On this particular night, I was not having it. Maybe it was the tequila, or maybe it was the shear disregard for personal space that this fat, trashy, 30-something was forcing on us that set me off. I mean could you imagine the reaction from a group of 20-something boys, if I was 15 years older and a hundred pounds heavier, and I just sat down at their table and tried to strike up a conversation? Needless to say, they wouldn't have to be so polite. He started getting mad at me because unlike my friends, I wasn't trying to be nice to him out of fear of pissing him off. I kept saying things along the lines of calling him an ugly, fat white guy and trying to get him to go bother another uninterested group. I realize that I may have instigated a racially charged retaliation from him, but for him to say "I don't know what's wrong with this girl, all her friends are cool, she must be a member of the Taliban", is just plain ignorant. Why yes, ignorant sir, anyone with brown skin must be a member of terrorist organization, you clever little man, you.
Why does racism have to surface every time we really want to piss each other off? It's not helping anyone, and it's definitely not progressing our society, yet we all know it is the ultimate low blow to the person of color. While it may be said more out of spite intertwined with humor than actual racially ingrained malice, we know what we are saying and that chances are this statement will set the targeted person off like crazy. There is something about being attached to whatever it is that our skin color conveys to other people, that takes away our individuality, our struggles, and stabs at whatever pride we have built in ourselves. There is something about being attached to the oppression and hatred that our brothers and sisters before us faced, that makes me wonder, just how American are we?
I realize my fourteen letter last name and multiple deity religion doesn't make me seem like the all-american girl next-door type, but this is all I know. All I have ever known really, is Maryland and this country that I love so much. My parents focused on their careers and their hatred for one another, instead of teaching my brother and I about Hinduism and Sri Lankan culture. I really know little to nothing of the land, language, and culture that they grew up in. Why does this event, 9/11, something that happened within my lifetime, need to be attached to me simply because the color of my skin? Joking or not, it absolutely sucks to be associated with terrorist groups. This is the only home I have ever known, and to be tied to organizations and pointed out as an enemy to my home, is one of the most demoralizing, heart breaking thing you can do to someone. I am an American-born citizen, and I will continue to fight for the rest of my life for social justice in this country because I love it.
With that said, I realize it has been a long time since I wrote in this blog. I started at a point where I felt so deeply connected to the Asian Pacific American activist community. At that point, this connection was my strength, my passion, and my power. Now, over a year later, in law school at the University of Baltimore, I am not connected to that community everyday. I no longer sit in Asian American Studies classes or attend weekly Asian American Student Union e-board meetings. The people, who brought me to my passion, helped me foster it, and taught me the importance of this fight are now miles away and scattered around. I find myself reading blog after blog trying to keep up, trying to keep my passion aflame, but I feel somewhat lost without these people. I look to broader civil rights movements, but with all the work I have to do for school, it's been harder and harder to keep connected. I realize now, that regardless of the circumstances, I need to keep up with my activism. It is my true love and the driving power behind my pursuit of my J.D. This incident may have been irritating and I'm sure I'll face plenty more racism, here in Federal Hill (one of the "nicer" areas in Baltimore), but it's good to know that I can still lay the brown smackdown.
