Hello, my dear readers. Today’s piece is slightly different from my usual “it sucks to be an international student but not really because look at the bright side!” commentary. Today, there isn’t a transition from a sad to a happy mood. Today, I am just plain mad. 

A few weeks ago, someone pointed out to me that on the USC Facts and Stats page for the incoming freshman class, “international” was listed as an ethnicity. I let out a dry chuckle, because what else can you do but laugh at this absurdity.  Federal regulations are responsible for this ignorance of different backgrounds, countries and cultures that each international student comes from, so it’s no surprise that people mirror the same behavior. 

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Let me clarify something right off the bat — I haven’t experienced overt racism here. It’s more microaggressive, where people’s implicit biases lead to certain behavior that makes others feel uncomfortable in their own skin. Unfortunately, these people are often unaware that they are being racist, because, well, they are trapped in their little bubble and don’t have much exposure to other cultures. So, even though some really try to be culturally appropriate, they don’t realize the deep impact even their smallest actions hold.

For example, my friend Michelle Kwon, who is of Korean descent and lived there for 5 years before college, mentioned she has seen people unintentionally make some controversial statements regarding East Asians and just group them together in one broad umbrella category. A few friends have asked her “what type of Asian” she was or if she was from “North or South Korea,” which surprised her because she didn’t expect students at USC to make such statements. 

I was, perhaps, the most shell-shocked when she told me one of her current professors confuses the names of East Asian students from different countries because she thinks they are the same person, even though they clearly have different physical features. 

But, it’s not even about caucasians being blatantly unaware because even some people of color have prejudices. A second-generation immigrant from India once assumed that I came from a business family because how else would an Indian afford an expensive private school like USC? I still clearly recall his look of surprise tinged with mild embarrassment when I told him that my parents, and in my experience those of a majority of Indians at USC, are actually salaried professionals. 

These incidents are surprising because we are in California, where everyone talks about being woke. But, I guess, that’s all it is — talk. 

On one hand, California and USC boast about their diverse culture, yet, they don’t bother to know the complexities of their diverse population and rather just dump them all into one box labeled “different.” These mixed signals are confusing because I don’t know if I should be proud of my distinct identity or if I am just another tick mark for this diversity box, with no one really caring how my heritage is actually different from that of other international students. 

I don’t think that me sharing these experiences and the impact it has on us will lead to the federal guidelines about education institutions reporting their class demographics changing — I am not that naive. But, I do hope that it would encourage us all to be aware of the fact that all international students aren’t the same. 

We have to look beyond overarching umbrella categories, and instead, acknowledge that under each of these groups, there are multiple subgroups. Just because we aren’t American, doesn’t mean we are all the same. Just like people from Texas have very different experiences from people in California, people from China have different experiences from people from Japan and not every brown person on this planet is from India.

And before I am accused of hyper-wokeism, I want to clarify that the point of this piece isn’t to expect people to now be able to tell Asians from different countries apart. Rather, I want people to be conscious of the fact that all international students belong to different countries and have different experiences. Just know that we may be people of color, but within this umbrella it is important to make the distinction that we are all our own people, with our own history and experiences, and to generalize means you are snatching that away from us. 

Edhita Singhal is a sophomore from India writing about her experiences as an international student in her column, “Foreign Footprints,” which runs every other Tuesday.