So I arrive in the room at there are a total of 5 people in the audience. Unlike many of the sessions I attended, this felt like an intimate affair. In the first few minutes, I quickly learn that Dr. Palmer grew up in Iowa and was friends with the WPC founder, Dr. Eddie Moore, and therefore has been presenting at the WPC conferences since the beginning. Dr. Palmer had been giving this talk at the conferences for many years so that might be why the attendance numbers were so low. I also later found out that Dr. Palmer had been a keynote speaker at previous conferences.
There I was in the room and he started to tell his story. So much of it resonated with me that I just sat there DUMBFOUNDED just nodding my head there. It felt so much like Dr. Palmer was talking directly to me and explaining to me why I felt the way I did and put into words many of the things I had been thinking for years but really hadn't formed a cohesive conclusion to. In approaching how to write this post, I am challenged to figure out how to structure it, but I've decided to relay Dr. Palmer's talk and then write about how it's congruent with my story.
Dr. Palmer was born in December 1969 in Corea and in 1971 adopted by a family from Iowa. As one might expect, the family is white and so he grew up as an ethnic minority in predominantly white Iowa. He grew up living in this zone of "trying to be white" and not realizing that he was always asking the question, "why do I want to be white?" He acted like them thinking he could be them but often heard, "you're not like other Asians." Dr. Palmer relayed stories of being teased and bullied by other kids because of he didn't look like them even though he went to school with them and played sports just like them. Growing up in the 1970's and 80's, there really were a lack of Asian role models. Asian men were either shown as evil, Fu Manchu,' or wimps, Long Duck Dong." Asian women on the other hand were depicted as exotic and submissive. We had a string of non-Asians playing Asian roles (ooh, this still happens but now at least there is some blowback). Then society called us the "model minority." The American Government was complicit in this in that their 1965 Immigration Act preferred (if not only allowed) certain well-educated and wealthy Asians to immigrate to the United States. It was those professionals who latched onto educational success as the way to play the white game and achieve success in white America.
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| Maybe.....people are starting to get it. MAYBE.... |
In all these cases, this was leading us Asians (men) in our ASCRIBED IDENTITY. The outside world was reflected back to us the identity THEY wanted us to have. We weren't white because we weren't told to see ourselves in white areas of competence and achievement. Therefore they saw us that way and we were told to see ourselves in that way. WOAH.
Dr. Palmer, being the same age as I and living many of these issues in the same moment as I, was asking, "If I'm not white, then what am I?" He hated the reflection of what he was seeing of himself. No wonder girls never wanted to date an Asian guy, look at how we were portrayed? Asian women of course would want to date a white guy, he's powerful and strong. The worst offender? The Joy Luck Club! All four Asian women marry.....WHITE MEN. Places of Asian male strength, the martial arts, were being co-opted by white men. Steven Segal and Jon Claude Van-Damme now taking over leading roles from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. White Hollywood was erasing the chance for Asian men to show strength and masculinity. So what do Asians do? They play the model minority game. It's the only path we have.
After college, Dr. Palmer moves to Corea and comes to the conclusion that he's not Corean either. Although he looks like the majority, he's not culturally Corean. The outside and the inside don't match. He eventually gets a higher level degree from a Corean University and works there. He marries a Corean woman and they move back to the States and now live in Upstate New York where he is a professor and he has three sons. During this time he reflects that he's never going to be Corean and he's never going to be American so what is he? Where does he belong? How do resolve that the face on the outside doesn't match the identity on the inside?
If I correctly interpret what Dr. Palmer says about resolving this issue is that not having to resolve it and answer the question is part of the solution. Our disparate identities is what we have to love. We don't have to fit into a box and that we don't have to be told how to feel our act. We don't have to be the "model minority." We can be athletic (he notes that except for Jeremy Lin, every single successful Asian athlete was not born in the United States!) and masculine and that our feelings of inadequacy aren't our feelings, it's what is being imposed on us by a dominant white culture. In addition, for Dr. Palmer it was finding out that there were so many others like him/us out there that our situation isn't unique just to our single experience. It's the white "supremacy" culture that is the source of our identity issues. This is now, with this lens of understanding, our EMPOWERED IDENTITY. We can love ourselves even though white culture is trying to tell us not to be proud of who we are.
Dr. Palmer concluded with two small anecdotes. The first was when he saw his first son being born and seeing his son made him finally "see myself as beautiful!" The second is when people ask him if he is Asian-American, he responds, "I'm American, it's YOU who put the hyphen in there!" I'm going to use this last response from now until forever.
Those of you who have made it this far are wondering how it applies to my life. For certain, I was not adopted and did no grow up in predominantly white Iowa. I certainly was conflicted growing up Asian in Seattle, but going to a private high school shielded me from any of the teasing and bullying. And I do have to say that I have to thank my parents for never trying to play the white game and trying to ingratiate themselves into the white community. I saw some of my Asian friends' parents "play the game" by volunteering for school committees and joining clubs and hosting parties. I saw that it certainly helped their kids have more of the popular white kid friends and get invited to those social gatherings, but I knew they never really were fully accepted. I could just tell, even as a high school kid. But I did try and play the game in some ways. I tried to play sports I never would have dreamed of (what was I doing trying cross-country skiing or rowing even) but mostly I put my head down and did the best I could in school. I did, however, unconsciously recognize that my portrayal in the movies and television was stifling and not right.
It was when I came out as gay and "entered" (I never really entered so that is why the quotes) the gay community did I fully encounter the issues described by Dr. Palmer. I felt INVISIBLE. I moved to San Francisco and was expecting to be part of this huge great friendship circle and community (little did I realize that part of the problem was that I didn't really work at making friends and doing things thinking it would just be given to me) but it didn't happen. And then I never saw a face that looked like mine (Asian) or a body that look liked mine (a little bit chunky and not muscular) ever portrayed in the media. Then (and still now) I would see online profiles of guys who would say, "No fats, no femmes, no blacks, no Asians." And the worst of all? Other Asian guys who wouldn't want to meet or be friends with other Asians.
This environment, in which I found myself here in San Francisco, lead to questioning myself as a person. It was the first time in my life where I couldn’t control the course of my life. Basically I wasn’t getting what I wanted, which was community, relationship and the picture of this full life, gay and overall. In retrospect, I realize that I was immature in thinking that it didn’t take work but I do now realize that what I was looking for might also have been a myth itself. This lead to some self-destructive behaviors that I now attribute to trying to equalize the playing field. I created a “community” of friends even though they weren’t always friends. And I always savored when someone told me “oh, you’re not like other Asians,” which I now recognize as a total insult and coming from a place of white supremacy. Enough on that.
I too, like Dr. Palmer, moved abroad to escape the pain I was in. My three years in Italy were a time to clear out the system. I didn’t even deal with the identity issues. I just lived outside the United States without any expectation. In fact, I lived in a place that highlighted my America-ness and the delight the Italians took when I could piece together some basic Italian was fun when I could EXCEED their expectations. I didn’t move to Italy to show off, I moved there to relax. But three years was enough and the pull of China was too great. I went to China as an American with American attitudes toward the Chinese as one big mass of people all the same, robots basically. I learned that (DUH) there are great Chinese people, crazy Chinese people, funny Chinese people…the entire gamut. People are people everywhere. But I loved living where I looked like everyone else….and I have to sheepishly admit, I loved the privilege and preferential treatment I got being an American in China. I had the best of both worlds. At this point, I didn’t have this conflict of wanting to be Chinese, but I came to be SO PROUD of China, so proud and have such love of the people that I became so proud of my Chinese heritage. This is what living in China gave me.
Like Dr. Palmer, I met my spouse in China. Meeting Onions has been eye opening for me to see how differently he and I see white America. He’s never had any sense that America is better than China. He’s proud of China and sees America (white America) just another place in the world. Although he has some crazy understanding of Chinese history and American history, he lives in America without any working sense that white America is any better. He just sees it as different. This lack of ability to see white privilege also has made it hard for him to understand the oppression of black people. I truly hope that this more neutral vision of the States is something he retains.
And then there is my nephew. His birth caused the same feeling in me about beauty. This cute and beautiful kid, although not my son, but my blood relation….how could I not love being a part of who he is. His beauty is my beauty, both inside and outside.
Ok, so about this Corean thing. According to Dr. Palmer, when the Japanese colonized the Corean Peninsula, the spelling on maps of Corea was with a C. But in English, Corea is alphabetically before Japan, so to move Corea behind Japan, they changed the spelling to a K. At least that’s the rumor….
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