Opinion: Racial insensitivity a continuing problem at BC

The Gavel
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As my eyes glanced across my screen, I could feel my cheeks starting to flood with color. I understood every word I had just read and I didn’t want to believe what was being said. “Someone needs to tell the Asian exchange students that they can only wear Burger King crowns in an actual Burger King #HumansOfMac” – @UpperBitch.

Did I really just read that? Did someone write that? First of all, if “UpperBitch” had done some research or had thought about asking the students what they were up to, he/she would have found that they were playing a game of Assassins and that wearing a crown was their immunity. Secondly, he/she would have seen that the participants were not Asian exchange students, but rather members of the Korean Student Association.

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I attended a majority white, highly conservative, Catholic high school in Texas. Except for my small group of friends, none of my peers were interested in becoming friends with me. They never harassed or bullied me for my race, but I could tell that they thought of me differently. When I found out that I was going to college in the Northeast, I was ecstatic because I thought that I would escape the conservative mindsets of my classmates.

For the most part, that has been true. Boston College has been a completely different and positive experience for me compared to my time in high school. I’ve made wonderful friends of different cultural backgrounds and I have yet to experience a direct or serious hate crime.

However, despite having a loving group of friends who don’t seem to care whether I am Korean, Hispanic, or what you may, there are times when I’m faced with the harsh reality that racism still exists.

For the most part, the racism I experience comes in the form of ignorant comments. My freshman year of college, I had a group of friends who were very nice and a lot of fun. However, whether it was because they weren’t used to having a Korean friend or because they felt comfortable around me, they would make an insanely large amount (to the point where that was my only topic of conversation with some of them) of jokes with stereotypes as their basis.

Most of the time I laughed them off. Sometimes I even thought they were funny. But after a while they just became tiring, I found them uncalled for and insensitive. My current group of friends rarely makes jokes regarding stereotypes, but tease me for being clumsy or for being silly, which is a part of friendship and much more preferable. Some are actually interested in my culture and ask me about it and I’m always excited to share a little bit about my heritage.

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I also frequently hear comments about how all Asians look the same. This stereotype, while offensive, is not without basis: while race might be a social construct, physical appearance is one of the ways we differentiate racial and ethnic groups. What really bothers me are incidents like one which occurred this semester. A person, who I will not name, told my friends that he could not tell the difference between Asians and then proceeded to loudly ask every Asian girl he saw if she was me. Our physical differences (or similarities) should not be mocked.

My awesome friends became very offended and told him to stop because those people obviously did not look like me. So to “He Who Shall Not Be Named”, yes, we may look similar, but if you look close enough I’m sure you will have no problem telling me apart from some other Asian girl.

There’s no way to completely get rid of racism. No matter how hard we try to educate people, it’s not possible to reach everyone out there. Also, it’s not just about educating people; it’s about befriending them and showing them who we all are. It’s about teaching that beyond varying skin colors and diverse cultural backgrounds, we’re all human and have more in common than you’d think.

Granted, these friendships and sharing our cultures can only be accomplished if people are open to learning and seeing something new as well as being willing to break out of their comfort zones. These safe boundaries we create for ourselves prevent us from wanting to experience something that is foreign or different from us.

People need to open their minds and realize that they can’t generalize and make assumptions about who I am just because of my race. Yes, I am Korean-American and I am proud to be Korean-American. It’s just shame that you won’t bother to get to know me as anything other than “an Asian chick” because you assumed that I’m probably the same as the other Asian chick you saw five seconds ago.

So, all of that being said, I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite songs, “Where Is The Love” by The Black Eyed Peas. It addresses the unending nature of war, racism, hate and also hopes for peace and love all in one song, just as I hope that people can see that we “gotta have love just to set it straight.”

 

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