I am one of those.

As I was trying to squeeze every last drop of juice out of a ripe lemon, a man named Dave chatted me up. A little distracted with keeping seeds out of my lemonade pitcher, I made polite small talk interspersed with emphatic “mmm hmms” and “uh huhs.” Dave was a guest at my house, albeit a tangentially invited one. The occasion was "A Cookout We Can Believe In," an event with dual (sometimes dueling) purposes. First, it was intended to provide a chance for us to get to know our neighbors, and my house invited the whole block over for burgers and hot dogs. Second, it was meant to cultivate unity for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. (Something like 3,000 such “house parties” were being held on June 28, 2008, throughout the country.) Honestly, I was more excited about the former goal, as campaign organizing sometimes feels coercive to me. However, my roommate Cody somehow manages to muster enough excitement about the electoral process to work occasionally for Obama’s campaign, and who was I to rain on his parade? (I left that to Mother Nature.)

Dave found out about our cookout from Barack Obama’s campaign website, so he was one of the 5 people who showed up out of pure Obamamania, not by virtue of living on this block or having a personal connection to me or a housemate. I was stirring an absurd quantity of sugar into the lemonade when Dave asked me what I was doing after my Fellowship. I explained to him that I was going to medical school at Harvard, which prompted him to ask me where I went to college. I told him that I graduated from Yale in 2007 and was about to betray the alma mater in moving closer to Lamebridge.

“Oh,” Dave said to me, “I know who you are. You’re one of those.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him in response, half-surprised, yet still half-disinterested.
“My ex-wife graduated from Berkeley,” he explained, “and she told me that 40% of the students were Asians.”

At this point, he had my full attention. But I didn’t know what to say. Here I was, just trying to make lemonade, and this random person had pigeonholed me as an overachieving Asian American whose cadre was taking over American post-secondary education. (So beware, y'all, of Yellow Peril in the Ivy League.) Had his wife had a negative college experience because of Asian Americans? And what did I have to do with it? I think that I managed to respond with a chilly “Heh,” which was sufficient to send Dave a signal that I was not happy with what he had said. Moments later, he left me to my business after making an abrupt about-face.

Interactions like this upset me because they make me dislike myself--not because I am not happy with my life choices and plans but because I seem to be playing into several convenient stereotypes. Yeah, I'm going to be a doctor. Yes, I majored in a science in college. Yes, your random guess about my ethnicity was correct. And yes, I like tofu. (How did you know?!)

But then I remember my hopes and dreams. They are so vast in comparison to these stereotypes. And quite frankly, they defy them markedly. So yes, Dave, I am one of those--if you choose to define me within this narrow framework. Now watch me go.