#tokenasian

I’ve been professionally developed a lot lately. Most trainings in my field start out with participants introducing themselves and the trainer establishing group guidelines or asking for everybody’s input on how they want to hold space together for the remainder of the training.

At the beginning of a recent training I was at, the trainer had three things listed on flip paper that they wanted us to talk about during our introductions. There were:

Name

Title/What you do

Where you were born

For people unfamiliar with trainings, the third one may seem irrelevant or like a big leap from the second item. Typically, the idea is to “break the ice,” get people comfortable with each other, talking about something besides what they’re at the training for, in hopes of creating a learning environment where they feel comfortable and can then soak in all the information and leave at the end of the day, professionally developed.

The third prompt had the exact opposite affect on me. Maybe that’s why when I stood up to introduce myself to 27 strangers, I omitted it. Before I could sit down though, someone from another one of the circle tables in the hotel conference room shouted out, “Where were you born?!”

“OH, Seoul Korea,” I added, as if the third prompt had really just escaped my mind.

My lack of just saying my birth place to begin with ended up making a moment that emphasized the very fact about myself that I wanted to keep on the down low. I should clarify here that the reason I resisted sharing this information is not because I’m ashamed of where I was born. Really, I was concerned with people approaching me to ask questions that I could answer on behalf of all the people of Asia. Yes, I was afraid of becoming the TOKEN ASIAN in the room.

After everyone introduced themselves, the trainer commented, “Well, it sounds like we have people from all over the United States...and Korea.”