Past Actions Leads to Future Discrimination
Growing up in a Japanese household, I never really came across discrimination. I had a Caucasian best friend in kindergarten whose parents treated me like one of their sons. We also had a couple of African American friends in our group who we played with frequently. I was never looked at funny while walking down the street with my parents, or denied service at a restaurant for being the race that we were. I visited my grandparents in Japan (mother’s side) and Hawaii (father’s side) alternating years, but never once was I ever “randomly” selected for an X-Ray or a search at the TSA line. I was in this bubble in which racism didn’t exist. Or maybe I was just too naive to notice.
I encountered my first form of discrimination in fourth grade of elementary school. Ms. Libel, a middle-aged woman, seemed a little off when it came to African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. During this time, I had a very close Chinese friend and a Korean friend, who we’d joked by calling ourselves the “Trinity” of Asians. Being part of the stereotype, the three of us were very good at math and often competed against each other for the top seed in the class. We had more Caucasians in the class, which made it more apparent that she did not treat the minorities the way she treated them. My Chinese friend was accused of plagiarizing on a report, although he had the evidence shown that he had not done so. She would rarely call on someone who had raised their hand if they were a minority. At that time I didn’t see her as a racist, but someone who just preferred Caucasians more than minorities.
In high school, I met another Korean student who I befriended through band class. For four years we played during classes, pep rallies, football games, and concerts. We got to know each other very well through band class and to this day, I would call him one of my closest friends. I was invited to his house for dinner with a bunch of our mutual friends. But interestingly, I remember him warning me about his grandparents. This was a very strange feeling that I was invited to a household with a warning beforehand. I asked what the problem was and he said, “my grandparents hate Japanese people”.
Growing up in an American society, schools do not teach you the evil and inhumane actions that America has done during wars. Even the story of the first Thanksgiving is altered so that the children would not hear the Pilgrims slaughtering the Native Americans during colonization. The worst action in American history we had heard was the dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and had taught us that it was necessary to end war. Just like this concept, my Japanese schools and my parents had not mentioned all the evil actions the Japanese people did during the country’s history. My Korean friend’s grandparents hated my kind because the Japanese invaded Korea during the early 1900s, raping and slaughtering villages.
This came back to haunt me when my Chinese ex-girlfriend and I first started dating three years ago. We started to get serious and she would come over to my house frequently to hang out. Occasionally she would meet my dad and my dad was very cool about it. But soon, I thought it was weird that we were always hanging out at my house and never hers. This is when I confronted her and asked what the reason was. She obviously didn’t want to admit that her father was a racist but she said, “my dad hates Japanese people”. Because of this, I was terrified to be in the presence of her father and was always hesitant to go to her house from that day on. I remember many times where I would call to pick her up and she would warn me to park a little further away from her house because her father was home.
In both cases, I was discriminated against for being a particular race. A race where my existence had nothing to do with the outcomes of war. The Japanese tortured, raped and slaughtered millions of Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos, and more and I mourn for those who’s lives have been impacted. But teaching the new generation to hate a particular race depending on a particular part of history will get you nowhere.
For my Korean friend and ex-girlfriend, me being Japanese despite the horrific past, didn’t faze them at all. They accepted me for who I am despite what their family had said. I believe that this is mainly due to the fact that they are Americanized and have what W.E.B Du Bois calls a “double-consciousness”. Where it gives us a “ sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Because we have two identities, we are able to look upon one identity and say that what the other identity thinks is wrong and we do not condone it. There is no way of convincing the older generation that their way of thinking is wrong. In fact, I would not even discourage it if they personally experienced the inhumane acts that one nation caused to the other. But after looking through both my friends and the result of the millennials who have voted in this past election, I am very hopeful for the younger generation to spread love.
