. I have a responsibility to my community not merely to give back but also  help recreate the landscape for the next generation. So my job has compelled me to explore my ethnicity because others are looking to me to help them understand their own. Because I’m so ignorant of my own heritage I’ve looked into taking classes in Asian American History/Thought at UW. But that will be in another lifetime – way too much to do right now.