This morning, my family engaged in one of our all-time favorite activities, watching the United States Women's National Soccer Team play. Today we cheered on from our living room as the United States beat North Korea 1-0 in the first round of 2012 Olympic play. Watching the USWNT play over the past few years has been one of the most powerful and important things my daughters have experienced. The names Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, Lauren Cheney and Carly Lloyd are known in our house much like sports figures -- like Kobe Bryant, Drew Brees or Big Papi might be known to others.
Despite the great fun of winning and watching the great play of the United States, as my wife and I followed the commentary on Twitter, we noticed a disturbing trend. Here are just a few examples from some the seemingly innocuous to the blatantly offensive:*
So to point out the obvious and absurd in all of this, all Asians do not all look alike. Still, do this search or this one or this one and you will see ample evidence that some believe and experience the contrary. Sprinkled throughout the tweets you see some folks calling some people out, others including a "I don't mean to be racist" disclaimer and others simply wondering out loud.
While it is one thing to call out the North Korean squad for their rough play, it is quite another to wander into the realm of "all Koreans look alike." While this might not be a huge deal to many folks, this "they all look the same" rhetoric this has been one of THE primary ways that society has historically denied and dismissed the human experience and expression of people of color. Sure, everyone is mistaken for someone at some point in time, but I simply do not think this happens to white folks as much as it does for people of color. For many of my black, Latino and Asian friends out there, I am sure that we can all list instance after instance after instance when we have been mistaken for a like-raced person who looks nothing like us.
Let me give you an example of how this plays out in real life in an innocent, yet telling way. If I had a dollar for every time that someone made a Bruce Lee reference to me, I would be a very wealthy man. Now you might be thinking, "Well, duh, your name IS Bruce and you ARE Asian." Sure this train of thought MIGHT might sense if I was also ripped with muscles, was 30 pounds lighter, 2 inches taller and could kill you with a one-inch punch to the heart and but alas, these are not traits that I possess. While I am not actually mistaken for Bruce Lee, it does give insight into the place where people start and usually stop when first meeting me... my Asian face and an automatic connection to another Asian face. This plays out even more personally, when I AM mistaken for other Asian Americans in my own church denomination. Despite the fact that I look nothing like Rodger, Joey, Neal or Kye it happens again and again, further illustrating the reality that many people really do think we all look alike.
In the end, seeing this trend in the midst of an event that is meant to bring the global community together, I was reminded that there is still much to do in trying to build better relationships between people of different racial backgrounds. We must be able to take the time to actually get to know each other in a way that does not dismiss the genuine racial and ethnic background/s of a person, but allows us to incorporate these elements into the lens through which we interact with one another. This could be said for many issues that make up our complex existence and unless we are willing to see one another's humanity in a way that truly incorporates all of those things, we will continue be a people who find ourselves battling across false and one-dimensional dichotomies of race, gender, sexuality, age, ideology, etc.
If you feel comfortable, please feel free to leave your story of mistaken identity as I do think telling the stories of our mistakes and brokenness is one way to help us all move towards some level of forgiveness and healing. Engaging in these conversations about race is certainly not an easy task -- community rarely is -- but I am convinced and convicted that it is well worth the effort.
*I chose not to publicly call out these folks to the extent that I would include the links to their Twitter accounts. Many are young folks who I believe are still learning the nuances of social media. My intent is not to bring down the hammer on any one person, but only to point out that issues of race are still in need of addressing in today's society.
Please feel free to comment here, but I'm more likely to interact if you comment on the originating post or contact me via Twitter.
Follow Bruce Reyes-Chow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/breyeschow
Henry G. Brinton: Religious Roots Of The Olympics
| 1 | United States | 46 | 29 | 29 |
| 2 | China | 38 | 27 | 23 |
| 3 | Russia | 24 | 26 | 32 |
| 4 | Great Britain | 29 | 17 | 19 |
| 5 | Germany | 11 | 19 | 14 |
| 6 | Japan | 7 | 14 | 17 |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect
"If you cannot kill with one-punch to the heart, you are not Asian." The Proverbs of WW
No big deal....
Dear Bruce,
Why don't you ask every person who makes a reference to Bruce Lee in relation to you for a dollar for making that remark. Some will be good humored about it and pony up. Others will take offense and storm off ina huff. But I'll bet you, word will get around fast and the comments will stop for you and other Asian people alike. You're welcome.
(P.S. My cut is for this advice is only 25%. A bargain!)
Not if you actually look at the studies. It's not "white" americans who are falling behind in math and science.
I work in an urban school and looking at our test scores, and those of other schools in the district, there is a clear pattern to test results. White and Asian students are all but indistinguishable in Math with the white students having a slight advantage in English scores due to a significant minority of Asian students being either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants with limited English ability. Hispanic students perform around 10 to 20% lower on assessments and Africa-American students between 30 to 40% lower.
Making a dig at white people on this subject is incredibly ignorant, childish, and counterproductive. White students, on the whole, are doing fine. We need to find ways to improve the performance of Hispanic and Black students and that, unfortunately, calls for series reflection of the cultures and societies of these groups and the ways they contribute to what is known as the achievement gap as well as the ways that schools can work to mitigate them.
BUT I don't do it because I once run into a lady in a store who spoke Bengali so you can never know. Not only that there is a man in our local grocery story, looks Japanese but calls himself Bengali because he and his wife grew up in Calcutta.
People sometimes accuse me of being a WASP -- I am white, I was raised as a protestant, but the Anglo-Saxons were the murderous gang that attacked my Celtic forebears, or so my family believes. I can swear at the English in Welsh.
The next thing, I guess is that people will accuse me of being from Illinois, when in fact I live ten miles north of the state line.
Lighten up, people.
I bet you can tell the difference between a Malay and a Vietnamese or Laosion?