A group of his superiors allegedly tormented Chen on an almost daily basis over the course of about six weeks in Afghanistan last fall. They singled him out, their only Chinese-American soldier, and spit racial slurs at him: “gook,” “chink,” “dragon lady.” They forced him to do sprints while carrying a sandbag. They ordered him to crawl along gravel-covered ground while they flung rocks at him. And one day, when his unit was assembling a tent, he was forced to wear a green hard-hat and shout out instructions to his fellow soldiers in Chinese.

A story like this one breaks my heart. I understand the importance for our military to be tough, but are the racial slurs necessary? I’ll always think back to the panel discussion, Asian-Americans in Politics, during AAB’s Asian American Awareness Week when Jeff Shang said the issue is not that Asian Americans seek to be “more white,” but often feel a distance with the second descriptor of their identity, what it means to be “American.” This article makes it appear as if Danny wanted to be a part of the military because of a combination of wanting to get away from the difficulties of Chinatown, preparation for his future and a naive fascination with the real-life application of a video game, and perhaps these all factored into his decision, but I think a large part of what enticed Danny about the military is also that it provided a means to identify with being American, to understand the value of what it means to be army strong and to somehow prove that he belongs.