Barely Known

So many people feel unimportant. The Vietnamese student lives every day knowing no one really cares to learn the correct pronunciation of his last name, Nguyen. A biracial man in his early twenties is African American and Tongan but people keep asking him if Tongan is basically Hawaiian. The Guamanian teen’s friends want her to do a Haka – not her tradition.

I try not to fetishize the month of May but I bring attention to Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. It isn’t much but I draw from the light of unsung contributors. Bring to the light the wisdom forced into the recesses of society. I try to incorporate quotes, short stories, anecdotes, and organic discussions to see if my students can grasp what it feels like to be generalized. It’s ambitious but it’s become a vibe. Humanize everyone. And with the year ending, maybe I thought it was working…a little…to broaden conscience.

When Fear Echoes…

But Saturday something trended on Twitter about Buffalo, New York. It was the 198th mass shooting in 2022 and it took the lives of 10 Black people. The victims were shot because they were Black. There were 13 wounded and the assailant had every intention of playing some kind of macabre equalizer. He was not unique or uncharacteristic in that he traveled from out of town to scout and execute his psychopathic mission. This malignant 18-year-old expressed rapacious ideation and once again animated what violent human ranking looks like. Tiered human caste predates the colonies that eventually became the United States. But I can’t help but feel that we keep missing the outcomes to which human hierarchy leads.

The following day, a primarily Taiwanese congregation in Laguna Woods, California experienced a similar episode. It was the Christian day of worship, the time when vulnerability and inner prostration are at the center of the gathering. One person was killed and five injured, four of them critically. It was hate’s version of a double-header. In two days, routine activities were interrupted by maniacal cowardice fueled by radicalized influence.

I can hear the disbelief in students’ comments when they say, “I just can’t understand how someone would do something so monstrous.” I don’t have answers to their implicit “Whys” but I assume that if they can’t fathom this horror, they must have unlearned something. I’ve had to unlearn prejudice so some of them have as well. I was taught well how to discriminate. How could I not be instructed on who to trust and which people to keep at arm’s length? I am a child of southern-born, segregation-era Black elders. Of course, I was taught NOT to wholly trust Whites. But how did I unlearn it? How did I separate loving my family from blindly accepting counter-intuitive ideas about other humans? How did I avoid treating others the way they treated my people? I was forced into proximity with THEM, their good humans and asshole variety. I was forced to sift, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

There was simply too much inconsistency in the notion that “THEY” were all bad. I had to be taught by White teachers. A White doctor spearheaded the medical treatment that caught my Spinal Meningitis and saved my life. I was coached by White men who treated athletes like they owned them. But I was also heralded by White professors. Proximity made hate a million times more complex and hard to universalize. But again, I was forced into a rhythm with White folks whether I wanted it or not.

No Rhythm to Dance

There is no rhythm in this country for Black people. That’s why it’s so easy to hate us. So few non-blacks live rhythmically in the vicinity of our norms, cultures, spirituality, etc. I believe the same is true for Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Latinx, particularly those who hail from less known countries in those groups. Proximity is everything in this era of Replacement ideology. We fail to see self in the other and simultaneously, somehow we act appalled at cold-blooded murder. But when doing life with Black people, for example, is optional, it can’t help but be a recreational indulgence. More often than not, those who don’t have to be bothered with Black folks will choose not to be. This is the harder work, engaging when nothing societally forces integration.

I didn’t have a choice so it was easy to see humans when they presented themselves. And it was easy to see the demons who refused to accept me as an actual person. Eventually, I spat out the bones and chewed the meat. I ain’t got time for bullshit people. But if the first thought about Buffalo’s atrocity last Saturday was to run counter-narratives about mass shootings involving non-Blacks, to find equivalents to offset this horrific and strategic decimation, then these hate crimes won’t subside. Racially motivated assaults are not one-offs. But that offends so many in this country thus stunting the spiritual awakening Christians claim is available on our soil. How about human reckoning, one that acknowledges that some people are viewed as collectively worthless on the American index. To deny this is to germinate killers. Period. Lead SELF; submit to truth. It’s all we got.

“Thou Shalt Not Be a Victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. But above all else, thou shalt not be bystander.”

– Yehuda Bauer, Israeli Historian

WHO ARE THE HUMANS?

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WHO ARE THE SUB-HUMANS & NON-HUMANS?