I Fail
Is there was a way for me to recant a deleted comment? I should learn to read more closely posts that I comment on, because while I still think the first part of Elizabeth Moon's citizenship post was good (and, to show you how I think, I originally thought she was going to talk about corporations next, bad citizens that they are) but, and I do regret this, my time on the Internet on a normal basis is always rare and short (10 minutes at a time) and frequently interrupted, I skimmed. Returned, skimmed again through all the tabs I had open. Started writing a "love this but here's a problem" comment in a hurry, was interrupted, left the apartment with baby, came back hours later, and just posted without thinking further. Over a day later, read Ms Moon's reply that made me frown, but, again having little time online, decided to do no more about it, until on Friday my friends list exploded. Read the original post again, more slowly, and realized I disagreed with more points than I originally thought, even though (and this is still true) I love how the post began, and you're free to call me an idiot for that.
I can't make this post long (and that's normal for me) because anytime soon the baby's going to wake up and I'll be occupied for several hours until she sleeps again, and I recover, then she wakes up again. I've had to write this post in parts. My online life is severely shallow now, and fragmented; it has to fit into the few little parts of my days that the baby, or housework, doesn't take up.
But my failure wasn't just a failure of time, and I can admit that now.
Someone once told me that I must lead a charmed life. I thought it was funny then, but now I see the truth in it--I've traveled, lived in different places, worked interesting jobs--and now I've realize I dodged a lot of really crappy racism...or else have been oblivious to it, or healed and forgotten the ill feelings soon enough. Reading my friends' list of different experiences being treated as outsiders/other/less-than-human in one's own country; cripes, this sounds lame but it's true anyway: I have experienced nothing that comes close, and it's coloured my views.
It's not that I didn't faced racism in the places I've lived in, but I only felt physically threatened once (Pikeville, Kentucky; when a big group of big white men seemed to be rounding up my friends and I in a parking lot--we bolted), and most of the racism/prejudice I experienced (or noticed) happened in my late teens and older anyway when, ahem, my skin was thick, everyone was stupid (relative to me) and I was confidant in my ability (rightly or no) to either talk or run my way out of any bad situation. I realize this may make me sound more stupid and lucky than brave, but anyway, feeling no fear most of the time made me quite adventurous and willing to take trains and buses alone and wander around most US/Australian towns and cities by myself, devil may care what anyone thought. If ever I felt unfairly treated anywhere, I sometimes roped in a "white friend" to go with me to complain. I probably was pretty obnoxious. God knows I was an anomaly in the international dorm when I was first a foreign college student in Wisconsin. It's not that I denied I was Asian, it's just that I was such a goddamned Internet, SF&F and gaming geek, often with a few fandom friends near wherever I was (and in the early days of the Internet, that meant few but very close buds) that I didn't think (and indeed never thought about) if my skin color or country of origin mattered. I just wanted to get to my weekly AD&D game on time.
Assimilation, if that is the right word, was relatively easy for me. My Malaysian dorm-roommate was sometimes near tears after fumbling her speech on the phone with the locals; for me, my classmates thought I was a Vietnamese orphan who'd been raised in the cheese state. I slipped in and out of different accents like they were snake-skin. (I didn't fool everyone. My Dungeon Master caught my British pronunciation for words like "class".) For the Asian students who looked like me, I didn't get why they always had to hang together grouped by their country of origin, conversing in their own language before they ventured off campus or interacted with someone white. I had more trouble fitting in with other Asian students (I was often not Indian, Chinese, Malaysian or deferential enough, Asian feminists were uncommon where I was)...and then when I moved to Kentucky, well, I still hung with the SF&F geeks (and it became a colourful group near the end) but the Kentuckians in general were more insular.
So I was relatively sheltered, or as sheltered as one could be for being used to travel; occasional prejudice to me was par for the course when one is among different people. I still behaved myself while being conscious sometimes of deliberately breaking stereotypes of Asian/Singaporean people by making myself conspicuous and heard. Even when I was hurt or confounded by some idiot (not exclusive to white people), well, they were idiots, so that was that. (As my meditation teacher would put it, once you put a label on something, it's gone.) In North Carolina, I don't even remember sticking out at all. My three years there, I enjoyed every day except bad work days or the big crappy episode with healthcare.
So hear's the duh conclusion: my foreign student/immigrant experience was my experience. Much as I curse the way I'm treated at US airports (I'm apparently on some extra-security list; I now know the constant checks on me--and the baby--are not "random"), I'm not the enemy du jour in the right-wing media, I'm not of a religion that I need to defend, and I got it easy. Others did not, have not, will not, can not have it as easy--not while "post-racial" idiocy is still alive and kicking. And I, a non-white, can definitely be wrong on race/religious stuff sometimes. But I can still learn.
I can't make this post long (and that's normal for me) because anytime soon the baby's going to wake up and I'll be occupied for several hours until she sleeps again, and I recover, then she wakes up again. I've had to write this post in parts. My online life is severely shallow now, and fragmented; it has to fit into the few little parts of my days that the baby, or housework, doesn't take up.
But my failure wasn't just a failure of time, and I can admit that now.
Someone once told me that I must lead a charmed life. I thought it was funny then, but now I see the truth in it--I've traveled, lived in different places, worked interesting jobs--and now I've realize I dodged a lot of really crappy racism...or else have been oblivious to it, or healed and forgotten the ill feelings soon enough. Reading my friends' list of different experiences being treated as outsiders/other/less-than-human in one's own country; cripes, this sounds lame but it's true anyway: I have experienced nothing that comes close, and it's coloured my views.
It's not that I didn't faced racism in the places I've lived in, but I only felt physically threatened once (Pikeville, Kentucky; when a big group of big white men seemed to be rounding up my friends and I in a parking lot--we bolted), and most of the racism/prejudice I experienced (or noticed) happened in my late teens and older anyway when, ahem, my skin was thick, everyone was stupid (relative to me) and I was confidant in my ability (rightly or no) to either talk or run my way out of any bad situation. I realize this may make me sound more stupid and lucky than brave, but anyway, feeling no fear most of the time made me quite adventurous and willing to take trains and buses alone and wander around most US/Australian towns and cities by myself, devil may care what anyone thought. If ever I felt unfairly treated anywhere, I sometimes roped in a "white friend" to go with me to complain. I probably was pretty obnoxious. God knows I was an anomaly in the international dorm when I was first a foreign college student in Wisconsin. It's not that I denied I was Asian, it's just that I was such a goddamned Internet, SF&F and gaming geek, often with a few fandom friends near wherever I was (and in the early days of the Internet, that meant few but very close buds) that I didn't think (and indeed never thought about) if my skin color or country of origin mattered. I just wanted to get to my weekly AD&D game on time.
Assimilation, if that is the right word, was relatively easy for me. My Malaysian dorm-roommate was sometimes near tears after fumbling her speech on the phone with the locals; for me, my classmates thought I was a Vietnamese orphan who'd been raised in the cheese state. I slipped in and out of different accents like they were snake-skin. (I didn't fool everyone. My Dungeon Master caught my British pronunciation for words like "class".) For the Asian students who looked like me, I didn't get why they always had to hang together grouped by their country of origin, conversing in their own language before they ventured off campus or interacted with someone white. I had more trouble fitting in with other Asian students (I was often not Indian, Chinese, Malaysian or deferential enough, Asian feminists were uncommon where I was)...and then when I moved to Kentucky, well, I still hung with the SF&F geeks (and it became a colourful group near the end) but the Kentuckians in general were more insular.
So I was relatively sheltered, or as sheltered as one could be for being used to travel; occasional prejudice to me was par for the course when one is among different people. I still behaved myself while being conscious sometimes of deliberately breaking stereotypes of Asian/Singaporean people by making myself conspicuous and heard. Even when I was hurt or confounded by some idiot (not exclusive to white people), well, they were idiots, so that was that. (As my meditation teacher would put it, once you put a label on something, it's gone.) In North Carolina, I don't even remember sticking out at all. My three years there, I enjoyed every day except bad work days or the big crappy episode with healthcare.
So hear's the duh conclusion: my foreign student/immigrant experience was my experience. Much as I curse the way I'm treated at US airports (I'm apparently on some extra-security list; I now know the constant checks on me--and the baby--are not "random"), I'm not the enemy du jour in the right-wing media, I'm not of a religion that I need to defend, and I got it easy. Others did not, have not, will not, can not have it as easy--not while "post-racial" idiocy is still alive and kicking. And I, a non-white, can definitely be wrong on race/religious stuff sometimes. But I can still learn.