This Land Is My Land
I have been wanting to write about racism for some time now, but I have been struggling with the words. Because it’s a monolith. A behemoth. We live in America – racism is in her blood.
Some months ago, my husband and I were having car trouble in a parking lot. A good Samaritan stopped and asked me if I spoke English before offering to help. My immediate thought was: “racist.” But a few minutes later, I took a step back and considered the possibility that he recognizes that he lives in a community that includes many people who look like me but whose first language is not English. And if this was the case, then was he a racist? Or just a thoughtful person? After all, he had wanted to help.
The Oxford dictionary defines “racism” as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” Historical segregation and mistreatment of African-Americans in the U.S.? Racism, without a shred of doubt. Colonialism? Racially motivated, for sure. The ethnic food aisle at the supermarket? Debatable; see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2019/09/30/to-david-chang-the-international-food-aisle-is-a-last-bastion-of-racism-others-see-it-differently/. (On that note, I would be remiss if I did not point out that H Mart absolutely has a “white people food aisle” – complete with boxed pasta and canned beans.)
Last week, I was at the hospital, waiting by the check-in counter, when I overheard the following conversation:
Receptionist: “Your doctor is Dr. Shen, not Dr. Shin.”
Potentially Racist Patient: “Are they cousins or something?”
So dumb. Should I assume then that Dr. Johnson and Dr. Johnston are also cousins by virtue of similar-sounding last names? Then there’s my colleague who joked about ordering “monkey brains” over lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. In my opinion, if you have eaten SPAM even once in your life, you should not be allowed to joke about ordering “monkey brains.” In both of these circumstances, I felt offended and a little angry too. But were these statements racist? Surely ignorant. Regretfully tasteless humor. But racist? I too am not blameless. Our gardener’s name is Juan; I have mistakenly called him “Jose.” Am I a racist? In my opinion, the incidents described here suggest ignorance and stereotypes, but are not racially-motivated. Ignorance and stereotypes are not acceptable by any stretch of their definitions, but the distinction is significant. Racism is hatred, and it’s ugly.
I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian suburb of Southern California – very idyllic, largely Protestant, and thoroughly Republican. Most of my memories are positive; I remember snow-cones in the summer at the local deli, neighborhood carnivals in the fall, and bicycling to Warehouse Music (RIP) to rent movies in VHS (RIP). But there are two other memories that still leave me reeling in disgust and fear, even now as an adult who can rationalize and sympathize. One memory is the day someone left dog feces on our doorstep. No explanation, but we interpreted it to mean that we were not welcomed there. I assumed and still assume that the perpetrator was Caucasian. (Thirty years later, things have not really changed; I heard earlier this year that a black family’s home less than a mile from our house was littered with watermelon rinds.) The second incident was a car accident involving my mom and a fellow resident. She and her husband told my U.S. citizen-mom to go back to her country. A classic line that is exclusively used against ethnic minorities in the U.S., even those who are citizens apparently. These memories are only a small part of a larger collection of experiences that have shaped me in ways for which I am very thankful, but even as a young girl, I learned to recognize the thinly veiled discrimination and rejection that was unquestionably racism.
More recently, we were at a local ice cream shop when we noticed a woman standing on the opposite side of the store, giving us the dirtiest looks you could imagine. It was clear that she wanted us to know that she hates us. As she walked past us, she hissed, “Go back to Korea!” Again, that classic line. Quite frankly, all of us were initially impressed with the fact that she had so accurately identified the specific Asian sub-group. How thoughtful. But I felt the same anger, the same disappointment, and the same insecurity that I had felt as a child. It was racism.
So am I offended by the fact that I have to find my low-sodium soy sauce in the same aisle as enchilada sauce? Not really. I don’t go to the neighborhood supermarket to buy soy sauce anyway, for the same reason that I don’t go to H Mart to buy cheese. But real racism? The kind where you seem to think that I don’t belong here because I look different from you, I eat something you would never touch, or I speak a language that you can’t understand? Now, I am offended.
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”