Never Surprising and Always Infuriating

 It’s been about a week. A very heavy week. I need to write this out to stop it from sitting on my chest. Every video I see, every post I come across is another reminder.  

I saw:

Stop Asian Hate!
We are not a virus!  
We stand in solidarity with our Asian family!
Protect Asian lives!

I also saw

They’re basically white.
Go back to your country!
Did you eat my dog?
They’ve never stood with us!

Every day that I got ready to write it out, something else happens. A 76 year old auntie shown bloodied and bruised. A mom with a young child punched in the face as they walk to an anti-racism protest. And it would just take me back to the starting point. Not sure where to begin.

I’ve heard so many voices lately, many of them younger than me, speaking out against what has been happening, recounting their own incidents around racism. The scenarios so familiar.

Six years old being chased around the playground at my California elementary school by two boys. They are yelling “Ching chong Chinaman” and pulling up the sides of their eyes. My friend tells my favorite playground monitor and I feel embarrassed. I do not tell my parents.

There is a culture of silence, a feeling of not wanting to call attention to ourselves. Of not wanting to be singled out. Never bringing anything negative to those you care about.  

In the movie “The Farewell”, this is painted so wonderfully. A grandmother is diagnosed with cancer. She does not tell her family so as to not burden them with the news. Her family knows about the diagnosis but does not let the grandmother know so as to not burden her with their sadness. This collective consideration is both beautiful and infuriating.

Seven years old. Everyone laughs at my lunches talking about how gross it looks. I hear “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees look at these” gleefully sang daily. I beg my mom for baloney sandwiches on Wonder bread. But I don’t tell her why.

Nine years old at a pool in Virginia. I see my brother, who is around 6, being picked on by two older boys. I swim closer and hear the familiar “ching chong” chant. I stare at them from behind him in silence. They swim away laughing. My brother has angry tears in his eyes. I am furious! At my brother. Why didn’t he stand up for himself! Why did he “allow” that to happen. My fury misdirected. I didn’t know how to stand up to something like that. We don’t say a word to each other and definitely not to our parents.

In all of these incidents I am humiliated and ashamed. I don’t want my parents to know. I don’t want them to be burdened by what’s happened. I keep it inside and know there’s nothing I can do. I can’t stop people from making fun of what I look like.  I can’t change the shape of my eyes. I have never been mistaken for white.

During college I am called a Jap and a “harbor bomber”. I hear that Asian women “are sideways ‘down there’”. I am greeted with a bow and an “ahhhh sooooo!” randomly. I learn to say “here!” quickly before the professor attempts my last name. I get asked where I am from more times than I can count. “But where are you REALLY from?” I hear words like chink and gook thrown around so casually. People tell me jokes about slanty eyes and their perceived vision like I’ll laugh along. I don’t tell my parents.

And still, even when writing this, all I can think about is how this is nothing. Nothing compared to what my Black, Indigenous and Brown fam experience. I feel like I should hold all of it inside and move on. I’m still embarrassed. I’m ashamed of how hurt I feel, at how furious I am. I’m playing my own oppression Olympics in my head and I don’t even feel like I should be a participant. I am ashamed when my BIPOC friends check in on me. I deflect because I don’t want to add to their own worries.

But then I see the pictures and read the stories. The 84 year old man killed in San Francisco. The child spat on in Queens. The 52 year old woman beaten by a group of teenagers in the Bronx. The 61 year old uncle whose face was slashed with a box cutter on a subway. And of course the killings of the 6 Asian women in Atlanta.

This is a Thing. It’s not my imagination. I am not being dramatic.

I can be vocal about protecting Asian lives and hopeful for BIPOC solidarity while also acknowledging the anti-Blackness in the Asian community. We all know who wins when BIPOC are divided and focused on hating one another. Can you imagine the nightmare we could cause if we stood together? If we all focused on the real evil?

“...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

 

It's heartening to see, and hear, the numerous voices of my Asian fam. No more suffering in silence to spare one another.