The sloped concrete walls of Los Angeles’ Holocaust Museum lie nestled in a lush hill just east of the Grove. Founded by Holocaust survivors, the sixty-one year old museum was home to a temporary exhibit - Hidden Histories: Recounting the Jewish Shanghai Story.
As a Jewish and Chinese multiracial Asian American, I had done my fair share of interrogating the ways in which my various identities inform my notion of self. I conceptualized my multiraciality as liminal, or existing on the margins of culture, as well as temporally and spatially constituted. Code-switching is perhaps the most common term for this, though I struggle with its absolutist nature. Rather than definitively switching into my Jewish or Chinese or Filipino or Spanish identity in any given space, I pick and choose from those identities as a means to form opinions and values.
However, the extent to my racial reckoning stops at a national scale. In other words, I had only thought about myself in terms of American culture rather than a global culture. As I stared at photos of Jewish refugees making matzah balls in a Chinese pot, I found a strange kind of solace. Though my great grandfather had already immigrated from China and my grandfather had never stepped foot in Shanghai as a Jewish refugee, there was something comforting about seeing individuals and families of my seemingly separate and dissimilar identities interacting and coexisting together.
I then read about Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul General stationed in Berlin, who single-handedly wrote thousands of visas for any and all Jewish refugees to cross his office door. The story resonated with me in a way I hadn’t expected in terms of conceptualizing a global community. As climate change progresses and human rights are continually violated across the world, how can one function outside of political institutions, just as Dr. Feng Shan Ho did, to enact change and ensure the livelihood of fellow global citizens? The significance of this story is evident in the new perspective I gained and walked away with. America does well in evaluating its own history and thus, identifying global heroes in places where America has failed is integral to fostering a globalized and collectivist community.
As we sat down for lunch, I continued my internal conversation about identity with a man named Brian Frankel. After joking about the similarities in our last names (Frankel vs. Frenkel) we chatted about coalition building and how his personal identity influenced his career. The work he had done first in an anti-human trafficking non-profit and then in a lobbying firm specifically aimed at progressing Jewish-American issues had felt like a natural extension of his values as a Jewish man. Frankel turned the conversation on to me.
“Well this is particularly interesting and exciting for you,” he said. “As a multiracial person, how can you use your identity – in AAPI spaces or Jewish spaces or LGBTQ+ spaces – to bridge cultural difference and find common ground on real issues?” My answer nodded to coalition building and the sharing of history and trauma, but it was still half-baked at best. As I move into the second half of this internship, his question will continue to permeate my thoughts and views on both identity and what that means for productive civic engagement.