So it's a sick day for me. It really hit me last night and I've been in bed, bundled up, with Tylenol Cold hoping that it'll just get on with it so I can get back to life on Monday. My husband moved the TV into our bedroom so I could have Netflix while sick, and I've had my laptop so of course I'm all over Reddit right now. And I came across this AskReddit thread: "What was the most racist thing you've ever witnessed?"
I always feel a little strange when questions like this pop up in my life. Because I tend to get weird reactions from people when I mention situations in which I've experienced racism first hand. The general consensus seems to be either A) who the hell am I complaining about racism when I'm not under threat of being shot just for existing, B) the incidents I've experienced aren't really racism because no one was hurt, C) some of the things I bring up are "positive" things so it's not racist, or D) it's impossible for me to experience racism because I'm not black. Yes, really, those are some responses I've gotten consistently over the years, and if you don't see anything wrong with those four statements then you're really not gonna understand the rest of this post.
I'm Filipino, born in Seattle, Washington. Both my parents are Filipino, and from the Philippines. My dad came over from the Philippines, sponsored by my aunt, and joined the Navy music program. My mom was naturalized as a child and lived on Guam until she met and married my dad. Right there, just those two sentences have gotten me some side-eye over the years, from staunch rednecks who firmly believe that all immigrants "TOOK OUR JORRRRRBS". They get pissed off when they hear how my dad joined up, learned english, and not only succeeded, but became a pretty damn well respected figure during his career. To them, the military is their sacred ground of MURICA, and the idea of an immigrant coming in and kicking ass is threatening to them. I've had significant others whose parents were appalled (yeah I didn't keep them around for long), I've had people I meet in college tell me that my family is the reason why our country is in trouble (especially when I mention how much of my family is military), I even had one particularly ignorant person tell me that the US Armed Forces didn't need the help of "immigrant freeloaders" and that they'd rather not have us at all, that they were doing us a favor and we had to be grateful. (Yes, that really happened, at a house party of all places, after several rounds of shots, and I left immediately after that conversation.) 
Until junior high, I didn't know what racism was. I really didn't. The concept of someone not liking another person just based on their skin color was completely foreign to me, and it made absolutely no sense. So when I moved to a new school in 7th grade, I was completely unprepared for some of the really racist shit that I experienced. To this day, it's still kind of hard to judge what was racist and what was just "let's pick on the new kid" but we got new kids after me, and none of them were treated the way I was, so I mean...
Like, at one point, when my grade got a Korean exchange student, the teachers got together and asked me if I would "be his buddy" and translate for him. I was completely bewildered and responded "I only speak English." They then said "Okay but don't you know a bit of Chinese, picking it up from your family and stuff?" First of all, the kid was Korean, and second of all, I am neither Korean nor Chinese. (I do have Chinese blood in my family, but they didn't know that and it's irrelevant anyway because we don't speak Chinese.) The teachers got really annoyed with me and went on to approach the only other Asian kid in our grade to ask for his help. I don't know if they spoke each others' languages, or what really became of it, but Joel started learning how to speak English and that was that.
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| I once got my ass kicked because I didn't have this particular academic planner like the other kids did. Seriously. |
When I first got there they were amazed that I spoke english - first because I'm brown (one kid literally said "I thought she'd only speak some sort of gobbledegook"), then because we had just moved from Italy so they assumed I was Italian. Kids in my grade would trash my locker. They invented a game for the jungle gym outside where the whole point of it was to push me off the jungle gym onto the ground or into the snow. Seriously. The whole point was to just hurt me, and only me. They'd steal my books and my parents would have to pay for new ones, until they got fed up with paying for new books and had a talk with the school. After that they left my books alone but took to shoving me into lockers and desks. I had no idea what the issue was. All I knew was that these kids seemed to hate me and I didn't know why. When I learned what it was about me that they hated, I...didn't have an argument. I can't argue that I'm not brown. I couldn't make them see me as an equal. I demonstrated pretty easily that I was not stupid or a savage or whatever, but it didn't matter. They weren't all awful, I had some friends, and I might have had more except that the really awful ones made me retreat into my shell and I didn't talk to anyone if I could help it.
I'll grant you that that was over 10 years ago. "Times have changed" people argue. I'm not entirely sure if they have. Last year my husband taught out in a more remote part of our area, one where racism and class divides are still very real. We got a lot of side eye when he introduced me as his girlfriend, and a lot of "ohhhh isn't that nice?" when we got engaged. Some of the parents and kids straight up stared at me the first time they met me, and several of the parents immediately accosted me (it was a pool party, the kids were in the water and the adults were just so curious) to interrogate me about my life, where I'm from, where my parents are from, what languages I speak, how long I've been here, etc. etc. Not a single question about my education, or who I am as a person, but a million questions about my upbringing (they were really fishing to see if I was upper class or at least upper middle class), my parentage, my genealogy. They never quite said it out loud, but it was clear I was considered to be on the same level as "the help", and since I was marrying a teacher, I had climbed as far as I was going to on the social ladder.
Sometimes "positive" racism comes up, and I always feel super weird about it because they're not being mean but they're being ignorant and it's still offensive. Like the the time (about four years ago) my boss pulled me into his office to ask if I was Filipino because “Filipino people are such hard workers, I’m glad we hired you”. Last time I brought that up as an example of racism, the person I was talking to said he was just paying me a compliment. Okay, so what about the time some guy wearing a red MAGG hat told me to “go back to where [I came] from” and then got mad when I told him I was from Seattle? “Well it’s not his fault, you look like you immigrated here.” I don’t even understand that comment, this is America, unless you are Native American we all immigrated here.
I've heard all sorts of interesting things regarding racism. A common remark I hear is "Why are you even talking about racism? You're not black. No one is racist against you." Um. Literally anyone can experience racist bigotry. White people, brown people, black, pink, yellow, red, purple, whatever. I also get people basically telling me that nothing really bad has ever happened to me, like no one lynched me or my family members, no one has shot us just for existing, we haven't experience X Y and Z, the worst of racism that this country is experiencing right now. Okay, I can't speak for my entire family but I can speak for myself, and no, those things haven't happened to me. You're right.
So my question then is: At what point does this become a problem? I constantly have people telling me to let these "little things" go, but where do I draw the line? When does it get big enough that I'm "allowed" to react? When someone is physically injured? When someone insults X number of people at a time? I’ve had some people say I should let it go unless they meant it maliciously - so because they didn’t mean to be racist it’s okay? If I shoot someone because I didn't know any better, I still shot someone and I’m still gonna be charged with shooting someone. "Okay, but now you're over-exaggerating, no one's getting shot here." So is that where the line is drawn for you? Physical injury? Because let me tell you, between physical injury and emotional/mental injury, I'd take physical injury any day. It's easier to recover from.
Racism is a hot button topic these days. #45 hasn't made that any easier on us as a country. I don't necessarily believe that Trump himself has "caused" more racism, but I do think that he has made it easier and more socially acceptable for people to express their racist/sexist/hateful opinions. Do I experience the same amount of hatred that other people do? Not that I'm aware of. Does that invalidate my experiences? No. Should I let it slide just because someone else "has it worse"? No. If a person decides to grab at my chest, I'm not going to let it go because he didn't rape me. And if a person makes a racist comment to me, I'm not going to let it go because he didn't shoot me. I decide where to draw my line, and I encourage others to find theirs as well. I'm not a crazy social justice warrior, I'm not trying to fight everyone's battles, but I do want to live in a world where I don't have to think about this stuff in daily interactions. And the only way I can build that world around myself is to draw boundaries and lines and enforce them. I can't control everyone, but I can limit my interactions as much as possible. I just want my little corner of the world to have a little less hate in it, and I am absolutely allowed to want that.
