A New Year
I’ve thought for years that Judaism has it right: September is definitely the beginning of a new year. It most certainly seems so this year after such a deeply engaging summer, the highlight of which was the consuming experience of our daughter’s wedding, a far bigger event psychically than I had anticipated.
Earlier this month I got to mark the beginning of the new year with the students, staff and faculty of Hebron Academy, where I was invited to give the keynote address at this year’s convocation, marking the start of their academic sessions.
The time I spent at Hebron was a delightful introduction to a remarkable school, “a small, independent, college preparatory boarding and day school for boys and girls in grades six through postgraduate. At Hebron students from across the United States and around the world are challenged and inspired to reach their highest potential in mind, body, and spirit through small classes, knowledgeable and caring teachers who provide individual attention, and a friendly, respectful, family atmosphere.”
I drove an hour north from Portland to rural Hebron to share stories of the life I had created in the forty years since I graduated from a small international high school not unlike theirs.
One third of Hebron’s student body are international students from 11 countries. One of the highlights for me was connecting with the 14 students from South Korea, with whom I got to share dinner. Afterwards they all walked me back to my car and one student snapped photos on his cellphone.
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I ended my convocation address with one of my two lifetime favorite quotes (the other is here), from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, from his Letters to a Young Poet:
“And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle that tells us we must always trust in the difficult, then now what appears to be the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
We live in mythic times. This seems a proper invocation with which to begin a new year.
Dreams Coming True
This week I’m transported with love, joy and wonder: Our daughter Yunhee married her beloved Josh (ours, too) on July 31. The night before we held a Korean ceremony complete with traditional wedding hanbok and ritual bows.
Tomorrow I arrive at Camp Sejong in northwestern New Jersey, where I’m the creative writing teacher for the Korean-born campers, ages 7-14, from both adoptive and Korean-American families. (For an account of my first year at Sejong in 2007, see “Hong Kil Dong Goes to Camp”.)
We’ll be creating vision maps, titled “A Bridge of Dreams,” imagining their lives in the future and how they’ll pull from the strengths of both their cultures. I’ll be using Yunhee’s wedding photos as an example of what that can look like.
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The Center of the Universe
Growing up in 1960s South Korea, I was a spectacle. Tall for a white American, I was a giant compared to the average Korean child, whose nutritional intake might still have been limited by post-war hardships. My round eyes, high-bridged nose, honey-colored hair, and pale skin were all amazingly exotic to the children – and adults – who often exclaimed over me in the market. Every day of my young life, I felt the spotlight on me, just because of how I looked.
In addition, Korea’s ancient tradition of gracious hospitality to the guest, combined with the South’s gratitude for the U.S. role in the Korean War, meant that Americans were welcomed nearly universally as VIPs. Everywhere we went, we received special attention and special service, intensified when we spoke Korean and expressed appreciation for Korean life and culture.
As I often tell students during my school visits, it was a lot like being a princess. One of the results of this conditioning was that I developed an exaggerated sense of my own visibility and significance. Returning to the States on furloughs, I felt the strangeness of walking through airports and attracting no attention at all.
This early experience of being on a pedestal, so accentuated that I couldn’t help becoming conscious of it, has helped me notice some ways in which I am accorded status as a white person in the U.S. The constant affirmation white Americans receive is neither as overt nor as exuberant as what I experienced in Korea, but it is pervasive. What the two experiences have in common is the assumption of being the center.
Absorbing a sense of centrality is a subtle process because it’s usually unspoken and unconscious. It’s a combination of being the norm – the reference point from which all other racial groups are viewed – and of constant validation through the prevalence of images of whiteness. But because those images don’t provoke the thought “white people,” but simply “people,” we often don’t notice them. (One example: from news articles to novels, people are usually identified by race only if they’re not white.)
When there is constant reinforcement of the idea that one is the center of the universe, it develops into entitlement and expectation. It feels familiar and natural, so much so that the withdrawal of it causes anxiety. When Welcoming Babies came out, one of author Margy Burns Knight’s relatives looked at the dozen babies pictured on the endpapers, five of whom are white, and asked, “Aren’t there going to be any white people in this book?”
I’ve heard repeatedly from people of color that often the most difficult people in anti-racism work are liberal whites who proclaim their commitment to the cause, but want the process to be on their own terms, in ways that keep them comfortable.
As I work on releasing myself from the biases I’ve internalized, I’ve found the assumption of centrality to be one of the trickiest things to see and to reframe. I may be working on it for the rest of my life. Catching myself again and again expecting it to be all about me is disheartening. But I can take heart from the knowledge that if I’m seeing it more, it must mean my awareness is growing.
Transracial Adoption & Discussions About Race
A few of our daughter Yunhee’s thoughts (comment #11) in response to the same clip (see previous post) on not discussing race with transracially adopted children:
I struggled with identity, and the idea of why I was put up for adoption. I went through phases of sadness, anger, and every other emotion along the way. The idea of my parents telling me not to worry about it, because no one cares about race anymore is unfathomable! That would have destroyed me.
My parents were understanding, supportive and ALWAYS willing to talk about what I was feeling. That is how I moved through each phase into something healthier and happier. Not by them ignoring my questions, emotions, and pain. They nurtured both cultures in my life, and let me explore both. I have since found a happy balance between my two cultures, and I claim both.
…Children are very observant. It is why we watch our language and behaviors around them, because they will pick it up. Children are curious, observant and very, very, blunt. A child will notice if they are not the same race as their family, and even if they don’t notice, some other person will, and then that becomes the mirror for the child. And the people in the world are not always the kindest.
At one point I was at a holiday party with my parents and a woman saw me, and then stated to her friend loudly, “Yes, you have to be white to be American.” Those mirrors are there, they are real, and they are painful.