11.9

Let's Talk About Race

Part I

Every once in a while, I like to forget that I’m a non-white person. I’ll try to move through the world as though people are seeing me, Mel, before they see my race. This was much easier to do when I was a child, when my imagination was vivid and I was lucky enough to grow up in a very diverse neighborhood, with many kids of the same race as me. My family watched both foreign language TV programming as well as mainstream media. I could see myself as the main character in any one of the stories I read or watched or heard about. At the time, it never occurred to my naive young self that there was a “main” category of people where I lived. But I have since grown, and I have learned so much. Especially in recent years, I’ve found that it’s become more and more difficult to forget that I am, indeed, not in the “main” bucket but in the “other.” As I ascend in both my career and my age, I often find myself in a room of all (or nearly all) white people, and over the years I have come to realize that there can be no separation of me from my race.

I am my race; it is the first thing that anyone will see, and I cannot exist, at least in current society, without this label. It has become one of the most familiar subjects of my life, out of pure necessity and survival.

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely love my family, where they come from, my motherland, and my second language. I’m immeasurably grateful that I’ve been given this unique perspective, and I believe it’s a gift that I can inherently see from more vantage points than one. But, as any Person of Color living in America will tell you, it has not been easy to come to (or even maintain) this perspective. I remember each time someone has reminded me that I’m a non-white person: from the smallest change in tone (most often from neutral to condescending) to the loudest derogatory term being yelled at me or someone in my family. And those are just the verbal abuses. I’ve personally witnessed enough acts of hatred to know that just by existing as a person of color, I need to be vigilant and hyper-aware of my social surroundings. And after years of this type of existence, my tools for understanding and dealing with racism have been carefully honed and sharpened. You might say I’ve become an expert: I can easily recognize it, I can call it out, and I am the last one to shy away from the topic. In fact, I’d say I’m eager and happy to talk about it, and I wish more people would. Specifically, I wish more white people would.

But they often don’t. Especially in formal settings, like in offices or at dinners. More especially if someone they know, or even they themselves, could be perceived in the slightest as being a racist. Often I sense there might be fear of saying the wrong thing or offending someone. Race is deemed a sensitive topic for them. This needs to change.

Mel

November 9th, 2019