I was talking to Mr. A about my post yesterday and he wanted to throw his $.02 out there.  (Also, I am getting tired of posting every day so I am outsourcing this one.)

*****

Here are a couple of thoughts from an actual, honest to goodness, Asian American.

(1) Don’t teach your kid to be rude.  Kids should not be encouraged to swear or be racist.  ”Slanty eyes” is  a vulgar, racist gesture.  You wouldn’t encourage your kid to use the middle finger or swear because you think it is cute.  Slanty eyes is among the most vulgar, racist things that you can do when directed towards asians.  If you think it is fine for a five year old to say incredibly vulgar things like “cunt” or “fuck” or if you think it is funny for kids to say racial slurs, then, fine,  encourage your kid to make slanty eyes.

(2) Don’t give your own  kid a complex about her race.  Everyone gets weird complexes from their parents.  I would think the last thing you would want to do is to give your own kid a complex about her race.  Why would you want to encourage your kid to act in a way that every single asian american thinks is weird and offensive?

Stick to the normal complexes parents give kids.  ”I irrationally hoard money  because my mom died poor.”  ”I have a messy house because my dad was an obsessive clean freak.”  Those are tough enough.   Don’t add “I hate the way I look because I have slanty eyes” to the mix of things your kid will have to overcome.

(3) Racial identity is really hard to understand.  Soooooo, this topic is really hard to understand EVEN FOR ASIAN-AMERICANS.  In fact, racial identity is really hard to understand for minorities with a long history and established culture in this country, like African-Americans.

How Asian should I be?  Who can I be “really asian” with?  When can I make a racial joke to defuse the tension, without making people feel uncomfortable?  When is my race hurting me?  When is it helping me?

I have these questions probably once a month or so, and I am 38 year old well-educated very fancy-pantsed  corporate lawyer.  Your kid is going to have find a path that makes sense for her.  Just try not to screw up so bad she goes into therapy, or starts dating white guys.

Note: This post was edited by AmFam to remove words like “vulgarity” which normal people do not say.  She also wrote “fancy pantsed” which is grammatically incorrect.

Yesterday, Mr. a took L on her piggyback bike for a ride on the bike trail.  That was where the incident happened.

As he came around a corner, one of two white teenage boys yelled something in Japanese at them, in what he called “a samurai voice”.  Mr. A didn’t remember exactly what the kid said, but it went down kind of like this:

“Sayonara konichiwa!” (not really what he said, but I have a very limited Japanese vocabulary myself)

Mr. A kept pedaling for a few strokes, thinking “Am I going to let that go?”

pedal

pedal

pedal

“Nope.  I am not going to let it slide this time.”

So he turned  his bike (with L on the back) around and went back to the boys.  When they saw him coming, Mr. A said the boys’ expressions were clearly saying “OH SHIT!”

At first, Mr. A let himself unload on the kids.  They were pretty young and he was quite a bit bigger than them.  And he was pissed.  I am guessing they were scared stiff.  He ordered them off the trail and demanded to know their names.

Then, the non-offending kid threw his friend under the bus. (heh)

“What?  He did it!  I didn’t do anything!  He said it, not me!”

Mr. A then chewed out the kid who did it.

“What did you say? What did you mean by what you yelled at me?!!?”

“I don’t know what it means!  It was just something in Japanese!  I don’t know!”

“But what MESSAGE were you trying to send by saying that?” Mr. A said.

“Nothing, nothing!  I don’t know what it means!” the kid stuttered.

“Were you yelling it because I am ASIAN???”

“No! No! I wouldn’t do that!” the kid said.

The kid looked like he was ready to pee his pants.  The denial made Mr. A even more annoyed but he had calmed down a little by that point.  He made the kid tell him his name, age (14) where he went to high school, the fact that he is on the cross country team and his phone number.

Then he gave the kid a lecture.

“Listen, you were trying to show off for your friend, but this kind of thing can really have long-term consequences for you.  This is the kind of thing that could get you beat up or make you lose your job.  Some day, you are going to look back and you are going to be really, really embarrassed by what you did.”

“I am really sorry.”  the kid stuttered.

“I am going to call your parents to talk to them about this, because this is serious.  Maybe in a few weeks, you and I can sit down over coffee and talk a little more about this situation.”

“Yes sir.  Ok. Uh, Can I shake your hand?” the kid asked.

Then Mr. A rode away and promptly forgot the kid’s phone number.

Mr. A and I talked about it a lot last night.  To be honest, we mostly talked about it because we thought it was really funny that a scrawny little 14 year old thought he could yell something like that at an adult and get away with it.   Neither of us think that this kid is probably a bad kid.  He was probably just showing off with his friend and not thinking at all.

On the other hand, L was with Mr. A, so I am not willing to let the kid off with a simple chewing out by Mr. A.    Because she is only 5 years old and now I can never think she has never been involved in anything negative because of her race again.  That makes me so very sad.

(As an aside, Mr. A asked L if she was scared when he was yelling at the kids and she said no and seemed completely unimpressed.  The only thing she asked was “Daddy, what did they say anyway?”  He told her they just said something silly and then they got in trouble for it.)

Also, as a parent, I would absolutely want to know if my kid was out in the community making an ass of him or herself.  Mr. A agreed that this was a teachable moment and we need to follow up, even though it is a hassle because he forgot the phone number.

Today, Mr. A is going to call the cross country coach and ask him to pass along Mr. A’s phone number to the kid’s parents and request that they call him.   (Because Mr. A forgot the phone number.)  We will see what, if anything, comes of that.

I am proud of Mr. A for dealing with it and not letting it slide.  Last night, when we were talking he said this kind of thing has probably happened to him hundreds of times in the past, but he kept thinking that L was with him, so he went back to yell at the kids.

This is the kind of thing that makes me really, really glad that I am parenting my kids with an adult who has grown up dealing with racism (or as Mr. A prefers to call this, racial incidents.)  It is all well and good for me to yell at jackassy teenagers, but it is all the better for L to see how an Asian adult handles it too.