Tuesday
The horrific Atlanta shootings that took the lives of eight Korean-American women are only the latest manifestation of a race hatred that has always been with us although it accelerated following Donald Trump’s use of racist trope to characterize the Covid virus. This is a story that hits close to home as I have a biologically Korean daughter-in-law (raised American), making both her and my grandson potential targets for bigots, bullies, and worse.
At the risk of jumping to conclusions, it seems fairly clear that the killer represents a toxic mixture of rightwing evangelicalism, repressed sexuality, and white supremacism. In her survey of Asian American literature, scholar Elaine Kim speaks of how white Americans have exoticized Asian sexuality, emasculating Asian men and hyperfeminizing Asian women. (The “dragon lady” is the most famous instance of the latter.) Kim writes that
Asian women are only sexual for the same reason that Asian men are asexual: both exist to define the white man’s virility and the white race’s superiority.
It didn’t matter to the killer that the women he killed were mostly elderly. In his mind, they were Asian women connected with massage parlors, and his fevered imagination did the rest.
In her frequently assigned poem “When I Was Growing Up,” Chinese-American poet Nellie Wong alludes to this exoticizing, both how she was expected to be an “exotic gardenia” and how Asian men were caricatured as small and frail. All she wanted when young was to fit in. As the poem makes clear, fitting in meant being white.
When I Was Growing Up
By Nellie WongI know now that once I longed to be white.
How? you ask.
Let me tell you the ways.
when I was growing up, people told me
I was dark and I believed my own darkness
in the mirror, in my soul, my own narrow vision.
when I was growing up, my sisters
with fair skin got praised
for their beauty and I fell
further, crushed between high walls.
when I was growing up, I read magazines
and saw movies, blonde movie stars, white skin,
sensuous lips and to be elevated, to become
a woman, a desirable woman, I began to wear
imaginary pale skin.
when I was growing up, I was proud
of my English, my grammar, my spelling,
fitting into the group of smart children,
smart Chinese children, fitting in,
belonging, getting in line.
when I was growing up and went to high school,
I discovered the rich white girls, a few yellow girls,
their imported cotton dresses, their cashmere sweaters,
their curly hair and I thought that I too should have
what these lucky girls had.
when I was growing up, I hungered
for American food, American styles
coded: white and even to me, a child
born of Chinese parents, being Chinese
was feeling foreign, was limiting,
was unAmerican.
when I was growing up and a white man wanted
to take me out, I thought I was special,
an exotic gardenia, anxious to fit
the stereotype of an oriental chick
when I was growing up, I felt ashamed
of some yellow men, their small bones,
their frail bodies, their spitting
on the streets, their coughing,
their lying in sunless rooms
shooting themselves in the arms.
when I was growing up, people would ask
If I were Filipino, Polynesian, Portuguese.
They named all colors except white, the shell
of my soul but not my rough dark skin.
when I was growing up, I felt
dirty. I thought that god
made white people clean
and no matter how much I bathed,
I could not change, I could not shed
my skin in the gray water.
when I was growing up, I swore
I would run away to purple mountains,
houses by the sea with nothing over
my head, with space to breathe,
uncongested with yellow people in an area
called Chinatown, in an area I later
learned was a ghetto, one of many hearts
of Asian America.
I know now that once I longed to be white.
How many more ways? you ask.
Haven’t I told you enough?
Further note: In “the way it was” Lucille Clifton provides an African American version of Wong’s drama:
mornings
i got up early
greased my legs
straightened my hair and
walked quietly out
not touchingin the same place
the treethe lot
the poolroomdeacon moore
everything was stayednothing changed
(nothing remained the same)
i walked out quietly
mornings
in the ‘40’s
a nice girl
not touching
trying to be white
In “trying to be white,” however, Clifton talks about shedding this identity, as Wong also has. After all, there’s no future in it:
hey music and
me
only white,
hair a flutter of
fall leaves
circling my perfect
line of a nose,
no lips,
no behind, hey
white me
and i’m wearing
white history
but there’s no future
in those clothes
so i take them off and
wake up
dancing.
