“When was the first time you experienced racism?” the video displayed in my eigth grade social studies classroom asked. Back then, I’d thought as hard as I could, all the way back to my preteen years, to a time where someone had said a racist comment to me. I couldn’t find one because, in a society where racial injustice is so predominant yet so disregarded, anything that had been said to me to make me feel ashamed and humiliated about my own culture was deemed “the standard.”
Growing up in a predominantly Asian community, I never understood the true meaning of racist “jokes” or microaggressions until I aged past childhood naivety. Even more, going to a Japanese-American Buddhist church every Sunday and spending most of my free time as a kid in San Jose’s Japantown community, I was shielded from the reality of racism and degradation that many other minority groups face everyday.
I’ve always heard stories of Asian-Americans being taunted by the the chanting of “chink” or “ching chong” whilst on their way to work hard for the money that keeps a roof over their family’s head—I’m sure everyone has. But you take notice of the fact that it seems as though these realities are from a lifetime ago, when, in fact, these phrases are shouted at people everyday. In recent years, it largely occurs in buildings of education. Schools. High schools. My school.
I’ll never be able to walk in public without the idea that I’m being judged by people around me. Even if nobody is, it is engraved into the minds of all children in marginalized groups because of what has happened to our people in the past. We’ll always be seen as abnormal, no matter how much we do to blend ourselves into White culture. And that’s okay, but the way we are treated and have been treated because of it is not. Especially in the experiences of immigrants in the US, the way that these peoples have been treated in the United States of America go against all beliefs that this country is the “land of the free.”
The idea that I’m not allowed to struggle in math class, or that I get hungry when there’s a dog nearby is strange to think about, but is something minority groups across the world experience regardless of what country they live in—and it’s all because of how we look. In today’s society, we are taught to accept racism, to laugh about it. But why? Why should I laugh when someone tells me to open my eyes? Open them to the fact that your blatant racism is a sign of insecurity that you use to boost your fragile self-esteem? I don’t need to “open my eyes” to see that.