“America talks too much about race. America also talks too little about race.” These are lines from award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel Americanah that echo in my head. I read Adichie’s book last summer, since it was the Pomona College summer reading assignment. As I read, I jolted down some questions, which I hoped to ask the author (who gave a talk at our college a couple of months later) in person.
You might have noticed from my previous entries that I love using flashbacks and anecdotes when I’m writing, for I’m a nostalgic person at heart. I enjoy reading and writing in different environments, and taking a stroll in between to think about what I have just read or written. When I’m reading, I sometimes subconsciously associate the part in the book that I’m reading with the location in which I have been reading this book. When I return to the text, my mind brings me back to my previous surroundings, connecting them with my current setting. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
So now, every time I think back about the characters and plot of Adichie’s novel, my memories bring me back to Beijing, where I read it over the summer. Back then, I wondered how much the issue of race would affect me personally, whether it would be exclusive, or if I would have personal connections to the phrase “race cards.” Having studied in the U.S. for five months now, I feel that it’s time to reflect about what I’ve read, seen, experienced, and learned.
In my American politics class, our professor jokingly brings up his family’s perspective on race during our class discussions, saying that when we say someone is “colour blind,” or that an individual is “a person of colour,” we are basically saying that white people are colourless. Hmm… A chauvinistic term, rather.
To relate this to my own experience, I find a situation that I face a lot of times to be equally funny, where someone asks “Where are you from?” and, upon hearing my response, becomes slightly surprised, saying “Oh, you don’t have an accent.” If I don’t have an accent, does that mean that I don’t have a non-American / British accent (i.e. Chinese / other East-Asian accent, based on my physical appearance)? This comment may appear innocent upon first glance, but it ignores the existence of other types of accents (e.g. Australian, Irish, Indian, and so on…). Is this an implicit way of discriminating? To what extent does this point relate to the broader question of acknowledging race in America?
When I attended some local community events where I was the only Asian in the room, I seemed to get special treatment of some sort. Far from being marginalised, I actually got more attention than my Caucasian friends, whom I was with. This is not unlike situations described by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, where Ifemelu, the protagonist, provokes special interest on her native country, sometimes getting excessive / artificial attention.
I am not a cynical person, although there has been a lot of questioning in this entry. Let me end on a positive note. At colleges like Pomona, we pay much attention to addressing race-related issues in our student-initiated discussions (which include Open Mic forums, speaker panels, film screening and discussions, etc.) and our Dynamics of Differences in Power classes. I find the insight that my peers have shared with me in these events / classes extremely eye-opening. Yes, race has been a hot issue in the United States for a long period of time. We need to continue these thoughtful dialogues in order to respect and empathise with individuals’ unique experiences.