I’m drawing a blank on how to write about what happened in Georgia earlier this week. I wonder if that comes from a lifetime of conditioning - to not complain, to avoid confrontation. It’s better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing.
Image source: Time Magazine
But I am angry. I’m angry that this happened. I’m angry that the police talked about the murderer with sympathy: “yesterday was a really bad day for him”; that the press didn’t report on the victims, dehumanizing them, implying they didn’t have stories worthy of attention. I’m angry that people are debating whether this was racially-motivated or a “personal grievance” (hello, it can be both) invalidating the increasing hate crimes against Asian-Americans as a problem.
I’m also angry at myself. I’m disappointed that I haven’t made more effort to learn about the history of Asians in America. That my default is to rationalize that someone else has it worse so I shouldn’t complain. Maybe it’s the media too, which magnifies certain stories until they suck all of the oxygen from the room so that countless others are never told. I’ve internalized that my own story and grievances aren’t worth talking about. I have been erased. I erase myself.
My high school was 50% Asian. There was so many of us I never wondered whether I belonged. During my first full-time job, I noticed I was often the only Asian woman in the room. It wasn’t until mid-career after a lot of D&I training that I began to see how certain people are treated through the lenses of race and gender: “would they react that way if she was a man?” “would they say that if he was white?”
I grew up in an area with a lot of Asians but I still experienced racism. People yelled “go back to where you came from” and made fun of the shape of my eyes. I rarely felt physically threatened, just irritated. Those are small things, I’d tell myself.
Small things left unaddressed become big things.
I was born here and yet whether I belong here is questioned. Always, still: “where are you from?” “No, where are you really from?” It’s sad because my parents believed my perfect English would protect me from discrimination, that sounding like an American would make others treat me like one. It’s easy to hide behind success and pretend racism isn’t that bad. It’s easy to let comments and actions that make you feel lesser or unworthy pass, for these to accumulate inside until you start believing them. I was taught to accept things as they are, not to ask why or challenge how they should be. But the murders in Georgia and the hate crimes against people who look like me, happening because they look like me, is not okay. I’ll no longer just take what I can get; I deserve more. We all deserve more.