AAPI HERITAGE MONTH REFLECTION

My name is Christina and I am a first generation Asian American. I know it is odd, but growing up, I never used the term “Asian American” to define my identity. I always identified with terms like: Japanese, woman, scientist, or geophysicist. It was only after the COVID-19 pandemic and moving out to Wyoming, where there is a 2% population of Asians, that made me realize my identity as an Asian American woman. The growth of hate crimes towards different subgroups of Asians and the rallies that made it dangerous for me to walk along the streets, made me seek out more people who looked like me and want to retreat into a safe bubble. This is the same bubble that I originally moved out of because I wanted to expand my horizons and experience living in a different environment.

All of a sudden, I was nervous to make small talk with people in a community predominantly made of Black and white people. All of a sudden, those hopes that I had of expanding and being part of different cultures and groups that weren't just my own, felt dangerous. I felt lesser as a person because of the way that people were treating others in San Francisco and Atlanta, two locations where such hate crimes were happening at a greater rate than others. In April 2021, I started to feel this negativity at home in Southern California as well, when people were having “All Lives Matter'' rallies in Huntington Beach, somewhere I frequented often. All of these acts combined started to make me feel unsafe since the pandemic. I caught myself telling my friends “It is unsafe for a small Asian American woman like me to be walking around the streets, especially alone”, which used to be “It’s unsafe for a small woman like me to be walking around the streets, at night”. Luckily this didn’t translate to all aspects of my life as quickly, for example, my academic life was a safe space for me even if I was going to graduate school in Wyoming.

This is one of the reasons why I came to the University of Wyoming because of how aware my advisors are of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) issues and advocates of change towards a more DEI friendly department. It was one of the deciding factors of why I chose to work with Drs. Riebe, Carr, and Grana; even before I chose to attend the university, they made me feel welcomed and safe on top of doing awesome science that I was highly interested in. I was already used to being in the minority as a woman, due to my initial interests in physics and engineering before I found geophysics. When we concentrate on geosciences, it is especially interesting because even though the international Asian population is large, the Asian American population is quite small. On top of that, the geophysics community has an even smaller population of women; therefore, an even smaller population of Asian American women.

When I first started studying geophysics, I realized that it had so many aspects that I enjoyed like math, physics, and critical thinking. Now, after being immersed in the geophysical community, I have realized that I enjoy being out in the field, doing computational geophysics, and analyzing data. To do what I love, it means that I do have to travel to and work in locations that are remote. In the past, I have done field work in remote locations in New Mexico, Hawai’i, California, and even in the Canary Islands. During these campaigns, I had never experienced any kind of negative acts towards me due to my race or gender and I was never wary of my surroundings more than usual because of my background either. Sadly, due to the increase in xenophobic and racist violent acts towards Asian groups has made me hyper-aware of my surroundings during field work, which was never the case before.

This spring with the BCZN project, I had the opportunity to go out in the field twice to South Carolina and for the first time, when I was walking around in the nearby neighborhood at the remote area, I was conscious of how many people did not look like me. I also experienced people avoiding me in the grocery store, just like when COVID-19 first came out and people were wary of being around Asian people. Then I realized that the clerk at the checkout would not talk to me, even though he was making conversation with the 4 other people who were in front of me. Microaggressions are hard to identify and it never feels good to over analyze someone’s behavior or a group of people’s behavior to one serious allegation like, they are racist or sexist. But I think it is also important to not justify people’s behavior and be open to different reasons for why such acts are happening. At that moment, I realized that I was not in a well diverse location - not seeing a single Asian person over the course of a week and experiencing people avoiding me in particular made it clear that this was about race and I was experiencing the effects of the social climate of today. This experience made me rethink my safety out in the field and traveling to various locations and how I could better everyone’s experiences.

I hope you see that this piece as a call for all geoscientists, regardless of age, race, gender, sex, or religious beliefs and I hope you don't see it as just someone complaining about their experience in the grocery store. It is important to be supportive of your fellow colleagues and to provide everyone a safe space where they can excel in science. It is important to love what you do but also to enjoy working with those around you; my experience is that the people make it all worth it when the science is tough. I will be going out to California for field work again this summer with the BCZN team. To feel safe, I would like to make sure to implement the buddy system and be conscious of my surroundings with my buddy. If you are in the lab or doing computational analyses, it is important to treat everyone with respect regardless if you think your code or lab techniques are more efficient than the person next to you. Being respectful is probably a good idea in the field too (: Creating an environment that is diverse, equal and inclusive immediately is close to impossible, but everyone can practice DEI actions everyday to make the whole community feel safe and a place where everyone can belong. There are multitudes of ways that everyone can create a geoscience community that isn’t just safe and comfortable for the majority, but for every person who shares the love of studying the Earth or space sciences. I think this is an opportunity to not perpetuate the horrible things that are going on in the world, but a chance for people to come together and provide each other with care.

Christina Kitamikado, University of Wyoming