In the two years and 800 essay submissions I've spent with American teenage girls in putting together this book, both the most heartening (what I'm hearing from people who are under 18) and most disheartening response (what I'm hearing, always from white people, usually over 40) have been about race.
Heartening: Today's teen population is the most racially diverse this country has ever seen--the largest percentage of non-white and multiracial Americans are under age 20, by 2050 we'll have a white minority for the first time--and in many delightful ways, they're over it. They have friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents of all kinds. Race isn't necessarily something they think about--or choose to write about. As wildly diverse as the young authors of Red are, racial identity, theirs or others', was rarely an issue that came up in their essays.
Disheartening: This disturbed some of the older people, and a troubling, complicated kind of racism kicked in again and again. "Why are so many of the girls in the book white?" a reader, and purported fan of the book, would ask. The first few times it happened, I'd defend my choices by rattling off a list of the ethnicities represented. Then I realized this is only more of the same, and I was acting like an old person. I'd smile (if live) or kindly reply (via email) with, "What is it that makes you think these girls are white?" And then the racism began. Turns out, if you're of color in this country, the generation before you expects you to write about The Struggle--not TV or even your dad, not 9/11 or private school or museums.
So, in the wake of Obama's race speech--and to take back the horrible assumptions made by adults--for RED's first HuffPo blog, I asked some of the book's authors, representing a full range of perspectives, ages, geography, and yes, ethnicities to write on how much race is--or isn't--a part of their lives today.
Welcome RED authors, teen pundits, and Chicagoans Zoe Mendelson and Cammi Henao--neither of whom wrote about race in the book. Visit their daily blogs at www.redthebook.com. --Amy Goldwasser
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Erika Kwee, 17, is a high school senior in northern California and will be voting for the first time in November. She is currently working on her third fantasy novel.
When I look around my high school during lunch, I see flocks of polished, white, upper-class girls migrating past packs of Tongan athletes in the area known as "the Tongan lockers," situated next to the short Filipinos eating Cup-O-Noodles on the outskirts of "the Asian spot."
Yet a lot of these students rise above the invisible race lines. In fact, it seems like they rise above the divides only to split themselves in a different fashion--into the skaters, the emos, or the band kids. Maybe our high school society has evolved to the point where we have prejudices that delve deeper than race, to the cores of our values.
On several occasions, my mom has commented: "It's interesting that your sister seems to hang out with immigrant Asian girls, while your friends are mostly non-Asian. Why is that?"
And I shrug. That's just how things ended up.
Breaking it down into pure statistics, I would consider the group I hang out with most frequently at school to include two Caucasians, one Persian, and one Jew. This is confusing in itself. Is this how people typically label other people at my school? And where am I in their view? I don't actually know. But I did ask my parents if calling one friend Jewish rather than Caucasian was politically correct, and they were just as befuddled as me, which just goes to show that even in our politically-trying-to-be-correct society, we still get confused.
I've often reflected on the fact that I am not part of the Asian crowd at school, that I am in fact quite distanced from their whole social scene. However, I think my friends and I have all gravitated toward each other because of basic similarities and values. We study hard, are involved in school, and go to movies or basketball games or each other's houses. I just don't identify with the majority of Asians who can converse in Mandarin or Cantonese if the need arises, or who are always listening to Asian music, or who joke about being stigmatized by their family for getting bad grades, or who game constantly.
Of course, I'm stereotyping here. I mean, my parents still get concerned when I come home with a B on a report card--but I don't get disowned. And if I did, I wouldn't think that was an Asian thing. It's just that generally, the Asians are a culturally separate group from myself.
I am the result of an immigrant father and a first-and-a-half generation mother (immigrant father, first-generation mother); you could call me somewhere between a first- and second-generation child. But why would you get into that? I have never felt discriminated against because I'm Asian, although I'm sure people have cast passing judgments on me based on my race. I know I'm a lucky one for being able to grow up normally, not singled out for my slanted eyes or yellow-hued skin.
My mother grew up in a highly Caucasian population in southern California. She never felt deeply discriminated against, although she was sure there had been several small occasions. When I asked her, she couldn't remember any incidents. Instead, she recalled "feeling white" as a kid--such was the highly evolved society she grew up in.
My dad, on the other hand, immigrated from China to Phoenix, Arizona, at age eight, and in his less economically well-off neighborhood, encountered more prejudice. He remembered fighting a bully one day after school because of an insult. His mom, after first scolding him for fighting, laughed when she discovered the reason for the fight: The bully had called my dad a "Jap."
Both of my parents believe that socioeconomic backgrounds and education play a large part in discrimination. If they were ever the victim of a passing insult, they brushed it off--wrote it off to ignorance. I tend to agree with them. I believe the reason I'm not exposed to discrimination is because I live in a fairly well-off neighborhood with well-educated people. Call me whitewashed, but I think I'm pretty blessed to escape discrimination.
When it came to Obama, I admit that I was originally intrigued because of his status as the first-ever potential presidential candidate of color. But this soon passed, and he became just another candidate. His policies are what I aspire to base my judgments on, not his ethnicity.
As I read his speech, one section stopped me:
"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is...that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country...is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But...America can change...What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."
Yes, our country is still segregated. Yes, my high school is segregated on some level. But we have come so far, and so quickly, really.
Some people I know seem to think that we've gone far enough, to the point where race has become kind of a blasé topic. Yeah, we discriminated and were prejudiced bigots for a few centuries--we got that from history class, we're over it now. In fact, we're so over it, it's ironic to make stereotyping jokes: "You're Asian, you tell me how to fix my hard-drive." "Dang, your eyes look chinky in this picture!" "Oh, he's Jewish. I could tell by the big nose." But I don't think that should be the case, and anyone who thinks racial dividing lines aren't a big deal is living in denial.
Personally, I have found that in all my years of studying Mandarin on Saturdays in my all-Asian classrooms with classmates far more advanced than me, I felt like an outsider to these creatures so well versed in Chinese culture. On my trip to China, I felt as though every passerby could see through me as a complete phony outsider. When I am surrounded by nothing but members of the Asian group at school, I feel slightly uncomfortable.
The fact that I feel most at ease around people who are so ethnically different from me is, I think, kind of cool.