(soft piano music)
- Hi, my name is May Lee.
I'm second generation Korean American.
I was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1966.
Grew up for the most part in the States
but we did move back to Korea when I was very, very young.
But when we came back to America
I think I was about four years old.
I didn't speak any English,
but yeah, but that's how I started in this country.
It was an experience growing up in Ohio as an Asian,
as an Asian family.
In the 1970s there was a lot of discrimination.
There was a lot of racism,
there was a lot of bullying,
so it was challenging.
But I like to say it built my character.
As a young kid, you're different,
you're the outsider, you're the other.
So, I think the natural tendency for any kid
in that situation, you wanna belong.
You wanna blend in, you wanna assimilate.
So of course, I dreamed of having blonde hair
and blue eyes and I wanted my name to be Mary, right.
So it's always trying to deny,
my true identity because I knew I didn't belong.
I knew I didn't fit in.
So that was always this identity struggle, right.
And a lot of us went through that
and there are kids
who still go through that in this country.
Trying to realize who they are
but then struggling with
what they wanna be and how society looks at them.
So back then in Ohio, in the 1970s
you can imagine how much more difficult that was.
That's the thing about race
and the way race is viewed, right.
Versus anything else.
There's nothing I can do about this color of my skin.
There's nothing I can do about how I look
and what my eyes look like
or where my parents are from.
So therefore, I think it's so strange
when race is first thing that people attack.
When there's nothing I can do about it,
but that's who I am.
You either try to hide it and you try to deny it
and you try to run away from it or somehow deal with it.
Or you finally embrace it.
It took me a while to embrace it.
It's kind of a process of reprogramming
the way you look at the world
and then the way you feel in your own skin.
And that takes time.
I will say, if I had to redo it again
I would do it the same way.
A journalist needs to bring experience to the table, right.
And a journalist has to be empathetic.
And so when I deal with people
and interview people and meet people,
I can now bring my own experiences
of racism and discrimination and being the other
and that's so much a part of a lot of people's stories.
So I feel like that shaped me as a person
but also as a journalist.
And I think because of the pain that I went through
growing up with the discrimination,
it actually made me more the person I am now
because I seek a lot of justice.
I want truth telling,
I want people who have no voice to be heard.
And as a journalist, that's my job.
Yeah, so I'm your typical story of the Asian kid
who thought she was gonna be a doctor.
Now, there was a problem.
I could not do science or math to save my life.
I mean, I really almost failed chemistry
where I almost didn't graduate from high school
because of chemistry.
But because I was stubborn
and thought I have to be a doctor,
because that's what I'm supposed to do.
Even in college, I was declared pre-med
but then by sophomore year
I realized this is not for me.
So what is for me?
And I will tell you that it was a divine moment for me.
I actually started praying
and I was asking God, I was like, "I need help."
What should I do?
I need to know what I should do.
What is my calling in life?
And I swear to you,
it was as if a voice said to me,
"You should be a broadcast journalist."
I knew that my strengths
were speaking, writing, I loved writing.
I love the visual media,
but never once did I ever put all of that together
and say, "Oh I'm gonna be a broadcast journalist."
It was that clear and that divine.
And from that moment,
that's all that I did.
I was on a straight path to becoming a broadcast journalist.
Even for me to just get on the air
like my first on-air job
was next to impossible.
Because at the time it was the late '80s
and it was the height of Japan bashing in the United States.
There was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment.
Well, of course it doesn't matter that I wasn't Japanese,
I just looked Japanese.
So for me to try to get my first on air job
at any little local station
because in my business, you have to start very small.
Nobody wanted to hire me.
They wouldn't, of course, say that
because that's the reason.
But I knew, I sent out something like 60 resume tapes
all over the country in the tiniest little markets.
And I did not get one bite.
Finally though, I was given a chance
by a station up in Redding, California.
From that moment, I was like determined to make it.
Yeah, there are rough times.
And at one point my career
took me back to Ohio of all places
that was kind of coincidental.
And even then I ran into a lot of racists on the job
who said all the racist terms
and go back to where you came from
that was very common, very, very common.
So I was covering this protest
outside a ZZ Top concert in Dayton, Ohio.
And ZZ Top for those of you don't know,
it's a kind of a hardcore sort of rock and roll band.
You're gonna have a certain crowd of people.
So there was a protest of the beer delivery union.
This particular beer was sponsoring the concert.
So all these picketers were outside the concert.
So I'm interviewing outside
people who are going into the concert
saying, "Oh what do you think about this protest?"
So as we're interviewing,
I hear this group of guys to the side
and they're saying, "Hey, Connie Chung, Connie Chung."
Cause I always got that
because Connie Chung was the only Asian anchor
that people knew, cause she was the only one.
So I got that a lot.
So I chose to ignore it.
I kept on going then I hear the
"ching chong, chong, ching," right.
Which I also grew up with.
And that's when I lost it.
I dropped my mic in the middle of this interview.
I march over, it's about six guys in a circle.
I push one guy out of the way to open the circle.
I get in the middle of the circle
I say, "What the fuck did you say?"
And they just stand there saying nothing.
I go, "What the fuck did you just say?"
"We didn't see nothing."
I go, "Yeah, I think I heard you"
"making fun of me because I'm Asian."
I said, "We don't need any more goddamn racists"
"like you on this planet,"
"so you can shut the fuck up."
I lost it, I completely lost it.
And then, so they just stood there.
I walk right back, I pick up my mic.
I'm like, "I'm so sorry sir, can we continue?"
Sometimes you do need to stand your ground
and you need to speak up and you defend yourself.
When you feel total injustice, you can't stay silent.
You have to speak up.
And if it means risking something, then it's worth it.
I think sometimes duty calls.
I think right now we are at a moment in time
where Asian stories, Asian individuals,
Asian issues in this country
and around the world are
becoming a little bit more of interest.
And I think Asians of course, are wanting to speak up more.
Whereas before we kind of wanted to keep our heads down,
didn't wanna interfere,
didn't wanna rock the boat, make no waves.
But now, you're starting to see the Asian Americans
wanna speak up, want to be represented.
And I recently launched a podcast
called the May Lee Show a co-production with NextShark.
And I've been wanting to do a show like this
because what I was saying before.
So for me as again, a journalist for 30 years of experience
I felt like well, I think I probably have
the know-how to do a show like this
and also be able to connect with people
because of all of my experiences
and be able to bring these stories
and individuals and issues to the forefront.
And the response has been amazing.
I can't believe that people are responding this way.
It's very positive.
And they're sending me messages saying things like
I've been waiting for a show like this.
I've been waiting for a powerful Asian American voice
to speak up like this and dig deeper
and tell these stories and talk to people
on an Asian level of understanding
rather than an outsider, trying to control the narrative.
Now I'm controlling the narrative as an Asian
talking about the Asian community,
but this is an opportunity for us to speak our language
in terms of our understanding
and go much deeper into somebody's background
and what they care about and issues that we care about.
It's exceeded my expectations already.
And it's just the beginning.
I can't wait to see what's gonna happen moving forward,
I'm really excited.
And this is not ego whatsoever,
this is not about me.
It's so not about me.
It's really about trying to get these stories out.
And I feel like my life
everything I've done has now led me to this.
I feel like this is again the calling
of me going in this direction, yeah.
My name is May Lee
and this is my Korean American story.
(soft piano music)