华人在美国的遭遇。
2020-05-17 11:30阅读：
新冠肺炎又是一个坎。
作者是韩裔美国记者。
她说，七十年代她在芝加哥长大时，每天都看到对中国人的歧视。这次肺炎危机中，我应该把头发烫成金黄色吗？
是直面种族歧视，还是把歧视推到另外的人身上？
她已经不再说，“我不是中国人。我是韩国人”。
Why I’ve Stopped Telling People I’m Not Chinese.
When confronted with racism toward anyone, our instinct should be
indignation, not deflection.
By Euny Hong，15 March 2020, NYT.
Ms. Hong is a journalist and author.
Mid-February, when the world was starting to go pear-shaped, I had
to travel to an area where I’d previously experienced anti-Asian
sentiment. So a few days before the trip, I emailed my (white)
hairdresser frantically: “I know this sounds crazy but can you can
make me blonde? I’m traveling next week and I’m worried about being
mistaken for Chinese and blamed for the coronavirus.”
Let’s skip the ridiculousness of the idea for a second to focus on
the important bit: Why had I worded my request so offensively? I
could have just said I was worried about xenophobia. Why was I
throwing people of Chinese descent under the bus?
It’s like that old joke about the two people running away from a
bear: You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun
the other guy. Except in this case: You don’t have to deal with
racism; you just have to make people racist at someone else.
My panic was a humbling reminder that I should never be overly
confident that I would do the right thing in the face of fear.
Sure, wanting to avoid racial profiling is a survival instinct. But
survival instincts are often amoral and, if unchecked, can easily
turn ugly.
I ended up not dyeing my hair because a sudden allergy attack made
it ill advised. Also, it was stupid.
But I shared my anxiety with a half-Chinese-American, half-white
friend. What if I get stopped at the airport for extra screening? I
asked. She messaged, “Carry around a copy of your books to prove
you’re Korean.” (Two of the books I wrote have the word “Korean” in
the title.) She added: “I’m serious.”
I messaged “LOL,” dismissed her idea for about 10 minutes … and
then put copies of my books in my carry-on bag.
What was my plan? To run up to someone hurling epithets and say,
“Hey I think we can all agree this Covid stuff is all China’s
fault, but good news, I’m Korean! You know, the ones who brought
you BTS? So we’re good, right?”
This impulse isn’t exactly new, even if the pandemic has brought
out its most sinister form. I’ve been doing it since I was a child.
Worse, I was taught to do it.
When I was a kid in late-1970s suburban Chicago, anti-Chinese
taunts were a daily occurrence. It was a frequent topic at Korean
church — the only place we clapped eyes on other Koreans outside
our own homes. Our parents and Sunday school teachers told us that
the correct response was, “I’m not Chinese; I’m Korean.” (This
didn’t even work, it should be noted: When I informed a mean
kindergartner that I was Korean, he responded, “There is no such
place.”)
None of us kids were proud of being Korean-American back then. The
grown-ups tried to counter this shame by instilling ethnic pride.
But despite their good intentions, they invited pride’s ugly
sibling: implied permission to step on other people.
For an inarticulate child, maybe “I’m not Chinese” isn’t an
especially meaningful retort. But a grown woman should know
better.
So what finally brought about my moment of self-reckoning? It was a
T-shirt.
Last month, a Chinese-American friend of mine posted on social
media about a targeted internet ad that had outraged her. In the
wake of Covid-19, some clothing vendor saw a business opportunity:
a series of T-shirts with slogans like, “I’m Asian but I’m not
Chinese,” “I’m not Chinese, I’m Korean,” “I’m not Chinese, I’m
Malaysian,” etc. Her friends’ comments under her post were equally
indignant. (So much for predictive algorithms, by the way.)
My first thought was, “I wish we’d had these shirts when I was a
kid.”
And then I stopped myself, horrified.
By way of context — not justification — Asians have been siccing
people on other Asians for ages. In World War II-era America, some
Asian-owned businesses posted signs in their windows specifying
that they were not Japanese. I have even met a few Asians of that
generation who currently believe that it made political sense for
Franklin D. Roosevelt to put Japanese-Americans in internment
camps. Just the Japanese.
Which is not to say that mislabeling isn’t dangerous; it can even
be deadly. In Highland Park, Mich., in 1982, there was an incident
that all Asian-Americans of a certain age remember vividly: A
Chinese-American named Vincent Chin was murdered in a strip club by
two white autoworkers who assumed he was Japanese — one of the
people who, they believed, had destroyed the American auto
industry.
It was a tragic case of mistaken identity. But to respond to that
horrific incident with “Vincent Chin wasn’t even Japanese!” is to
create a dangerous distraction from the core issue: It is never OK
to attack anyone based on their race.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve bristled at the Asian-American
label. I found it frustratingly meaningless, lumping together
diverse groups under one heading in a way that promoted precisely
the kind of generalizations we want to prevent. “You all look the
same,” or, “I bet you love Excel and bad driving.”
But what I’ve come to realize over the past few weeks is that even
if I don’t identify with that designation and find it overly broad,
like it or not, it shapes how people see me. The only path forward
for any of us requires a united front.
If someone says, “You Chinese are killing us,” I am in that moment
Chinese. Whether I give the other person a piece of my mind or not
— awkward, perhaps, from six feet away — my instinct should be
indignation, not deflection. Because one of many lessons I’ve
learned from the pandemic and its consequences is that focusing on
being misidentified by a xenophobe is nothing better than trying to
negotiate a more accurate insult.
