I had never seen a Black person until I attended a private Christian school in North Minneapolis. I recall looking out the window of my parents’ station wagon driving down West Broadway Avenue. Scattered store fronts and restaurants lined the block. Black people stood highlighted on the street like statues-permanent fixtures in the backdrop of my Whitewashed world. I drove this same route for three years. During that time my family never talked about race. Race didn’t exist.
Like many transracial Korean adoptees, I grew up racially isolated from others who looked like me. My neighborhood, my school, and my friends were white. There was a period of time when I was so entrenched in White culture that unless I looked in the mirror, I forgot that I was Korean. One Halloween my friend and I dressed up as Madonna and I thought, How can I be Madonna? I’m Korean. I realized the color of my skin made me different from my family and if my parents didn’t see race, then how did they see me?
Child development research shows that by six months old infants are able to discriminate the differences in skin color. By two years old they are able to name colors and apply this to skin colors and by five years old children categorize by race and express bias based on race. When people claim they don’t see color or that all lives matter do they think this absolves them from racism? Or if they see it, it has no meaning to them? Being color blind contradicts how we develop as humans and disregards the fact that we live in a racialized world and have been socialized to believe that white skin is better.
When I learned about the murder of George Floyd, like many others, I felt so much rage. But I wonder when the protesting is over and the hashtags have disappeared how will I take my anger and use it to dismantle anti-blackness in my family, in the Asian American community, in my classroom, and in my neighborhood? It’s not enough to be angry. It’s not enough to put a Black Lives Matters sign in my front yard or post Angela Davis quotes on my Instagram. To be an anti-racist I must show up. I must listen. I must continue to do the hard work if I want my son to live in a just, safe, and humane world free of racism and hate.
I haven’t stopped thinking about George Floyd. How must it have felt to have a violent angry knee on his neck. I think about the eight minutes and forty-six seconds of pain he endured before he cried out for his momma. I think about how in that moment his soul summoned all the mothers of the world and I imagine us holding him up chanting in unison, I see you. I hear you. I see you. I hear you. I see you. I hear you.
Parenthood Pending 