“There are two presidents” S remarks from the back seat of the car. I look around trying to find his reference and I see two clean cut black men with suit jackets on selling pies.
Oh you mean the men selling pies. They are not Barack Obama. They are just two black men or as the boys would say, “brown” men.
“Why are the Barack Obama’s selling pies?”
It is fascinating to watch my sons as they explore their own understanding of race and the ways in which they describe people. They don’t have at this point any real context for cultural assumptions regarding race. They describe their “brown” friends by their color because it is an obvious and easy difference. They don’t identify their Asian friends by their physical characteristics because ..well they look like them and that is not a clear marker…like short or tall or long hair or dark hair. Their perceptions can not be “racist” or “prejudiced” the word of choice from my childhood at this time because their descriptions don’t carry the weight of character or personality assumptions. People are all still people at this point.
When children learn to speak they begin with basic categories or associations for things. The classic example is the child who looks at anything that stands and walks on four legs and calls it a cow or a dog. This group identity will last for a bit as their brains develop and their experience with each different animal becomes unique. It does not take long for the child to differentiate the sounds a dog makes verses the sounds a cow makes. As the brain develops it begins to add new categories and contexts for meaning.
On another day S and I are at the dentists office. I have gone in the back to speak with the Dentist and he is in the waiting room. Upon my return I see that he is talking to an older gentleman in his late 60’s. They are discussing the Alligator toys teeth..S is trying to get them all out. When I show up the man looks at me and then at my son and he says…well I forgot to say Ni-hou. I smile and ignore his comment as I usually do in these situations. I shouldn’t of course. I mean he is trying to reach out a cultural hand of friendship isn’t he? Well, should I look at him and say, Dasvedania because I note he has a heavy brow or perhaps, grazia because he looks Italian? Now that I think of it Caucasians are often impressed and flattered when you discern their ethnic heritage from the pot of possible genes. So why am I not equally flattered when people assume that I am Chinese? The Chinese aren’t bad people at least not in my experience, and that is where the problem is: experience.
Many Americans, like children, see Asiatic features and their brain searches for the category and they find Chinese. The general rule seems to be that all Asians look Chinese, and that we are all named Kim, yet another sentence I have learned to disregard. Oh it was nice to meet you Kim. To some people who I may only know in passing..I will be remembered as Kim. Wasn’t that Kim…nice, or abrasive or bizarre…fill in in the adjective.
Most people have a very limited experience with Asians. Historically, the Chinese actually have been in this country since the settling of the west. It is funny when people get excited about Chinese company’s owning buildings or real estate in New York, when so many of the Chinese helped to build the first Railroads. But how have Americans perceived the Chinese people? Well let’s break out the bag of stereotypes…short, peasant like, non-English speaking, slanted, chinky eyed, slimy noodle eating, sneaky, dragon ladies, fu man chu’s, pagan, happy Buddha’s, china making, prostitutes, geisha’s- wait that’s Japanese, I am getting ahead of myself..oh well they all look alike don’t they? dumb and then super smart, but mostly dumb, mongoloid, effeminate men, hot women ( to those with yellow fever), oh yes submissive and these labels are pre-1940’s. The wars with Japan, Korea and Vietnam certainly did not add any great associations to American’s perceptions of Asians.It isn’t really until the 1990’s that Asian’s start becoming real people from different powerful nations with different traditions and ways of living. We can probably thank the market economy, the booming Asian technological industries and Hollywood for the sudden increase in vocabulary regarding Who or What an Asian is. There is nothing like money and competition and ultimately power to make people start looking a little harder. When someone points to a person and says, hey look at that Chinese person..in America their curiosity is too often laced with ignorance. And irregardless of how that particular person knows, understands or sees Asians..if in most interactions being Chinese is associated with all the aforementioned perceptions then…I sure as hell don’t want to be Chinese do you?
Even my sons, the fruit of my womb…when looking at a picture of me said,… Hey mom looks like an old Chinese lady…indeed. They were corrected. I am Korean. (dammit) You are in part from Korea. This is where it is on the map. This is an example of our Art. This is what the Korean American grocery store looks like and this is the food they like to eat. But the problem is I am not really Korean..not culturally anyway. Which is why they need an education about their ethnic heritage. If I really were culturally Korean, they would know it every time they saw their Korean grandparents. They would even at this young age be able to see how we do or eat or act or speak differently specifically because we are Korean. Yet they have none of these visual or cultural cues to guide them into understanding their difference and neither did I.Internationally adopted children such as myself, or any child whose outward racial appearance does not match the one of our immediate family deals with a specific challenge regarding how we know ourselves and how the world sees us. My culture at least for the first 18 years of my life was that of an American girl raised in a suburb on Long Island by parents of German descent. The key difference in my understanding of being Korean is that others always see my race or visual appearance first and this is not necessarily seen as a good thing. Being Asian in a White society does not empower me. This understanding of disempowerment leads many adoptees to disassociate ourselves from our racial identities.
The New York Times recently published an article titled: Adopted from Korea and in search of Identity by Ron Nixon. In this article Mr. Nixon expands upon a recently published study of Adoptees by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute. What the study in part concludes is that Korean kids raised in predominately Caucasian families and neighborhoods in America, for the most part, associated or saw/see themselves as “White.” Many of the participants of the study struggled immensely with their racial identities and some still do. The truth is that our history, our culture conceived at the time of our adoptions is that of our Caucasian families. For many of us when identified by our faces…we think oh no you must be mistaken that is not me. But like ghost baggage from our former lives we are cloaked in a mantle of unclaimed history. And unfortunately it; this face; this race is the first thing most people see.Who is this person in the mirror? As a child I did not own that reflection, I was so busy trying to understand the myriad of ways other people saw my face. Based upon their behaviors I was certain that face they saw was not me. I was faceless. But there it was, every morning: an unclaimed history, a reminder of exile, a second class stamp. It has taken me personally 41 years of aging to finally be able to look in the mirror and say, yes that person looks like me.. I know her..I know that mark and that age spot I know that mouth and those eyes I recognize them, those are mine.
It is the history that needs to be reclaimed, it is an appreciation of genetic lineage because though it might not be pc to think it matters, it matters. It takes self-knowledge to understand… I am not that which you perceive me as. It then takes ownership to say I am this face, this is what it means and this meaning is powerful and empowering. We all must at some point, claim ourselves. I see those genes, I recognize their influence in my art, in my palate in my aesthetics in my character. And in claiming my racial heritage in discovering it’s finer aspects, I finally get to mourn the loss of my ancestry. I mourn the loss of my sons’ knowledge of their genetic grandparents and ultimately, I mourn my birth family’s loss of me.
The truth about racism or prejudice is that it is rooted in elementary perceptions. There are a slew of perceptions or assumptions people have of me good and bad, when they see me. Our perceptions of others depend upon our upbringing and personal experiences. This is all visual baggage that takes time to unravel. In some cases…perceptions are easily traced..for example being called a Gook by a white child in South Philly or having an older white neighbor say as I walk by with my sons…Ah I love the smell of Napalm in the morning. These names, these references are rooted in very personal experiences handed from one generation to the next. For my sons, being bi-racial and in some cases visually Asian, in a Caucasian society will inevitably cause conflict. And this journey I have had to take, in many ways they also will need to wrestle with. The face of their race will be an identity they will have to contend with. But thankfully they won’t do this alone and the world I grew up in is in many important ways different than theirs.My son is right when he says there are two Presidents. There are two Barack Obama’s, our president; a bi-racial man raised by a Caucasian woman in American society, who used to called himself Barry.
There is the Black man that the one category, racially challenged can see and Barack Obama the man who clearly owns his personal, racial and social identity.
Therefore on this momentous 2009 Thanksgiving let me say,
I am thankful for Avatar and Astro Boy and the movies of Ang Lee. I am thankful for mixed marriages and Sony and Hyundai and Bul go ki.I am thankful for teachers who teach with wonder and respect about the Chinese.
I am thankful for Korean TV and their sword and sandal version of the Choson Dynasty.
I am thankful for Sandra Oh and Margaret Cho and Kim Chi. I am thankful for Bollywood and Slumdog millionaire , and Jhumpa Lahiri.I am thankful for all the people and images that enrich and empower our multiple-Asian American identities.
I am thankful for my husband who has always seen me as more than an ornamental flower exiled from the east.
I am thankful for the sweet blending of ancestry in the faces and forms of my sons‘ eyes, noses, mouths, teeth, hands, hearts, brains, skulls, feet.
And finally I am thankful that there is an amazing country filled with history and culture and people that awaits re-discovering. No, not China…Korea, Korea, Gogoreo, Goreo, Beautiful country in the North.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
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