I'm currently a Senior Consultant at PwC Australia, for just under a month. I'm in the Diversity & Inclusion team - yes, PwC does Diversity & Inclusion consulting! - and I really think that our team helps solves some of the most important problems in society.
Of course, there are larger problems, right? Climate change, employment, health care... but when it comes down to it, we want meaning in life. And if you need to work, then it should be meaningful - somewhere you can come in, be yourself, feel safe enough to be able to speak up about problems, speak your mind, and help contribute your unique perspective on things.
But this job I'm in, it's one of the first times my job has been really personal - to me.
As an Asian-Australian male born in the 90s, I've already seen some massive changes in the way society treats people. And it's been mostly - overwhelmingly - been for the better. But we're not there yet.
I was born and grew up in a mostly Caucasian area in the Inner West of Sydney, went to a school with mostly European classmates, though there were a handful of Asians like me, and maybe a few from Lebanon. I went to a school where my surname was pronounced wrong almost every time. Why do I remember this? Because it seemed important at the time. It's not the kind of thing you can really blame people for - I'm sure my teachers didn't mean to cause offence, they were just trying their best.
And look, as far as things went, I probably had things easier than some - maybe even easier than most. I had most of what I needed, and if my family had any financial troubles, they shielded me from it.
I had a supportive family, though, who always pushed for me to do better. I ended up going to a selective school, which probably meant that I had different standards, and different expectations of myself, than I would have otherwise. Perhaps I would have been better off in a comprehensive school. It's hard to tell what the effect is from the inside looking out, and I can't A/B test my life.
In any case, after six years and lots of procrastination, I defied any traditional pressures and did an Arts degree - after a year toying with the notion that I might become a teacher, which was way too hard for me - in Linguistics.
Some years and a few jobs later, here I am.
So what's the problem? I'm doing a job that I like, in a team that I enjoy working with, and I feel like I'm really making a difference. It can be hard work but I don't mind hard work when it's something I'm passionate about.
It's because every now and then, I feel like I don't belong. And not just because I might be a sensitive striver, or have impostor syndrome, or be suffering from the effect of the Dunning-Kruger effect (seems like a humblebrag but I promise that I would rather not feel this nagging sense of self-doubt). No, it's because every now and then I get told that I don't.
You might think that I'm grasping at straws, that I have to something out from three years ago. I know that there are definitely groups in Australia who have it worse than I do. But there are some people who will have never felt this way.
It's silly, but I took and take it a bit personally when I read and watched news where people who look like me or my family.
It hurt a bit to wake up one morning in March to the news that a guy in the US "had a bad day" and decided to end the lives of eight people, including six women of Asian decent, but the reporting around it helped me to clarify the discomfort that I have around these acts of racism that simmer and boil over every now and then.
We're welcome in Australia, and for the majority of people, we're wholly welcome - us, our culture, our traditions. But for a select few, we're only welcome as long as we conform to Anglo-Saxon ways of life. Be Asian, act White.
Don't push your children too hard, don't draw attention to the fact that you're not White (because white people don't do this), and don't point it out when people point out that you're different. And don't you dare have a virus come from the broad region of the world your ancestors did, because then you ought to go back and take it with you.
Asian-Australians are, in Australia, what Asian-Americans are in the United States: a "model minority". We're a way to show Indigenous Australians and African-Americans, "hey, we're not racist - if you just try hard enough, and keep your head down, don't make a fuss, you too can succeed in this country!"
More than once I've been told "what's the point of you if you can't do math?" This was mostly from people who I'd consider friends, which makes me feel even more conflicted. Is it proof that they consider me a close enough friend that they're comfortable enough saying that which a stranger would consider offensive? Should this override the stereotype, which so many Asian children and teenagers feel pressured to fulfill?
And I guess this, above all, is why it's personal for me. I don't like the idea that my - well, I don't know... my children, my nieces and nephews, if I ever have them, my family - shouldn't have to feel like they need to pretend to be something they're not in order to belong. They should be able to be themselves every day.
Who we are, and what that means, is probably going to change as well. I'm not the same person I was ten years ago, and I'm glad I'm not. I definitely didn't speak with a weird English lilt before I started watching Doctor Who.
I am Asian. And I am Australian. I can be both of those things. It makes me better.
