My First Lesson in Solidarity and Loss

Note: This post was written for another blog a few months ago. We never got around to putting this series up - but I thought that recent events warranted my posting this.

Post addressed to: Kenneth Eng

Please also read this very insightful and critical piece by By Kil Ja Kim: Question From the Inside: Does Asian American + POC = Anti-Black? (link via Jimmy H.).

-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Liangs and I: My First Lesson in Solidarity and Loss

When I was between the ages of 4-9, my family and I lived in a middle class primarily ‘white’ neighborhood in Alberta. My parent’s first school of choice was about a five minute walk from my home, but because I was not Catholic the school rejected my enrollment. After this, my disappointed parents decided to enroll me into a school which was about a half an hours’ walking distance from my home.

I attended this school for the next five years (kindergarten through grade 4), and can not claim any form of attachment to my first institution of learning, in fact these early years of schooling were most definitely spent in a fair amount of isolation. A large part of this isolation was due to the fact that I was often treated as a ‘racial pariah’ and I do not recall having many friends during that period. This had little to do with my personality because from a happy, boisterous and extroverted child I became a very reclusive and introverted one. I was rarely ‘made fun of’ in overt racist ways but my ‘otherness’ was noticeable when my peers had birthday parties to which I was not invited, or when games were played or when we had to partner with other students on projects (yet everyone always asked me for help in math and English) and I was one of the last few people chosen.
In the absence of companionship, I picked up the habit of always doing my homework on time, reading, and listening to the radio. As a result of this, I always answered questions in class and won all the spelling bees in school. One could say that the only ‘friends’ I had in school were my teachers. In addition to this, I also developed a liking for the toys, clothing and musical tastes of my white, male peers. In fact, I would boast about my transformers and lego collections and/or musical knowledge. This increased my popularity a little, but in most cases people would take advantage of me by borrowing my toys or asking for homework help.

Academically Jeff Liang, a Chinese-Canadian, was the only other student in my class who always scored well. Like me, Jeff didn’t have any other friends either but was very lucky that he had Melissa, his older sister who was two grades ahead of us. I was slightly envious of Melissa and Jeff because they celebrated Christmas, Easter, Halloween (something my parents equated with begging) and pretty much all the other Christian holiday that I did not participate in because I was Hindu.

By grade two, Jeff and I had developed an unspoken academic competition between us, a competition that was often encouraged by the ‘nerdy’ white boys in class who were keen to find out who got the highest marks – jokes about whoever scored the best would ensue. These ‘nerdy’ white boys were not our friends, they would only come up to us after a test was over, or when we got our papers back. Jeff and I often compared our marks, tested each other’s spelling abilities and even challenged each other on our knowledge of television, movie and game trivia. Oddly, our rivalry developed into a sort-of friendship, and like our unspoken competition, our friendship was also unspoken. Our friendship was never ‘public’ nor did we ever acknowledge each other as friends by referring to each other as ‘best friend’. Jeff and I never hung out at recess, we never had lunch together and we never really talked in class to each other, aside from comparing our marks. However, after school, it was different; we walked home together with Melissa. Jeff and I would watch Smurfs and Carebears together, trade stamps and stickers and share our transformers and lego. Melissa would occasionally join us – but less so because she was a little older than us. Occasionally Mrs. Liang even babysat me.

Near the end of grade three a new student, Brad, had transferred to our grade. He was a few years older than Jeff and I, and was probably the same age as Melissa. Many rumors were spread about Brad, such as that he had been expelled from his last school and overall that he was a trouble maker. Brad was a little taller than most of the kids in our class, he was in hindsight a very ‘Aryan’ looking boy with white (not blonde) hair, very pale skin and blue eyes. Like the Liangs and I, Brad didn’t have any friends either and inevitably he befriended Jeff. Unlike us, Brad didn’t have friends because everyone was scared of him.

Brad lived very close to the Liangs and I, and shortly thereafter he started accompanying the Liangs and I in our walks to and from school. From the beginning Brad would make fun of me. Jeff would occasionally laugh and giggle at Brad’s taunting. Melissa being the ‘responsible older sister’ would occasionally intervene by scolding us. One day I had had enough of the joking and took it upon myself to blurt the saying “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me”. It was a ‘big mistake’ on my part. Brad, immediately responded with an ‘Oh yeah?..” and picked up the nearest branch off the ground and threw it at me. After he did this a few times, Jeff started doing the same. Melissa hesitated at the beginning and then followed pursuit. Trying to shield myself from the hailing sticks and stones, I ran across the street and took an alternative route home, crying the entire way.

I didn’t tell my mother about the incident immediately, I never told anyone in fact. It was something I was embarrassed by, something that I thought I had brought upon myself by speaking up for the first time. From that moment, Jeff and I stopped hanging out altogether and resumed our former lives as isolated invisible minorities in a primarily white school. If I was babysat by Mrs. Liang, I was sure to bring my books with me to study in which I occupied the furthest table in the corner to pass the time until my mother came to pick me up. Even Jeff wouldn’t attempt to talk to me while I was there, if he watched television, he watched it alone; if he played with toys he did it alone. Like our friendship had formed in silence, the demise of our friendship too also passed in silence.

Within a month or so Brad got into more trouble and was eventually expelled. No one heard from him again, even his family moved away. But my friendship with the Liangs had changed permanently. I walked home alone or with a new friend that I had made, Shelly, a white ‘obese’ girl from another class who also had no friends. Shelly later became my first ‘best friend’ despite her many attempts to ‘convince’ me of the existence of Jesus. Even when Jeff, Melissa and I saw each other walking in the same direction we avoided each other.

Like the friendship that the Liangs and I had formed had been kept a secret, our ‘break-up’ was also kept a secret. No one knew of our friendship, no one knew when we stopped being friends, no one ever thought twice about us. Our undeclared friendship was a source of embarrassment so we kept it to ourselves and likewise our ‘break-up’ was a painful loss.

A very long time has passed since my friendship with the Liangs ended. I moved away the following summer and never saw or heard from Melissa or Jeff again. Since then I have moved several times, to other smaller and predominantly white cities and towns, yet my experiences with other people of colour have not been very different from my experiences with the Liangs. In fact, the Liangs could easily have been the da Silvas, the Subramanians, the Shahs, the Dalmars, the Kims, the Garcias and sometimes I too have been ‘the Liangs’. Encounters with other people of colour have often been greeted with a silent acknowledgement, an undeclared sharing of a guilty secret and often a source of embarrassment. We would encounter each other, but are often embarrassed by the acknowledgement of our shared second-class status and as a result we forsake potential alliances for short-term gains and suffer an incredible loss. We know that we can be friends but being friends might not be the ‘safest’ thing.

It was only in my university years that I befriended more people of colour because there were just 'more of us' there, this was when I could finally ‘safely’ be an ‘Indo-Canadian’ without shame. Yet, even now I see this shame when other second generation South and East Asians refer to newcomers as “FOBS” (or Fresh off the boats) – making fun of their accents, their habits, their clothing and mannerisms. I see it manifest itself in the way we make classist and racist remarks when we realize that not all of us are ‘model minorities’. When we deny the existence of the ‘third-worlds’ that our parents came from because we have not directly lived their, their very existence becomes a source of embarrassment for us. When we compare how much ‘better’ everything is in the “West” and how everyone is more ‘civilized’. I see it when we hurt each other and try our best to ‘ignore’ the systemic racism, sexism, classism, imperialism that harms all of us in a myriad of ways in both systemic and unseen forms and overt forms. We proceed in our individual bubbles as though our ‘short-term gains’ will shield us from any or all of these things. Most of all I see it when we deny that we have anything in common and practice our own form of racism against each other. Ultimately who wins when this happens? What are the unaccounted losses when this happens?

*All the names used in this story are fictional; any resemblance to living or dead person(s) is merely coincidence.

Cross-Posted at Pass The Roti.