Hollywood’s depiction of the high school cafeteria –  popular white girls sitting at one table gossiping about boys, Asians at another proving theorems on their napkins – might be hyperbole and it might be a racist stereotype. But, at least in my experience, it was frighteningly close to reality.


In our high school, the first table was for jocks, and the third was for popular girls. Only the second and fourth tables were permitted for me – Asian boys sat at the second table, and “nerds” at the fourth. These were not laws written in our school constitution. You would not get a detention if you violated them. Rather, they were social norms all students obeyed.


As a freshman, I too obeyed. Although I talked to white kids in class and played on the soccer team with them, we became strangers at lunch. They belonged at the first table, I at the second.


Then, in junior year, a popular white girl asked me for a ride back to our neighborhood. The drive home took ten minutes, but our conversation lasted hours more. Within a month, we began dating. Within two months, I had expanded my social circle to include members of the first and third table, the white girls and their boyfriends. Suddenly the whole lunch room was in play.


Sitting at these tables, I discovered that there was a huge misunderstanding. There was no hostility between Asian and White students; rather, there was a lack of opportunity for the two communities to build relationships with one another, due to long-established norms that called for strict segregation. I was fortunate to have stumbled into a position that enabled me to interact with both sides – a position, I thought, that could also help bridge them. Acknowledging the issue of segregation explicitly, I invited my buddies from table two to sit with me at table one. While some were uncomfortable with talking to the “white” people – people with whom they had never felt permitted to associate – many were surprised by how easy it was to click with their estranged peers.


The transition was powerful: people were intermixing. However, I felt a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, because I was only affecting my inner circle of friends. Instead, I wanted to publicly identify an issue plaguing the whole school.


“I have a dream,” I announced to an audience of 1,800 at the student elections. The gym flooded with laughter. I paused. I knew it was a little ridiculous, but I proceeded: “that one day, the Newport Knights will rise up and break down the segregating walls of our school.” The gym fell silent. Ten seconds before, everyone had thought I was a comedic candidate. However, I had outed myself as a de-segregationist. 


Although feeling nervous and exposed after my speech, people approached me and affirmed that segregation was a worthwhile issue to address.


Since becoming ASB President, I have taken many steps to break the segregating wall. I have intermixed my white and Asian friends and have fervently encouraged the entire school to “un-clique”. On the fourth of July, a popular white girl invited her Asian crush and his friends over to her house for a pool party. Over the summer, a new couple emerged: an Indian girl and a white boy. Similarly, I, a Chinese boy, took a Vietnamese-Pakistani-White girl to homecoming this October. All tables are permitted now.


Don’t get me wrong: I know that cliques will not die out overnight, or perhaps ever. Cliques represent groups of people who share personal and cultural interests (e.g. athletics, academics, fashion). The problem is not when these cliques exist, but when they form and harden around color. I am grateful that in my term, I have contributed to uniting our school, and hope to affect similar kinds of change in college or other communities I become part of in the future.