I am a cultural appropriator. I think I’m a white person from Colorado. I talk like one in the peculiarly flat, uninflected accent of the westernmost mid-west. I make white cultural references to things like Steve Gutenberg and Fiona Apple, and I developed a friend group comprised almost exclusively of white, middle-class people of similar educational backgrounds. I was born in Golden, CO, in the early seventies, and because the examples of my own race presented to me in the ruling culture were to a one humiliating and ridiculous, I hated that others saw me as Chinese. I appropriated white culture in order to survive— I took the easy path. I made jokes at my culture’s expense. I distinguished myself as not “one of those” Asians. I assimilated. But because I am of a different race, there’s only so much I could ever “pass.” I spent most of my life hiding from my race. I’m done with that now. I do white person better than you do, I know more about and can express myself more clearly than you can in your only language — and I’m also Chinese, meaning that I am actually more than just white. Imagine if all Asian-Americans embraced that all of a sudden. It might look like this rise in activism, art, and concurrent rise in hate crimes against us as the terrified ruling majority suddenly finds themselves under attack from an unexpected flank. The other edge to the double-edged sword of increased representation is violence against us. If this allies Asian-Americans more closely to African-Americans and Mexican-Americans in this White Supremacist monoculture, I guess I’m taking the beatings and eradicating the “model minority” myth as a point of pride. We are in good company. I’m sorry we’re late to the fight.