“So, do you have any non-Asian friends?”
The question caught me off guard. It was freshman year winter break and my hometown friends were doing a “friend tour,” flipping through our camera rolls and lore-dropping on our new college friend groups.
At first, I was upset — was she accusing me of being prejudiced somehow? But when I scrolled through the photos myself, I saw what she meant. Every smiling face beside mine was South or East Asian. They were all children of highly educated immigrants, mostly from competitive high schools in the suburbs on either of the coasts or in university towns. We were similar in race, culture, socioeconomic status and political affiliation … Just like the majority of my friends from Arizona…