Allow me to take this moment to release some thoughts. Something happened today that hadn't occur to me since elementary school.
I was driving on Babcock St, and was making a left turn onto Nasa Blvd when a dude in a car at the red light shouted at me:
"ASIAN FAGGOT!"
I didn't know how to react. I kept on driving, feeling peculiar. I haven't heard any racial slur directed towards me in a long time. Hearing them again brought back some familiar feelings from my childhood.
Though my family are from Taiwan and I was born in the U.S., I was raised in both countries. While I was living in Taiwan, my Chinese was poor and I had to catch up academically with my classmates. My classmates in Taiwan regarded me with suspicion and picked fights with me and taunted me a few times claiming that I was an American spy. Luckily those incidents were few, and I made a few friends during those two years.
When I returned to the U.S., my English was poor, hence I had to adapt again. First couple of years consisted of classmates chanting "Ching Ching Chong Chong!" and slanting their eyes with their index fingers and telling me to go back to China. But again, the tauntings were rare and pretty soon I made friends and my English improved.
Since then, no one has openly said anything to me regarding my ethnicity. I know that racism still exists but I look at the population around the world and saw the heterogeneity in all the people and felt that a case like today cannot be explained logically. Racism is just another manifestation of xenophobia...and no amount of public policies can change a person's view. They just prevent people from killing what they fear and getting away with murder.
It just so happens that I was driving my car today, which made my physical features visible to the public. I am beginning to appreciate the anonymity that my helmet provides when I ride my motorcycle. What happened to that man that made him say that statement? Was he venting? Was he having a bad day? Did he know someone who was asian and did something wrong to him? These are questions that will never be answered.
Have we, as human, improved after several thousand years of civilization? I really think improvement is hopeless for us, but it is a nice illusion. We strive to continue this illusion of progress, in hopes that someday it will become real. Plato observed this phenomenon over two thousand years ago, and to this day this observation still holds true.
3 comments:
This reminds me of when I was in elementary and middle school. I think I heard the word "chink" every day until I got to HS.
Recently I've had people give me and my husband dirty looks as to "what are you"?
Racism is not fun. Especially for those of us who are mixed, we don't fit in anywhere.
I used to get that a lot growing up in Detroit-- chink this and chink that-- they'd never had any contact with Asians prior to that, I guess-- Detroit was very very segregated in the 70's and 80's--there were neighborhoods that were predominantly one race or ethnicity--Black, White, Hispanic, Arab, Chaldean, Jewish,Polish etc. . . so if you weren't like everyone else, they'de single you out.
A racial slur is hurtful, to me, because the person uttering it fails to see me as a living, breathing person and chooses to view me via some stereotype that he has accepted or invented. What's really going on is that person is showing their own ignorance and intolerance.
But knowing that doesn't make me feel any better when I'm being targeted.
I got beat up pretty bad when I was in college-- a couple of drunk kids thought I was Iraqi or Arab or something. They kept telling me to go back to Iraq at least. I told them I was "indigenous" and they told me to go back to India.
It's funny...a lot of my friends, like you guys, are of mixed descent. We all are in many ways...and anyone can split the hair very finely. Black and Asian? Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese? Hakka and Fukian? But who wants to do that? Why? And honestly who cares?
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