Injustice

I don't know why the news gets me so worked up.

Maybe it's because I tend to put myself into it. It's like I can totally see myself being the person profiled at the airport. I can totally see myself as the person being ridiculed because my features are "Mongoloid," the not-so-politically-correct term used to describe the features of those who have Down Syndrome. Victims of of the birth defect have features that were described as Mongoloid because people thought they have somewhat Chinese features.

So, yesterday, I read about six white men who beat up a black man in New York. Who knows why? And I flip through a coffee table book at the local book store yesterday and see a picture of a white man, wearing a tank top that says "White Patriot," in a KKK outfit, holding a sleeping child. What got to me was his outfit, not that he was holding a sleeping child.

I don't immediately shout and rave, as that's just not my personality, but it steeps and brews, until the draft becomes bitter and rancid. Hopefully, writing about it will be cathartic.

Growing up in multi-ethnic Malaysia, I had friends who were from different ethnicities than I. The fact that we were different didn't stop us from being friends. Our differences were not because of our skin color--I often had differences with people who were from my ethnic group. Our differences were mostly philosophical. They were debated heatedly but they were also cause for celebration. I would have long discussions with a Muslim friend of mine about the Syariah law's opposition to Muslim apostates but I'd go to her house for a Hari Raya Aidil Fitri celebration and share with her family a meal of curried goat and tumeric sticky rice.

The first time I felt marginalized because of the way I look was while I was in the United States. I'd lived here for two years before hearing a slur hurled at me. This incident does not accurately represent my experience here but it has tainted it. I don't understand what inspires someone to shout, as they drive past me, "Go home, you f**king Chink." I did nothing to invite his treatment of me. I was just walking back to my car after a night shift in the newsroom.

Ironically, the other time I experienced something like this was also while I was walking back to my car. My husband and I had just finished a game of squash and was debating some issue heatedly--it could've been U.S. politics or whether we should go to the grocery store, I can't remember. But, while we walked past a car that was waiting to get into the parking garage, two black men made monkey noises at us as we walked past.

My husband was fuming but he knew that it wouldn't do us any good to confront them.

I, on the other hand, was puzzled. It was puzzling to me that they felt they were acting superior by making animal sounds to ridicule us. To me, their actions debased them, and not us. It doesn't take a lot to come up with the sound a chimp makes or "Go home, you f**king Chink." How many neurons do you think are fired for those thoughts to happen? Not very many, I should think.

If I let myself, I know I can be upset. These insolent people didn't know anything about my husband and I and yet, they could devalue us so quickly. Did they care that we were earning advanced degrees, had traveled all around the world, or could debate the finer points of U.S. foreign policy with them? Did they care that we were dog lovers, food fanatics or that we consumed science fiction with a vengeance? Did they care that we were bringing wanted dollars to their economy and that we have no reason to stay on in this country, that we could very well go home, as they want us to, as soon as we're done with school?

What is it that makes someone judge another by their appearances or skin color? What primitive instincts override the higher functions that I presume these people must possess since they've evolved along with the rest of humanity?

The first person to insult me was a white man, someone who may not have experienced such racially inspired insults. But it still puzzles me as to why the two black men felt they could malign us like that, considering their history in America before the emergence of civil rights? What is it that brings humanity to such lows?