Featured Stories

During the 1970’s, I spent part of my childhood living in Garden City Park, a then predominantly White, working-class suburb in Long Island, New York. A few summers ago, my older sister and I were reminiscing about the fads of that era. We were basking in the joy of nostalgia, taking turns blurting out the names of our favorite things: “Oh, the Magnetic Gyro Wheel—I could play with that thing for hours! What about Shrinky Dinks? Remember the puffy ones? And Underoos! I always wanted the Wonder Woman ones! Oh, and the…” Just as I was about to say the name of the next item that I loved, I paused, horrified: “Wait, we used to call those black cloth Mary Janes ‘c**nk’ shoes? My sister slowly responded “Yeah, I guess so. Everybody did…”

Growing up in a mostly White community, I rarely found myself in predominantly Black spaces. Throughout my K-12 schooling, conversations about racial equity were scarce or even absent. As a White woman who grew up in a predominantly White neighborhood, I was never forced to confront my own privilege and reckon with racial inequity until I began college. For the first time, I encountered people outside of my bubble and was able to listen, learn, and become involved in social justice initiatives.

Several years ago, I was living on an organic tomato farming collective outside of Santa Cruz. I had been invited to house sit for a couple of years (with my then husband and our son) while one of the landowners temporarily moved to DC. I left my home and work in Southeast Alaska to live and raise my then four-year old son on this idyllic farm with a view of the ocean, and minutes to the beach. This land collective started out in the early 90s, a motley crew including a Vietnam vet-turned-farmer, an accountant, a biologist, a hospice worker, a couple of teachers, and even a farmer or two.

I’ve lived through many “awakenings” in my lifetime as I’ve struggled to defend my blackness in spaces that rejected it, ignored or silenced it, or tried to make it conform. One of the greatest awakenings of my life highlighted race in a new way and intersected with a concept I didn’t understand at the time, class. The year was 1993, I was six years old and had no idea how my little world would be shaken up.

Poet Bhanu Kapil Rider, in her work with young Indian women asks, “What are the consequences of silence?” I’d like to answer that question by starting off with why silence exists in the first place. As someone that loathed attention, who struggled to think in the moment, who felt anxiety when speaking in public, who thought about the aftermath of my words more than what they accomplished at the moment, I have felt the personal weight of silence. And there are many reasons why I have been silent.

I grew up in a fairly small southern city. It is a city that is big enough for others to recognize by name, but small enough that there is always a chance of seeing someone you know at the grocery store. I attended a private K-12 college prep school where my class was majority White and affluent. I was largely surrounded by this same homogenous demographic growing up, whether it was in the neighborhood, in my math class, or on my soccer team. I don’t remember talking explicitly about race in my classes, with my parents, or with my peers, but I do remember opting into discussions, clubs, and camp experiences that focused on “diversity”.

While growing up in a predominantly White neighborhood, I have been the benefactor of relationships that have allowed me to recognize my privileges as a White cis-gendered female. Perhaps by no fault of their own, people in my town remain insular because most never leave. There was a clear distinction between those who grew up here or what we called “natives”, and those who relocated from other towns, particularly those who were non-White. With each passing year, many of these long-established Long Islanders become infuriated with the rising number of “outsiders” that planted their roots in their towns.

My racial awakening has been marked by the moment I began understanding Spanish. My parents are Korean, but I was born and raised in Argentina. Although I knew from a very young age that I looked different from the majority, this did not mean much to me until I heard the words “Go back to your country,” to which, to this day, I keep wondering where it is that I am supposed to go back to.

As I delve deeper into Cathy Park Hong’s (2020) reckoning in her book Minor Feelings, I too have awakened to my own, although brief, experience as an Asian international student in New York City. Coming to NYC, I always thought I was immune to racism. This notion was challenged when I began graduate studies in the United States.

My sixth year teaching I moved to teach in a new school in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The school population was both racially and socio-economically diverse. I had previously taught in Brownsville, Brooklyn at a racially segregated school. I had never taught a white student before. My new class was the ideal image of an integrated classroom and with it I was confronted with my own biases.

The twin pandemics of racism and COVID-19, with the former made patently visible in the climate of the coronavirus crisis, had forced me to pause, turn inward, interrogate my positionality as an Asian American woman, and reckon with the depth, complexity, and history of my racial identity. This was identity work that I so desperately wanted to do alongside my parents, but dealings with race were never an explicit part of my upbringing.

To develop a racial identity requires this same logic. It is not possible to escape or combat racism, bias and inequality without first embarking on deep examination of my own identity, history and experiences. New experiences along the way, seen through an ever changing lens have me pressing the proverbial enter button again and again in the hopes of exiting out the other side with deeper understanding, ready, willing and able to take on the mantle of anti-racism.

I was disappointed. On myself. A frequent feeling I have, cuando hablo mostly in front of White individuals. When I speak Spanish, I can articulate myself without doubt. Puedo hablar claramente, y si acaso, no me pongo nerviosa. O sea, no, si acaso no digo algo claramente, me auto correcto inmediatamente. Pero cuando es en English, when I have to make the switch, I lose power. I lose confidence and even self-love.