Writing this Thymos Anthology essay has been very difficult for me. Even though I average about seven or eight rewrites per essay or story, I’m usually pretty accurate when the words come out. With this personal essay, however, I feel like I’m cutting open my own stomach. It’s requiring more rewrites because I often have no idea what I’m trying to say. At the same time, it’s helping me to think through a lot of the pain that I experienced growing up.
In the course of my writing, I remembered my sixth grade teacher. I was getting beaten and harassed for racial reasons at the time, and I remember how she felt that it was somehow above her to deal with the crap that I was going through. She chastised me for being immature after I once complained that a White classmate hit me in the head with a rock after shouting a racial slur. I’ve got her ugly, racist mug plastered into my brain. I think it’s stuck there for life.
Anyway, on a whim, I googled her, and I learned that she’s living in Southern Oregon, in a nearly all white town. I’m glad my former teacher has found a place where she doesn’t have to deal with us pesky minorities. I can imagine her shouting “You lie, boy!” whenever Obama speaks on TV. She’s now retired from teaching, thank God. Ironically, I found her name in her church newsletter.
Part of me is angry that she’s living and retired. Part of me wants reparations. Part of me is too tired to stress out anymore. All I know is that when a racist teacher allows your childhood years to be marred by violence, those years never come back.
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The very first racist encounter I remember was when I was in kindergarten riding the schoolbus. A blonde girl behind kept spitting on the top of my head cuz she didn’t like Chinks. I turned around to smack her a big one and the busdriver, a white woman, yelled at me to sit down. I know she saw the whole thing, because I saw her face in the rear view mirror. of course she didn’t tell blondie to sit down and quite spitting at me.
I learned very early on that white people have a very dark side to them, and that this dark side starts at a very young age. Do I get angry thinking about it? Yes of course. Because those people are probably still alive masquerading as “decent Americans.”
But I acknowledge the anger and let it subside and move on by focusing on the moment. I try not to let that experience or the countless others affect my interactions with white people who’ve been extremely kind and caring to me.
Here’s a question for you all: what would you do if you did find a racist bastard from the past? If you had the ability, then would you ruin the remainder of their life? What would you do?
Well, define racist bastard? We can certainly all recall those stark examples of racist douchebags that committed blatant acts of disrepect against us that led to emotional and sometimes grave physical harm. But there are in my experiences overwhelmingly more examples of whites who I once were friends with in the past, but have in time understood their ignorance and subtle racism and rejected their world view.
So to first answer your question which is a tough one, I think I would confront them and speak my peace and in that way have closure. But beyond that there is nothing you can realistically do but live your life. It’s kinda like the best revenge is to live an awesome life which in a way is kinda saying that the bastards can never grind you down but instead have made you stronger. Beyond that and you may end up on the 6 o’clock news as some whack job, chinky, racist foreigner. Then depending on what you did, some Asian group(s) starting first with your close family and friends will have to come out and apologize to whitey on behalf of first your ethnicity, then the whole Asian American population, and then finally the whole entire Asian American race. But if you can get away with ruining their lives, I’m all for it.
The question I have is are you the least bit guarded when dealing with white people not because of obvious racism but because of subtle, covert racism and ignorance? Does that same guardedness occur when dealing with the white friends you keep?
Odd.
I’ve actually experienced the opposite.
James,
Thanks for the story. It’s amazing what some people do in their professional lives. Your bus driver is paid to be a fair disciplinarian, and yet she let her racial biases get the best of her. It’s so wrong.
“Do I get angry thinking about it? Yes of course. Because those people are probably still alive masquerading as “decent Americans.””
That’s EXACTLY what I’m feeling. I pulled this racist witch’s name up in, of all things, a church newsletter. In the newsletter, so talks about how she left the church for a while, and she thanks God for bringing her back. It makes me mad, thinking that this de-facto Fuhrer is walking around, spouting out Biblical aphorisms, and acting like she’s all perfect and holy. It makes me absolutely sick to think that she got away with shitting on the Asian kid when she was paid to do a job. It angers me that there will be no one to write “White Supremacist” on her tombstone when she’s gone.
She happens to be one of these wealthy, snooty, holier-than-thou people too. It’s like, “I’m White, privileged, and I’m the teacher, so fuck minorities.” Damn, she was born in 1943, so she was only 21 when all those civil rights demonstrations began. You’d think that those movements would’ve affected her. Maybe they did–just in the wrong direction.
“Here’s a question for you all: what would you do if you did find a racist bastard from the past? If you had the ability, then would you ruin the remainder of their life? What would you do?”
I posed this question to someone who grew up just an hour away from where my 6th grade Fuhrer moved. She said one word–”Yes.”
For me, it’s similar to what mT was saying. I don’t think you can win. The only area I would question is the concept of closure. Even after speaking, what can she possibly do to give me those years back?
Is your essay about her?
Sometimes, the hardest, most painful things in our lives to write about turn out to be some best pieces of writing we could ever write. One of the things I always tell my students when we practice writing is, “Write what you know!”.
In any case, I look forward to reading the essay (whatever it is) and the anthology.
Sometimes, the hardest, most painful things in our lives to write about turn out to be some best pieces of writing we could ever write.
This is true. Though painful, past personal traumas can ironically be the richest material to write about.
They are something that you can really tap into and “mine” to yield the most compelling experiences that will emotionally engage an audience.
As for your sixth grade teacher, I say a bunch of us drive down to her house, where we can teepee and egg her home in the dead of night. We can also spray night the phrase “Jaehwan was here” on her door as a calling card.
Never forget! Never forgive!
g,
It’s not about her, but her actions do get dishonorable mention. I think at the time I kind of just resigned myself to the fact that that is the way the system works. She played an important role in my young understanding of the system.
Larry,
In the spirit of Red Dawn with the anti-Chinese remake, I think we should spray “Wolverines” just to confuse her.
@ Alpha
I totally understand what you are saying about that dark side. I still recognize it in people I work with today, but there is not much you can do to flush it out, sometimes it comes out on its own.
As for your questions:
“…what would you do if you did find a racist bastard from the past? If you had the ability, then would you ruin the remainder of their life? What would you do?”
I am mostly of the notion that people end up with what they deserve. Yeah there are those rat bastards who get away with things and step on people to get ahead. In my life, I find that everything ends up working out the way it should sooner or later. I also find that if you spend your time improving yourself rather than plotting revenge, sometimes life hands you gifts.
I’d like to tell you about one particular gift, but I’ll save the discussion for a gin and tonic evening with friends.
Jaehwan, I hope you receive gifts in life soon.
@ Larry if you need eggs, I’ll set some side in the sun for you, so they get nice and smelly.
You need to forgive in your heart and move on.
For your own sake, that is.
But even as you forgive, why not write your former teacher an honest letter. Don’t get angry or curse her out, just explain to her exactly how her actions have effected you all of these years. Tell her how her lack of sympathy and racial bias has been something that you have carried into your adulthood. Make her responsible for her actions and their painful consequences. Be polite — don’t give her any reason to feel any justification for her hatred. Let her twist in the wind of her her own cruelty and indifference.
Believe me, it will effect her much more than you can know, especially if you just tell your story without leaving any of the painful details out. It will haunt her. No teacher wants to be the “monster” who ruined the life of her student, no matter how prejuduced she was/is.
Leave the burden of it with her …and take it up no more.
Thanks for the advice! AG, I too hope I finally get my gifts!
Kobukson,
Can one forgive when the criminal remains unrepentant? I don’t know the answer…what do you think? In either case, I want justice.
King, I totally like your advice. It’s probably the right thing to do. I just seethe whenever I think of her actions. That’s probably going to have to stop before I’m able to write any kind of letter.
“Can one forgive when the criminal remains unrepentant? I don’t know the answer…what do you think? In either case, I want justice.”
Yes.
There is a fine line beween seeking justice and seeking revenge.
Justice acts in similar ways like money, when you chase after it, it never seem to be enough. But when you are prepared and let it be, it flows.
I used to walk around carrying grudges, lots of them. It was driving me nuts. My grandmother kept telling me that I needed to forgive and forget. Forgiving sounded okay, but I thought forgetting was stupid. She said forgiveness doesn’t work unless you forget, they only work together.
For years I kept asking how to forgive. It is such a hard thing to learn and relearn. I kept telling myself, “I forgive this, I forgive that…” One day, I decided I had too many things in my head and I started what I call, “label and boxing-up” thougths. The label was the overall perception, sometimes a word of causion, sometimes a mere opinion, and all the thoughts, good or bad went into the “box” and put away in my mind, not to be dwelled upon and for all intensive purposes, forgotten. All of a sudden, I became free to do many thing.
Every now and again, I am reminded why someone is labeled such in my mind and every now and again, I get a chuckle out ofcircumstances and the labels make sense and everything ends up as it should.
Some interesting thoughts here. Speaking from my own experience, I think it’s best to let it go and move on with your life, untethered to the negative things in your past. Maybe a letter would be cathartic for you, if it’s designed to exorcise it from you forever.
Indeed, there is a fine line between justice and revenge. But how do you know when it’s enough and crosses into revenge? How do you know that you are not becoming the very person you hated as you seek to destroy this person?
I had my “Holden Caulfied” moments in high school, hating on certain people who I thought were assholes, bullying their way thru the social structure of our peer group, some who weren’t particularly nice to me. But what you find out is, for as much energy you burn up just even thinking, “God, that guy’s such a fucking asshole, I’d love to kick his teeth down his throat…”, you aren’t even one thought inside their heads. They’re ignorantly going about their own lives, while YOU are the one left with psychic damage. See, after all these years, keeping that flame of anger and hatred alive, stoking it until’s it’s glowing white hot, it’s all one-sided and all that negativity emanates within YOU. You let someone get inside your head and made you carry all this baggage around.
It’s hard to forgive the taunts and the racist shit thrown at us when we were kids, teenagers, whatever. I think it’s best to let some things die with the past, relegated to the dustbin of your life’s history. As for forgetting? No, to some extent, I think it’s necessary to remember what has happend–NOT dwell on it—but know and accept that as part of one’s unpleasant memories. Because it’s a reminder for how we should treat others and that seeing other people getting picked on is unacceptable. Because we know what it’s like.
I remember a lyric from a Pete Townshend/Who song that has always stuck with me:
Let your tears flow
let your past go….
King: ” It will haunt her. No teacher wants to be the “monster” who ruined the life of her student, no matter how prejuduced she was/is.
Leave the burden of it with her …and take it up no more.”
words of wisdom there, King