by the staff of The Bulletin
The Untied States of America has a long tradition of violence against people of Asian descent. With the racist working conditions of the Chinese who helped build the Western part of the transcontinental railroad system in the Nineteenth Century to the rounding up and corralling of Japanese American citizens in internment camps in the Twentieth Century and now the anti-Asian violence sparked by the Coronavirus Pandemic here in the Twenty-first Century, it could be argued that anti-Asian violence is as American as apple pie. It subsides from the eye of the general public for a while but, like any weed, it breaks through the surface again and again to steal the life from innocent, hard-working, American citizens. Hali Lee is an American of Korean descent and the founder of the Asian Women’s Giving Circle. On April 17, 2021, she consented to an interview to share her perspective on the more recent attempts to return America to its former ‘glory.’ When asked how she became the leader she is today, Ms. Lee responded by saying: ...I don’t actually even really think of myself as a leader...Actually, I think of myself as a learner, you know. I’m someone who loves to learn...I’ve always been a learner. I love learning new things. I learn things from my kids all the time...I find myself,...in these leadership positions now but...its not like I knew when I was 21 that I was going to end up at this place...I followed interesting opportunities. I’m always interested inequity and social justice and women and girls rights and why aren’t thing more fair in this amazing country of ours? Why are some people...held back by systems and other people seem to get ahead by the same systems?...What can we do to deconstruct systems like that? What can I learn along the way? And then, also, like really important, how can I build relationships with people who are good and try to do good things because it is through those relationships, I truly believe, that we will move forward as a collective people….I would say its more about finding a personal path that is meaningful and is aligned with my values in the world and finding good people to walk on that journey with and hopefully raising kids with consciousness and integrity and, you know, try to make a little bit of a better place. I would say its more about living life or trying to live life by those values than it is about setting out to become a leader. Okay. Have you personally dealt with hatred, resentment, animosity, whatever for being Asian? Oh yeah. My whole life. You know, I was born in Korea (South Korea) and my family moved to the United States when I was a baby. So,…My only memories of my home country are as a tourist when we go back to visit family. So, I am American... I grew up in the Midwest. My brother and I were the only Asian kids in our schools until Kim Wong came in fifth grade. Her family is Chinese-American and we’re friends to this day….I remember when my brother and I were really small, a couple of 6th graders, who were the oldest kids in elementary school. They were really big. They chased us home. We thought we were going to die. There used to be this like ‘Chinese Japanese, Dirty Knees’ taunt, that was sort of a sing-song rhyme that my brother and I heard this a lot. And my mom, we were just talking about this the other day, she saw us like screaming down the street. We lived in a suburb where we could walk back and forth to school and we were running home, “Mom! Mom!!”...She comes running out of the house, grabs the kid, one of these kids, by the back of the neck, by the scruff of his shirt and made him come in and call his mom to tell her what he had done…That was kind of a funny one, but I remember being on a bus in Chicago visiting my grandma and an elderly white woman, literally stood in front of my mom, my brother and I were sitting on her lap, she got a seat, it was fairly crowded screaming at her that we should go back to the back of the bus. We didn’t belong at the front of the bus. And, that not only did we not belong in the back of the bus, we should just go back to our own freaking country cuz we don’t even belong in this country at all. And my mom was just so quiet and we didn’t know how to handle it. You know, because ‘Is she going to hurt us? Is she just crazy?’ Like we didn’t know...Like in college, every time I went to any public library and anywhere in America some crazy – I shouldn’t use those words - but someone who was obviously mentally not altogether sane, would follow me around ranting about the Vietnam War and call me, you know, anti-Asian slurs. I’m not Vietnamese, but they couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. I’ve been told to go back to my own country so many times, countless times. I’ve been shoved, grabbed. A lot of, unfortunately, a lot of Asian-American women are sort of hyper-sexualized so that has come up in a lot of my potential romantic relationships or flirtations. There are people, I might want a date or even just strange men on the street who want to date me, or who just assume I’m available for pay because I’m Asian...so many ways, right? So being Asian American and being a woman, get, you know. Your kids have heard the term intersectionality, but, you know, those that, that’ s something that many women live with, right, who aren’t white. Whether they’re black or brown or red or yell-, whatever the words are...its inextricably mixed with the stereotypes around gender and women for those groups. Its just so common as to be, not even noteworthy and then after the presidential election of 2016, its like all that stuff that was just right under the surface, like, you don’t have to dig very far to find terrible racism in America. Its right there. And then I think after the election of 2016, it just was allowed to burst out into the open and even more. And then with the Wuhan virus or Chung Flu or Kung flu or whatever you called it. Ive been in New Mexico since October helping to take care of my elderly, mom and dad. But, before I came here, I was sitting, there just aren’t as many people here, and we’ve been very secluded indoors, most of the time, cuz my parents are old, but in the city, obviously, its much more crowded and before I came here, I definitely I never got physically harmed, but people gave me the side-eye. I got a little bit shoved in a grocery store, people cross the street. Like, I got the dirty-eye. I, you know, I just like people just assumed. I was like this infected person because I have an Asian face. Probably ten of my girlfriends. In New York City have been shoved, spat on, pushed to the ground, shoved in the grocery store. Yelled at, I’ve been yelled at, but not physically harmed, except for that one little, maybe an accident. But I don’t think so...in the city. So yeah, yes, many, many personal experiences... With that being said, since this has been a lifelong pattern, something that has been going on throughout your life, how has or have those incidences impacted what you decided to become? Oh God. Now that you mentioned high school, we had, like, a race riot in my high school. It was crazy, David. This was Kansas City...very white, you know? And I, I went to public school until ninth grade and my parents put me into private school in 9th grade. And there, at that time, there was one sort of very good, fine college preparatory...It was all girls, very fine school, very good college acceptances. But it was also, the school where all the society girls go, like the debutante girls. But in ninth grade, that’s when all the Jewish kids, the two black kids and the three Asian girls arrive, so that we used to call ourselves the “Brown Hair” girls and they were the ones who’d been there since Pre-K because like society, this is the school - and their grandma and their mom, right? So there’s this hereditary, thing. The Jews, the black kids and the Asian kids that was my friend group. And our parents sent us because of the college preparatory thing. That class was so crazy. Like those the, the lifers, the ones that have been there for a long time, legacy Kids in a way they literally painted swastikas on my Jewish friends lockers. I got called a “Chinky b****.” There was like outright racist ****, that happened, bad stuff that happened in that year. They called in counselors. And I think that’s like, I don’t ever want to live in a place like that again. I mean, those things I realized at the time, that it really said much more about them than it did about me, you know. And my friends, we were the new kids 9th grade. We were really smart, we did sports. We had a great time. We were just like in my head, kind of normal kids. But there was also, like, this incredible animosity coming from this group of legacy kids. And I remember thinking ‘I’m out of here in four years because I’m not staying in Kansas City, you guys are welcome to this place and the school and you send, your kids here.’ And they do. They maintain that sort of legacy generational thing, but I don’t want any part of that. I’m moving somewhere else. So I thank you for this good education. Thank you not for this horrible aggression and racist attitude or whatever, but, like, I’m out of here and I see that like those friends of mine from that time where we didn’t, we don’t live there any more, you know? Like, that’s why I guess that New York for college and then I lived in New York pretty soon after college and Ive stayed, I guess part of it is that I don’t really want to live in a place that’s mostly white any more. You know, I don’t want to live in a place. I want to have one of my kids to help grow up with people, of all, colors of experiences. I didn’t want them to grow up in a place where the dominant culture was ‘jocky, white kids.’ I get the impression you wont be going to any high school reunions. I have not gone yet, but if I might, I might. I don’t know. I don’t think so, David. I’m pretty lucky at financially covid and this current moment like I kept I have an income. Ive been able to spend time with my mom and dad. I worry a little more about stuff that I didn’t have to worry about, like, my parents are elderly and they walk alone some days. I worry about them in a way that I didn’t. I walk with them more than I might have because I want to be there in case one behaves badly towards them. So there’s still potential for that, even though they have been here for decades? They are 90 and 85. They went to college here and then they went back to Korea and had me. And then they’ve been here ever since. Im 53 and 54. So they’ve been here much longer than they lived in Korea...You know, my dad is a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. Their both perfectly bilingual. They both worked for decades and retired in America. They’re American. They’re Americans also, with Korean, you know, roots, right? So I would say there’s just a level of wariness. Like, I don’t think I want to take the subway by myself right now. I don’t think I want to walk my dog alone at night. I think Im going to ask Peter to come with me or one of my kids or something. There’s just too much crap, you know? Like I know too many, too many of my girlfriends have been harassed and had scary moments in the city and I, I don’t want to, I’m going to be extra careful. Cuz I don’t know. Why would I want to put myself in a situation like that? The ‘Model Minority Myth.’ How much of a factor has that played in your experience? I would say its been a factor my whole life and its also been a factor for my kids. And the reason why it sucks, there are so many reasons why it sucks,...I cant even prioritize...One of the ways it sucks is that its an artificial construct that serves to separate and divide people of color. So its a way of separating Asian American people which is as your very first question, you asked me like whats the right way to talk about Asian American people and the its so hard because there’s like a million ethnicities, dozens of - which is like 5 major religious, you know, there’s, there’s no way, in a fair way, to categorize this entire, giant group of people, right? But I get it, like, we have to sometimes. And I actually think that the moments that we can make a huge, a bigger umbrella, like the more that we can be unified to fight injustice, the better. So, there are moments when all of us who aren’t white need to come together to fight, like, what’s happening right now with the Republican party like an anti-voting, right?...There are moments when all of us need as big a tent as possible, right, to fight this like incredibly wrong thing that’s happening. And then other times we have to allow, and with grace, allow certain subsections of our giant bi-pod communities to be in solidarity with each other and then support them. So, like, when Atlanta happened, and those women were shot, the women of Asian American descents that were shot... So there are moments, like in that moment, when those of us who are Asian-American women needed moments to be together and just be a community and cry and listen, right, and share the experiences that we’ve had...and I got a lot of support from my friends who are Latina and African-American and West Indian. And they would, just text me. And it was so nice to know that they were like, they didn’t need to talk to me, they just wanted to say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ It was so nice. And then, unfortunately, there’s many more moments when we’re called upon to support or just send the same kinds of texts and be a community with our black friends because the murder of black young men and recently this young Latino kid was killed...Anyways, this is my long way of saying that things like the ‘Model Minority Myth’ only serve to separate us. And it’s a strategy on the part of people like, sorry to get a little political here, but it’s a strategy on the part of people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Donald Trump, to separate us because if we are united, they can’t win. So the more that they can do to separate all of our different peoples and communities based on stupid things like some myth of like what? They think, I’m better at SATs, so somehow that makes me like - first of all, that’s not even true and second of all who cares? And third of all, what does that have to do with anything, right? Like, it’s just a way of separating us based on these completely artificial constructs so that we can’t come together and fight things together and be stronger together. So, that’s one thing. Another thing that I hate, another reason the model minority myth sort of sucks, is that it serves to strip, like, for example, my kid, (I’m picking on my first kid again) of his accomplishments, right? So, people will say, ‘Well, of course, he got into Amherst College, because you’re obviously a tiger mom, and he’s obviously really good at his SAT’s and obviously, blah blah.’ Actually, know what? He got in because hes an athlete. And he put in thousands and thousands of hours playing his guitar and practicing his craft. And he’s always loved to read and he’s actually not a great SAT taker. But, once you sort of like, lump someone into a category of a robotic, Asian super achieving student, it strips them of their individual-ness; and, as Mom, you know, it makes you want to murder people. (I’m not a violent person. Please tell your students that.) Okay, so how has the anti-Asian animosity, prejudice, hate changed over the course of your lifetime. What did you deal with that your children didn’t have to? I mean, I have to say that it’s not that different. The incidences that I shared with you like being chased as a kid or on the bus or being chased through libraries, those are just so common...In some ways like I would say my kids, maybe, haven’t had to deal with that as much partly because they live in New York and that’s very different than - and they’ve gone to, you know, open-minded, sort of progressive schools. Their friends group has always been much more diverse than my friend group was in Kansas City. They have a really different experience and that has to do with class, you know, they have more money than I did growing up. So that’s part of it, New York City’s, just more cosmopolitan in a way. I don’t know. This thing that’s happening right now, its still developing and we’ll have to see. I just, I wish I could predict the future but, you know, like, if these crazy people become ascendant, you know, like if voting like,...you know,...voting is really important and we live in America, and the enfranchisement is supposed to be a right in this country, right? And its supposed to be and if that crazy wing of that other party gets its way, that’s kind of scary...I mean, come on, after this January, all these crazy white people, like, stomping through the Capitol. Like, if that had been a group of, pick a color,...like, especially black, though, right? But can you imagine if that had been a group of Latin X young people or a mixed-race, do you know?...It would have been a flood. It would have been Bloodshed. It would have been. It would have been horrible. And, you know, I don’t know if, I don’t think you need a better example than that. You know, like, those folks were treated with kid gloves and with politeness, and they were allowed to leave a crime scene and that would never have happened with anyone else. I think even, like, a group of white women might have been shot at or arrested. I think maybe…, but maybe not. I might take that back. But certainly anyone who wasn’t white. Like, if that’d been a majority P.O.C. crowd that would have just been a bloodbath...So, with my kids, two of them, the first time they voted in a presidential election was in 2016. And I have to admit, they were in tears. They just can’t believe it, you know. It was so unbelievable for all of us. And I think that I have a lot of faith actually in this generation because young people are leading so many movements right now and are so activated. And they’re super competent and super smart. And they breathe, eat and breathe, this intersectionality and they eat and breathe this idea of people existing on a continuum...Its just like so normal for them. And technology is so normal for them. So I have a lot of hope for this young generation of young activist right now. The remainder of this interview with Hali Lee will be available in our next issue.
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