Why I Feel Numb

I should be outraged, shocked by the wave of anti-Asian attacks we have been seeing for months, only now spotlighted by the media. I am worried, mostly for my 82 year old mother who might become the next victim while heading to the grocery store. And I feel sorrow for everyone who has been or could be targeted. But my primary reaction upon hearing about the Atlanta shootings, and the half dozen new attacks in the last week or so in the Bay Area, has been numbness. Emotionally, I’m simply resigned and numb because this is all utterly predictable and in some ways inevitable given the long history of systemic racism (cutting across all races and colors in complex ways) in this country, the frequency of mass shooting events, and the toxic rhetoric from certain right-wing groups and media whose flames turned into a bonfire under the last presidential administration. I’m not shocked by the recent news because these anti-Asian hate incidents have been happening for the past year-- they just weren't getting noticed.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out why I am feeling more numb than fearful or angry. I believe one factor is just being exhausted from this past year of pandemic, wildfire, racial injustice, venomous political discourse, and overall worry. But it’s also because I grew up Asian American in the U.S. and to protect myself, I lowered my expectations and built up thick walls around myself to try to block out all the racist and sexist bullsh*t. I was born in New Jersey to parents who were originally from China, fled to Taiwan after the Communist takeover in 1949, and immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1960s to attend graduate school and take advantage of all the opportunities that America offered. 

We moved to Cincinnati, Ohio when I was 5, and I grew up there. I went to public schools which were remarkably integrated-- integrated meaning there was a healthy mix of white and black students. However, I was always in the “other” category. Literally, on all the school forms I had to fill out, there was “black”, “white” and “other” in the race column, so for thirteen years I filled out “other”. I only recall one other girl in my elementary school who was half-Asian, half-white. I was generally happy and had friends-- both black and white-- but I was also the odd one out. I fully participated in the playground rhymes where you said “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these”, pulling at the corners of your eyes and then pointing at your nipples, not understanding what that really invoked. Frequently I’d get “ching chong”ed by other kids, even my own friends. Sometimes I hit them, sometimes I yelled something insulting back at them, oftentimes I ignored them. I was frequently embarrassed by my parents because we ate weird food and they had thick accents, but I also loved their cooking and thought it was cool that I was from an exotic, Oriental country like China.

Things got far worse when I became a teenager. As a young kid, the racism was about feeling weird, about not fitting in, about being “other”. As a teenage girl, it took on a much more predatory feel. Grown men would cat call on the street, and “ching chong” in the same breath. Starting at the age of 13, and continuing into adulthood, I’d get lines like “Are you from China [or Japan or Korea]? I love that country. I’ve been there. Wonderful place. The women are so beautiful. How long have you been in this country? You are so beautiful.” Again, sometimes I ignored them, sometimes I told them off, sometimes I walked away-- the decision always based on a calculus regarding my personal safety. Was I alone or were my friends nearby? Was I in a public place with a crowd or in an isolated spot? Never once did I feel flattered-- only disgusted.

Fast forwarding a few decades to the present, I feel that I am in a very strange spot where location and age as well as socio-economic class make a huge difference in my day-to-day experiences as a Chinese-American. I live in San Francisco, where there are many Asian- and Chinese-Americans, and which is a progressive-leaning city. I have done well with my education and my career, so I live a life of privilege, including the ability to have worked from home this past year. I do not experience nearly the frequency of overt racist comments as I did growing up in Ohio. But it does happen, and it’s more jarring because I’m not expecting it. I was yelled at by an angry driver who called me a “Chinese b*tch” a year ago because I stopped at a yellow light instead of gunning through it. A group of teenage boys “ching chong”ed me while walking in my own neighborhood a few months ago. 

Looking back on these more recent incidents in San Francisco, they have been annoying but not very threatening. And I realized that one key reason is because of my age. I am solidly middle-aged now, and spend most of my time in public in comfy “mom clothes”, so I do not get the sexual come-ons I did from ages 13 to 30-something. And I am not elderly, so I do not immediately look like an easy victim. It’s a sad statement that I’ve figured out that part of my relative safety lies in the fact that I’m in this particular age window.

Location also matters. Ohio is different from San Francisco. Not only did I grow up in Cincinnati, where my parents lived until four years ago, my husband is also from Ohio, from the Cleveland area. We visit my husband’s family in Ohio at least once a year. I love them all dearly-- they are wonderful, kind people and we get along extremely well. But my in-law’s moved to a very rural county in Ohio after they retired, and I always know that I will stand out like a sore thumb there, and get frequent stares. The county is overwhelmingly white (98.7% in the 2010 census), and I put my armor back on whenever we go there and are out in public. 

Last June, three months into lock-down, we decided for our kids’ sake that we needed to take a break, so we drove all the way from SF to Ohio to stay with my in-law’s for a few weeks. I did so reluctantly not because of the 2,480 mile drive, but because I was afraid I would be attacked either verbally or physically in their rural community, which is very white, very conservative, and very pro-Trump. I purposely laid low when we got there, and minimized my trips into town. I pulled my face mask up high and my baseball cap low, to hide my identity. One day at the shore of a lake where we went swimming with the kids and extended family, and my mask was off, one man who was with his own family spent ten solid minutes staring me down. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t acknowledge him, but he simply glared at me in silence because I clearly didn’t belong there as far as he was concerned. Later that evening, when I mentioned the staring incident to one of my husband’s close family members, they said they hadn’t noticed. When I mentioned that I often get stared at in their community because I’m the only Asian-looking person in the entire county, they were shocked. They hadn't realized that happens all the time when I am there. And of course, why would they notice? It’s not their lived experience. 

But of course race, gender, age, class, community are all lived experiences. They affect our life experiences as Americans in profound ways. I have my own set of experiences that have given me a set of protections-- some built as armor against the daily incidents of discrimination, predation and “otherness” I grew up with and still experience on occasion; many granted by the socioeconomic status I have attained in life. These protections have in some ways made me numb, but I need to break through that.

I cannot claim to fully understand the lived experiences of other people, some of whom have more privilege than me, some who face far greater adversity and far more lethal levels of injustice. But we can all seek to listen and to empathize with others. Only from listening and empathy can we arrive at wise actions to combat these issues.

So I have decided to share some of my experiences here, in the hopes that some of you may listen. I invite you to share your stories, too, and I will do my best to listen.

Addendum: for those looking for more information and ways to take action, here is a list of relevant resources.

#StopAsianHate #StopAAPIHate #ShareYourStories #racialjustice