The check-off boxes on questionnaires from grade school into college asked if you were “black, white or other” and I always proudly checked the “other” box. In many ways I knew I was different, but I didn’t even know why and this offered a strangely comfortable identity as being “other.”
My Japanese father and Russian Jewish, German, English mother divorced when I was around 2-1/2. I grew up learning of my mom’s lost background of Judaism when she remarried my now deceased step-dad who was raised as an Orthodox Jew. My brother Steve and I attended a Hebrew day school that laid a lasting foundation for that aspect of our identity and after our bar mitzvah’s, it was sealed – we were Jewish kids.
But fully coming to understand my Asian heritage continues to be a work in progress. As a child, I had very little exposure to my Japanese culture due to my parents’ divorce and all-American attitude of my 1st generation Japanese father. He made an effort to make sure we felt more in touch with being American than understanding our ancestry. And aside from one memory of being made fun of where I had to ask my mom what it meant when someone made slanted eyes at me, I felt pretty much like everyone else.
I was raised by my white mother and step-father. My brother and I would visit our father some weekends and his wife, our Japanese step-mom would sometimes make us traditional snacks of toasted seaweed paper. Their home had an Asian fusion feel about it, even as a child it felt like we were in an exotic world. I always felt more like a visitor to that world than ever owning any part of it. It wasn’t until college years and being exposed to some of the art history and contemporary Japanese art from printwork to performance art that I started to feel a connection and desire to learn.
I danced with an Asian American performance group that came to Cincinnati sometime around 1991, Chen and Dancers from NYC. The piece titled, Hidden Voices focused on a historical reference where Chinese immigrant workers entered a Massachusetts factory as strikebreakers. Even though the story was about heinous discrimination and abuse, I felt honored and rewarded because I got to dance with the other Asian dancers of the company. It was thrilling to dance with them! As the piece unfolded, the story hit me and the reality of Asian hate became clear. That moment stands as a big turning point. I saw how the evolution of differences have branched in every direction from awe and beauty to fear and disgust.
Chen and Dancers would typically cast all the dancers from each town into the section of the dance piece that represented the white community of this story. But I was brought into the “Chinese workers” side which included the entire Chen and Dancers cast. A magical friendship was born from that bonding experience and for several years I traveled back and forth to NYC to help create a dance theater group, In Mixed Company by Maura Nguyen Donohue. We were a group of primarily Hapa members (mixed Asian) speaking about the experience of being half Asian, half White. Maura is Vietnamese and Irish and though our mixes are different, she looked and felt like my sister. I finally found my family and felt less of an “other” and more accepting of myself now that I had a reference. This came after coming out of the Jewish closet, the gay closet and who knew the most visibly obvious one would take the longest – finally the Japanese-American/Hapa closet.
Today, we honor the Vietnam War Veterans which recognizes that divisive event in history. There have been so many tragic moments in our history that have painfully injured the plain and simple essence of our humanity. So many instances where we’ve disregarded one another’s existence for the sake of our safety and so called, well-being. Well-being only comes when our care and thoughtfulness of one another is clearly shown. But instead, our distrust and loathing continue to be played up as if a new hand is dealt every now again like an unfair card game, constantly being given a poor hand by the cheater. For too long, name calling and blaming for the stories from the far and recent past keep tearing us apart. We don’t want to accept parts of the story and have others who keep rewriting the story to fit their biased narrative…and then get away with it. But not completely. There is always a price to pay.
My sense of pride in my identity continues to grow and I’ve truly enjoyed the diverse Asian community in the Bay Area – it feels good to be around others that I look like or share some resemblance. Even though my cultural connection may not be very deep, there’s something about seeing others with similarity that establishes safety. I’m sure it’s rooted in our basic genetic structure for the sake of survival. Our basic instincts may benefit from it, and our higher minds can learn to expand this into a harmonic expression of humanity. But we still have a long ways to go and daily work that each of us need to sustain in order to raise greater awareness.
I appreciate any sort of diversity and make room for mystery. I recognize that sometimes the idea of world Peace is there but the full understanding is still waiting to be revealed. If we can chill out on trying to fit in or simmer down from acting out and be more rooted in waking up from the trance of old worn out stories, I bet we’ll have a good chance here. I wish for the liberation and harmony for everyone. When the Black Lives Matter movement sparked massive attention last year, I was right there because I understood it on the level of historical ignorance that requires constant vigilance. We cannot act like we don’t know the true story. We cannot let anyone try to maintain a false story because it’s very clear at some point, it could become THE story.
We are forgetting who we are. As I learned in spiritual counseling, we are each other. That’s the “other” that I’ve come to understand. We are each other. Some instinctual part may be in us to fear the “other”, but it tends to be that when we can create greater self-acceptance, less power is driven into wanting to separate and divide. More interest enters to have compassion and love. We must support the ones who have suffered most because it has only happened due to our ignorance and ego and not because of our best efforts. When we support the big chain stores and internet giants, we forget about all those who create alternative ideas and creative thinking. We are forgetting about the healthy, entrepreneurial spirit of small business. Especially at a time where our economy has been badly hit, the small mom and pop stores need our care in particular. For some, it may be that closing time was already near. But for many, the spirit of their hard work would do well to be respected and celebrated.
We all know pain. May we also all come to know Peace.
