Growing up as an Asian-American, I’ve often been asked the age-old microaggressive question: “Where are you from?” When I answer that I was born in Manhattan, whoever’s asking switches to a more targeted inquiry: “Where are your parents from?” I know what they really want is a clear
answer about my ethnicity, so I cut to the chase.

“I’m half Chinese, half Korean.”

 Most times, this leaves them utterly perplexed. Their confusion is based on the outdated preconception that a person can only be part of one race or one ethnic group. Despite the fact that the United States’ population of multiethnic and multiracial individuals has been increasing in recent years, with the 2020 Census showing a 276 percent increase in people identifying as “two or more races” since 2019, this idea continues to persist in society. Personally, because my last name is identified as Chinese, people often assume that both my parents are Chinese. I often don’t get to correct them, so they are baffled when I speak Korean or wear hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) at cultural events.

Similarly, in a 2015 study conducted by Pew Research Center, one in four mixedrace adults said people have often been confused by their racial background. Over time, these assumptions can erase the identities of individuals who belong to multiple groups. When people view you as solely one ethnicity or race, they ignore entire aspects of your identity, which pressures you to conform to their stereotypical expectations of your behavior. This is especially true if someone makes an offensive joke about a group they don’t think you’re part of. As a multiracial or multiethnic person, sometimes your only choice is to awkwardly laugh it off.

Unfortunately, even PHS, with its core values of diversity and inclusion, cultivates an environment where this occurs. Throughout my time here, I have met many students who are victims of this narrow mentality and falsely assume my ethnicity.

This is an administrative issue as well. In 2023, an online survey was conducted regarding students’ opinions on the school climate. This survey asked students to choose a single race from the following options: White, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Other. This forced multiracial students to make a choice: should they select the race whose culture they most strongly identify with? Or maybe they should silently resign to choosing “Other,” because that is what they are to society — the center of a venn diagram that doesn’t quite contain everything from the circles it’s made up of.

I cannot speak for all multiethnic individuals, but I often feel inadequate — I’m neither Korean or Chinese exactly, but also not “All-American.” As a result, I often feel as if I don’t truly belong anywhere. Although I don’t think this feeling will ever truly go away, I have found that meeting others who have similar backgrounds helps me feel validated. There is no instant way to broaden societal ideas surrounding multiethnic and multiracial individuals, but facilitating discussion and increasing awareness of this perspective can help people understand the complexity of racial identity. At PHS, it is about time that we adapt our way of thinking to America’s ever-diverse multicultural melting pot.

Torn between worlds: multiracial identities

   Can you name one detail about Unit 731, the WWII research program with thousands of casualties? Probably not, but unfamiliarity with this tragedy isn’t your fault. Rather, the surprising lack of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history in the outreach programs at PHS is to blame. 
   In order to understand why we don’t often learn about these topics, it is important to acknowledge the root cause: the marginalization of AAPI individuals in the United States. One source of this oppression is sinophobia, the fear or hatred of China, which spiked to an all-time high during the COVID-19 pandemic. The branding of the disease as primarily the fault of Chinese people caused a rise in racist name-calling and violent hate crimes against millions of Asian Americans, including those who weren’t of Chinese descent. One of the most horrific attacks was the 2021 Atlanta spa shooting, in which eight women, six of them Asian, were killed. This tragedy rattled AAPI communities across the country, serving as a stark reminder that they could be the target of a prejudiced hate crime. The Princeton community held a vigil honoring these victims and acknowledging anti-Asian racism, but initiatives like this do little to combat structural ignorance of AAPI people and history. 
   Historical programs at PHS often commemorate tragedies within western countries, such as the Holocaust, but overlook the suffering that people in Asian countries have faced throughout history. We have never once had an assembly or event about Unit 731, a Japanese research program during World War II that performed unsedated vivisections and purposely gave victims frostbite and the plague. It is estimated that Unit 731 killed up to half a million people, but United States authorities provided operation officials with legal immunity from these crimes in exchange for research information. Due to Japan’s destruction of evidence, the United States’ compliance, and its exclusion from our history awareness initiatives, few people in the United States learn of this brutal mass murder. To state another event that is overlooked by educational outreach programs at PHS is the Manila massacre, also known as the Rape of Manila, which took place during WWII. During the Manila massacre, the Imperial Japanese Army brutally murdered at least 100,000 Filipino civilians and raped hundreds of young girls and women. Though both of the above events undoubtedly caused significant trauma to the groups targeted, these cruel violations of human rights may become hidden away and slowly forgotten one day. Worsening this situation, PHS has failed to even acknowledge these horrific war crimes in Asian history during AAPI history month. 
   In defense of our school’s curriculum, there is only so much our teachers can show us in the vast expanse of history. However, that is exactly why we should be supplementing these parts of AAPI history through speaker events, much like the assembly for Jewish Heritage Month. When we invite knowledgable scholars to share information about Unit 731, they commemorate and pass down this important piece of world history down to future generations. After all, if we don’t know about the past, how can we stop ourselves from repeating it in the present? 
   Education, in the face of discrimination and political tensions, is crucial in the fight for AAPI representation. As an already marginalized group, AAPI communities need to see their history portrayed in outreach programs to both teach AAPI individuals about their ancestors and promote understanding within the broader student body. Through awareness, we acknowledge the struggles faced by cultural groups, work to prevent such atrocities from happening again, and celebrate the AAPI individuals within our community. It is time for PHS to take steps towards shedding light on the important topics ignored by our current outreach programs and fostering a greater culture of empathy and understanding of AAPI history in our school community.

We should have had an AAPI month assembly

   Freshman year can be stressful — you have more responsibilities, a new social playground to navigate, and much more homework compared to middle school. However, I also find myself worrying a lot about an issue I shouldn’t have at such an early stage of my life: college. At PHS, academic excellence is normalized to the point where any deviation from it might as well mean failure. This increasingly competitive academic landscape calls for a new type of student — someone who can easily fill up their Common Application activities list and summarize each of them under 150 words. It often seems like everyone around me is one of these exemplary students, which in turn incentivizes me to accomplish as much as I can to appear successful. Unfortunately, many students share that mentality, which creates a highly superficial and performative academic culture at PHS.
   In my own experience, this type of environment has compelled me to join courses and student organizations based on how good they would look on my college application. It appears that many others feel the same way: according to an anonymous survey of PHS students who take AP courses, 69.8 percent are taking accelerated or AP classes for the primary purpose of looking good on college applications. However, performative culture goes beyond just taking an advanced class — I often find myself viewing each class period as an opportunity to put on a show. What can I say to sound like a bright student? How little work can I do while still receiving good grades? This is the reason some students read SparkNotes instead of the assigned book, or use ChatGPT for their notes. Students may take these shortcuts and appear competent, but they don’t actually advance their learning from doing so. Your peers don’t know or care if you truly learned from the assignment — they only see the score you received and its associated brilliance. 
   Performative student culture goes beyond just taking advanced classes; it also applies to the extracurricular activities students engage in. At PHS, it’s quite common for students to start clubs as a way to demonstrate their skills. In a survey of PHS students, 49 percent of respondents agreed that their primary purpose in starting or joining a club was to look good on their college application. Having many student organizations is beneficial for the school community, but in many cases, students register them without actually intending to follow through and have productive meetings. 
   When the only objective of one’s academic career is to get into a good college, they lose the purpose of what school is ultimately for: education. College isn’t the end-all-be-all of life, and there are so many skills taught in school that can be beneficial in the future. Filling up our lives with empty promises of intelligence is a recipe for disaster once we escape our bubble of college applications. 
   Realistically, it is difficult to stay completely away from performative culture in PHS’s competitive atmosphere. However, it is possible to work towards your goals in a manner that still benefits your personal development. This starts by being intentional about your activities — yes, you can create a club or non-profit to benefit your college application, but think about how you can learn and evolve from the experience instead of starting it only for the sake of appearing successful. Focus on the impact of your work, such as helping the community or raising awareness about an issue. When it comes to classes, ask plenty of questions and take charge of your own learning; after all, you are the beneficiary of the knowledge you gain. So the next time you consider taking a difficult class or committing to an extracurricular, ask yourself: will this actually help you grow as a person, or is it just another way of trying to outperform everyone else?

Our shallow academic performance

Corporate behemoths don’t only sell products — they sell concepts. Companies tell consumers that their products will make them cool, productive, and successful; this is mainly achieved through the use of social media. The modern era has made teenagers, a demographic that has always been easy to influence, even more vulnerable to companies dictating their lifestyles and more importantly, their personal worth.
   The influence of social media advertisements is undeniable. Ads are everywhere online, but they also often cross over into real life. Companies do their best to make teenagers think they need whatever it is they’re being sold in order to be up to date with current trends. This is only amplified by seeing influencers with those same products. According to Forbes, companies create advertisements by following four basic precepts: a successful advertisement must be memorable, meaningful, strongly tied to a specific brand, and able to “communicate how the product … makes [the consumer] better.” These messages often pressure viewers into purchasing these products to achieve the “ideal” life.
   Aside from extensive advertising, companies promote consumerism by engaging in a phenomenon known as planned obsolescence, where they purposely design their products to age poorly, so that people feel the need to buy the newest version. According to France24, multiple countries are investigating Apple for intentionally installing software updates that harm battery life and make repair difficult. 
   Overconsumption not only impacts a teenager’s wallet, but also the environment. In today’s age of social media advertisement, companies push out new trending products at staggering speeds; more often than not, these mounds of products end up being improperly disposed of. This results in substantial amounts of mismanaged waste sitting in landfills. A prime example is the electronics industry, which, according to The World’s Counts, makes up 70 percent of overall toxic waste. The majority of a phone’s carbon footprint is derived from its manufacturing processes, which involves the usage of rare earth minerals. In order to extract these minerals, the mining process creates a huge amount of toxic waste, such as mercury, which can flow into nearby waterways and pollute marine ecosystems and drinking water. Gold and tin mining have also contributed to deforestation in the Amazon, which stores 150–200 billion tons of carbon. According to a 2022 study by Lövehage et al., the representative carbon footprint of a smartphone is estimated to be 50 kg of carbon dioxide. In 2021, Apple generated 52,490 tons of highly toxic waste. With social media encouraging people to replace their phone every one or two years, both the emissions of production and the impacts of waste are exacerbated. 
   While it’s easy to acknowledge the current climate crisis and the role that consumerism plays, it’s much more difficult to take action and break out of our current cycle. In our generation of teenagers specifically, a herd mentality is highly pervasive. Breaking free from this pressure starts with separating overconsumption from social status — overconsumption isn’t “cool,” and there’s no reason to get rid of an older but still functional gadget just in order to replace it with the latest model. There’s a lot we can do to combat corporate schemes, even ones by powerful companies, such as switching to more responsible brands with products that are known to work well for many years. Buying the latest gizmo isn’t the way to a happy life, so the next time you think about buying an item you see online, ask yourself: do you truly want this, or is it a manufactured need? 

The Tower

Stephanie Liao's Work

The Tower