My Unexplored Inferiority Complex

 

I'm so proud of and inspired by my friend Dave Lu for authoring this thoughtful essay, "How the Immigrant Scarcity Mindset Holds Us Back." It really captures, far more deeply and richly than I ever could, an aspect of something I have been meaning to blog about, which is my unexplored inferiority complex.

The Bay Area of 2023 is flush with affluent, successful, and prominent Asian professionals. Even the Bay Area of the 1980's of my childhood was a wonderfully safe, accepting, and positive place to grow up. So you will not hear me cry "woe is me." That said, a lot of racial pain isn't the overt, headline-worthy stuff but the unspoken, subtle stuff. And, as with most of the country, there was a lot of that in my upbringing:

* School curriculum and popular media were both almost utterly devoid of positive Asian content, and some was downright pejorative.

* Unflattering stereotypes were widely held and freely expressed on a day to day basis, so prevalent that they were internalized and joked about among me and my Asian friends ourselves.

* The "bamboo ceiling" of Asian-free leadership teams was not only a thing but so accepted as to hardly be challenged or protested.

In my adult life, I have not lacked for self-awareness, confidence, and success. I am proud to be an Asian American, aware of what it means to navigate the world as one, and happy to see the progress I and others have made in breaking through past barriers. 

But it occurs to me that I have left largely unexplored the sense of inferiority that was imprinted in me from my childhood. Thankfully no truly traumatic or bullying episodes. But like the slow drip that carves out the mighty river out of the imposing mountain, racial pain even in small and subtle doses also leaves a mark. 

I am learning to give myself space, in public and private settings, to own the grieving of having once felt that being a member of a certain group marked me as "less than." The appropriate human response to sitting in those feelings is to feel feelings, like sadness and anger and regret, and I have felt (am feeling) those feelings. I am also hoping, motivating myself, to steel my resolve to be shed of this inferiority complex, to live in the truth that I am enough and I have worth and I can lead. I am sure I am not the only one on this journey.