Climbing That Second Mountain

You talked about the racism and the biases and the microaggressions you’ve endured throughout your career. And even now you’ve said. Can you describe some examples of that? And how has that influenced you in the way you lead?

On a daily basis, if you look at some of the comments on my Instagram, this is why I kind of turn off comments or a little bit is, people criticize me for only being Japanese and Filipino, that I’m not Chinese, that I’m not Korean. So I see inwards racism there. I see people in my DMs right now telling me to go back to China. And I was like, “Well, this is confusing, because some people on my comments are saying I’m not Chinese.” So, I see that all the time. I think in the workplace, I’ve seen this quite a bit, but people don’t see young Asian men who look like me on boards. And so when I walk into a boardroom, they say, “Hey, you’re DoorDash, right? Like, what are you dropping off?”

Oh, my.

I’m like, “Oh, okay. Okay.” I heard that quite a bit. I heard that twice when I was at Gap Inc. And even in the earliest parts of my career, when I wasn’t speaking up, when I was more, just trying to figure out my path, I had white colleagues tell me all the time, like, “Eric, we don’t see you as an Asian person, we see you as another white guy. So, like, you’re good.” I’m like, “Oh, great. I’ve acclimated. I’ve assimilated too like, that’s fantastic. Right?” But that level of racism has always been prominent in my life.

I grew up in a predominantly white town, where you don’t see people that look like you very often. And you’re told all the time, like, “You don’t belong here, man. First of all, I see the Holocaust, slavery, Native Americans, indigenous people in my history book. I don’t see Asians, so therefore, you're foreign, for sure.” And I’m like, “What are you talking about? I was born in Hawaii. My dad was born in Chicago. My grandparents were born in central California, like, I’m probably more American than you are. You’re Italian.”

And so I think that level of racism was placed on me. And you turn on the TV, you don’t see yourself in ads or TV shows. So, again, I think it’s an amalgamation of all these different things. But that helped shape this voice. That helped shaped this passion to make sure that my kids can have a different conversation. They don’t need to have the same conversation that I had. And I think that I felt good about that. I felt good about climbing my second mountain to fight for my people. I’m way past my first mountain. I’m on to the second. And I think that second climb is going to take the rest of my life. But if I make it, then the world for them changes. And I think that’s the greatest gift that I could give to my kids is shaping the world a little bit around them.