Racism Snapshot: Yellow Polaroid

I wrote after spring break of 2010 on the way home from visiting my mother's family in Silvercliff. What beauty and love worn out when we got to Colorado Springs. I don't forget most people in the U.S. are intolerant and ignorant, but CA sure cushions the blow. And I don't find crying or psycho punching to really let me blow off some steam. Apparently the man I am going to hear speak on September 11th punched his army superior for being a racist. Good for him! Being me, I don't fight that way. But I do have a few things to say to "my own" army man:

You are sitting with your white mother at an airport, waiting like anybody else waiting at the airport. It is early morning, Colorado Springs, Denver state. Your mother is making conversation with a talkative former US veteran who now serves the military as a satellite service for NASA. He blatantly ignores you and when he asks you questions, he talks through your interpreter: your white mother.

He calls you a "fucking whore", because he assumes you are Japanese. Japanese. He condemns you because he thinks Asian countries, particularly Japan to be over paranoid about epidemics like the H1N1 scare.

You could be Japanese. But also Korean. Maybe Vietnamese. It does not matter to the man. He just shot "them yellow devils" every war that he fought in.

"FUCKING WHORE."

You think of your father. He is "one of them."

And then you think of yourself.

You are too.

Not Korean. Not Japanese. Not Vietnamese.

Chinese.

Does it really matter?

Specific shit.

You could be Japanese.

You could be Korean.

You could be Vietnamese.

You could be Filipino.

Even Chinese.

"Ha well you're just one of them bastards from the fucking Cold War!"

"Chink!" "Gook!"

"Slant." "Yellow." "Dog eating." "Frog face." "Unsexy." "Not attractive, no offense."

ASIAN.

Then again...

You are just sexualized. Exotictified. Personified. As being a innocent lotus blossom, ripe for the plucking.

---

I am a shrinking violet.

I eat lotus blossoms for breakfast.

I don't know kung fu.

But I can say the last part. And I can kick your sorry ass with my superior mass, I am not dainty flower lily.

I am not sexy? Yes offense taken.

I'll be 15 until I'm 500. Have YOU ever considered botox or a brow lift? You're starting to sag.

Oh and nobody needs a unibrow!

Understand that we are privileged to eat beef and chicken, because other people cannot afford such delicacies.

And Mister Veteran from the Airport who was talking to my white mother instead of the "yellow devil"-daughter next to her...I don't really like being called a "whore."

I'd rather that you don't see me than pretend that I'm the enemy. And I wish that you weren't so colorblind. Thank you.