colors can be mixed (sometimes)

I found David H. Hwang's Bondage to be a deeply provocative play, and I've spent the last couple of days reflecting on identity, especially in the context of visual association. I've tried to write about it several times, but nothing productive came of it. Funnily enough, visual associations was brought up today in class. From the play, we know that Terri is a white woman and Mark is an Asian man. Because they both use masks to obscure their images, it seems that both of them have a certain aversion to their race; neither wants to be typecast of judged by it. Mark sees being Asian as being weak, while Terri prefers to assume the guise of anyone but white. She starts off as being a white woman, but the subsequent dialogue is filled with negativity (granted, she is the dominatrix). What I find interesting is that people seem to be more readily willing to accept minorities to be uncomfortable with their identities; the fact that Terri seems just as uneasy with her whiteness is an equalizer between her and Mark. Race, then, plays a role in everyone's concept of self-identity, not just for ethnic minorities.

Which leads me to what happened in class today. Todd brought up the fact that he is tired of ethnic minorities feeling marginalized by the white man, and why we can't all just get along. In truth, everything would be a lot easier if we did all just get along...but that would be to live in an ideal world, and unfortunately we do not. Like Francis said, people are born with biological prejudices; that is to say, we feel a lot more comfortable to be around people that we are familiar with. Many times, this means the people that we grew up with, people who, more often than not, will look like us. I honestly do not think that this is a bad thing. Carling and I have talked about this a lot, because although she is a quarter Filipino, she acknowledges the fact that she was raised, essentially, as white person. She has been actively exploring the Filipino side of her, but admits that she misses being around white Americans sometimes since she's surrounded by Asian people all the time now. And I can say that I know exactly how she feels: my freshman year of college, I rejected all things Asian. I refused to attend Asian events, and had few Asian friends. All I wanted was to be, in Todd's words, an American. And for me, to be American meant to embrace all things American: the English language, our style of dress, the way we celebrate holidays.

But I felt an emptiness that I could not place. All the while that I was being American, I was ignoring a significant aspect of myself, my Chinese heritage. A lot of things happened to accentuate the difference between a 4th or 5th generation American with myself. My freshman hallmate would frequently say things like "If immigrants are so unhappy here, then they can just go home" or "I hate how they have ethnic comic strips like Boondocks or Baldo. I mean, where are the comics for white people?" (That was when I was like "Um, you mean all the rest of the comics?!") I could not relate to certain aspects of how those Americans grew up, just as they could not relate to how I grew up Asian. Most of them agreed that it was better to assimilate--like Maya said, to be American is to lose your identity or connection with any other countries but this one. But I wasn't willing to. With some trepidation, I finally joined the Chinese Student Organization. And that was when I really felt like I had come home. I felt free to use that other language, to eat rice and pickled vegetables without being teased about how "Asian" I was being. I felt that that was really when I began to reconcile my dual identity.

A couple of weeks ago, I read Denise Uyehara's Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels, courtesy of Eddy. Scenes IV and V touched me deeply, as it reflected a lot of my past and current perspectives on dating and relationships. I've been working on a poem loosely structured like the one in Scene V, which I will include in my final portfolio for the class. Mostly, I've been exploring the notion of race as a part of us that is not necessarily negative. People are always talking about how minorities seem to always stick together in romantice situations like somehow they are choosing to segregate themselves from the general population. In truth, minorities are just like any other American: we want to find someone who understands us, has commonalities that bring us closer together. And if this means that we happen to look alike...well, is that our fault? Many Christians will only marry within their religious sect. Why is that seen as being acceptable? Because they have shared beliefs? Many ethnic minorities have shared beliefs as well. Unlike white Christians with their varied coloring and backgrounds, our beliefs are worn on our distinctive faces. We can't hide it. Does that make our commonalities any less valid than those between white people, because ours are visible and theirs are not?