On the SoapBox

Chao mi! May hom nay, minh da kiem cach de leo len soapbox, nhung kiem hoai kg thay cach nao buoc len dc. Mai den hom nay moi danh "lieu mot phen", chi vi kg muon mi buon vi da nhieu ngay kg thay minh blog gi ca. Vay thi, co thac mac may hom nay minh suy nghi ve gi kg? I've contemplated the topic of the sermon I heard preached on Sunday, which was Racism Awareness Day, at the UCC church I visited in Oakland. Because I don't know about that particular church community, I feel both comfortable and uncomfortable in launching my critique (well, not really critique, but more like unsympathizing observations).

Before I start, I should also say that I am slightly leery of posting these comments on the blog because blogs are the gray territories of where private and public merge. This may be nothing but HAT's (a virtual space designated for my own usage) but it is really nothing but -- because it isn't anything I can call my own. That said, I'm still going to say what I've been itching to say for days now (but didn't know of an eloquent way to say it).

This past Sunday, I was a part of a rather diverse group seated in the cavernous santuary -- black, chinese, vietnamese, white, latino/latina, and I'm guessing a few others were also of southeast asian descent. Yet, despite our multi-cultural and multi-ethnic make-up, the preacher (a white woman raised in upper-middle class South African cultures) kept emphasizing that the racism issue was not an institutional problem, but an individual problem. She also re-iterated several times that "we" needed to recognize our responsibilities in the racism existing between black and white people. In that conversation, Asian Americans in the audience were invisible because though we look Asian, our presence wasn't strong enough to overcome the overwhelming sense of white guilt which dominated a large part of the sermon. Racism awareness day did not include conversation about cross-cultural or cross-ethnic racism. Racism was narrowly and quickly defined as white vs. black, never mind that racism and prejudice between economic and social classes of the same ethnic race make significant differences. Never mind that there are entire races of people existing in the world with similar if not even greater concerns. Never mind that peoples of Arabic and Asian descent also exist. Never mind. This is just oversimplifying the situations so that we don't have to think beyond the rote.

At the risk of exemplifying the "model SE Asian" who has to ask the obvious, I have to ask again, isn't it about time we realize that racism isn't easily dichotomized between black or white? That it is not just institutional or individual? What of classicism? Sexism? Agism?

This isn't new. You have heard this before. Let me say this then. De HAT noi dieu nay nhe. Minh met lam -- met moi vi luc nao cung phai ngoi o ngoai cuoc trong khi nhung nguoi My trang ngoi do de talk and talk to me instead of dialoguing with me. In fact, it should not just be a dialogical experience but a polyphonic experience. And it should include all voices.

And yes, that includes all the voices in my head, too. And they're getting rather loud...