By Thomas Lee

Like most people, I don’t like conflict. I’m very bad at arguing: either I blow up and say things I regret, or I will say nothing and later say things that I will regret.

This is especially true with my White friends. No matter how close we are, I generally can’t discuss race with White people, even progressive ones. No matter how much White people say they support people of color, many of my friends are curiously naive or downright defensive when I speak about racism and bigotry.

White people’s reactions usually fall into one of these four categories.

1. The racist incident never happened. You must have misunderstood.

2.  The racist incident is overblown. You are overreacting.

3.  The racist incident wasn’t racist because it also happened to the White person.

4.  I am responsible for the racist incident. 

The first three responses are infuriating. The last one is downright hurtful, especially coming from people I care about.

Several years ago, I was having dinner with two of my closest friends in Minnesota. I told them about a recent incident when a White man approached me at a convenience store near my condo. I was standing in the middle of the aisle and wearing a dress shirt and slacks. 

“Excuse me,” he said. “Can you tell me where I can find ginger beer?”

“What?” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you worked here.” 

Friend A accused me of classism. 

“What’s wrong with being a store clerk?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” I said. “But I’m not a store clerk.”

“Oh, so you think you’re better than a store clerk?” she said.

Sigh.

Friend B said she was once mistaken for a store clerk.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Which one?”

“Neiman Marcus,” she said. 

“Neiman Marcus?” I laughed. “I wish I was mistaken for a worker at Neiman Marcus. At least I could get the 10 percent employee discount.”

I was pretty upset. I wanted support and validation but instead met apathy and outright hostility.

The same goes when I speak to White friends about my fears of Donald Trump. 

True, we all dislike and fear Trump. But once again, White people dismiss my fears of being assaulted, deported, or sent to concentration camps in the desert. 

White people have no problem believing Trump is Hitler. But they somehow can’t process the possibility that the U.S. will detain Asians, citizens or not, in vast camps, something that has already happened. 

Last Saturday, I had dinner with a Jewish friend. Despite my reluctance, she said desperately wanted to talk about Trump and how he is destroying the country.

I told her I read a story how ICE rounded up and deported Chinese nationals in Dallas.

“I’m scared the same thing will happen to me,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Aren’t you a U.S. citizen?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter,” I said. “Look at me. Do I look like a prototypical American? Asians have always looked like foreigners in this country.”

“Yes, but you are a U.S. citizen,” she repeated. “And you don’t have an accent. And you are a published writer.”

“Millions of Japanese Americans who were U.S. citizens and didn’t have accents were rounded up and put in camps because of a national emergency,” I said. “And the federal government didn’t apologize until several decades later.”

She seemed unconvinced.

This drove me nuts. Even today, 40% of Americans believe that Asian Americans are more loyal to their countries of origin than to the U.S., doubling since 2021, according to a recent survey by The Asian American Foundation. And more than 1 in 4 Americans are concerned that Chinese Americans are a threat to U.S. society, especially around national security. 

You’d think a Jewish person would understand the fear of being rounded up and placed in camps. Plus my friend, a successful entrepreneur who works in Asia, is intimately familiar with the troubled relationship between the U.S. and China. For some reason, she, like many White people, can’t connect the dots.

“What happens when there is a war and U.S. soldiers are coming home in body bags?” I said. “History is going to repeat itself.”

When it does, I only hope my White friends won’t blame me for ending up in a camp. 

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