Thursday April 17, 2008

First Person: Growing Up Asian in Norway

Lissi Goril Anda

For the greater part of my childhood, I grew up thinking I was white. After all, my family was white, and living in Norway, blond hair and blue eyes were the norm.

The fact that I was adopted from South Korea had never made me feel different, just special. Over the years, however, I have come to learn that the Norwegian children's rhyme "we are all equal on the inside" is a truth that people sometimes forget.

With a population of 5 million, Norway is a small country, roughly equivalent to the size of California. In contrast to California's ethnic diversity, however, immigrants comprise only 6 percent of Norway's population; most of these immigrants are American or Danish.

Racial discrimination in Norway is of course illegal, but that doesn't always translate into fair hiring practices. I was surprised to find that a resume in the United States doesn't include the applicant's nationality and place of birth. This information, which often indicates ethnic identity, is printed on every resume in Norway when applying for a job.

Research by the Norwegian government has shown that a resume with an Arabic or Asian-sounding name is less likely to result in a job interview than an identical resume with a western name. Legislation was recently passed to ensure that 40 percent of all executive board members in any large company must be women. There are no similar affirmative action policies to boost the number of ethnic minorities in business, however.

Considering the ethnic diversity of the United States, I was surprised by some of the questions I was asked when I went to California for a bachelor's degree. At the local station where I was interning as a camera operator, I was frequently asked, "Well, what are you? Norwegian or Korean?" - as if the two were mutually exclusive.

As if my identity weren't complicated enough, I came from a Scottish college and had an American accent. There were times when I considered printing leaflets explaining my background (and explaining in footnote that Norway is not the capital of Sweden).

People told me I was the loudest (i.e., rudest) Asian girl they had ever met. Admittedly, this might be true; I have a relatively deep voice and I'm not shy about using it. From my co-workers' reaction to my personality, however, I got the impression they expected all Asian girls to be mousy grinds.

Oddly enough, I encounter fewer stereotypes in Norway, probably because there are so few Asians here, and the ones that are here are assimilated, since they were either adopted by a Norwegian family or married into one. The lack of stereotypes is liberating in work situations: people never know what to expect from me.

Norway was recently judged by the United Nations to be the best country in the world to live in. If you are an immigrant, you get free Norwegian lessons and government assistance establishing yourself. But it isn't always easy being one of only a handful of minorities, let alone Asians.

Like minorities living in all corners of the world, I have had customers demand to speak to "someone who understands them". Last week a little blond girl pointed at me and loudly asked her mother whether I speak Norwegian, and I still remember how I cried as a little girl when two neighborhood boys told me to go home where I came from.

Despite these incidents, I feel privileged to be able to open people's minds and shatter the stereotypes they may unconsciously harbor about Asians.