But this question of, “Where are you from?” This framing of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners predates Trump by far.
Most if not every Asian in America has similar stories.
The mocking of language, pulling up eyes, kung-fu poses and racial slurs — these are commonplace.
Getting told to “go back to China,” expletive added for emphasis, is no microaggression.
But are you aware of this if you are not Asian? What would you do as a bystander when you witness it? What do you tell your students as a teacher, tell your kids as a parent?
Our discussion of race in America in the schools and the media are one-dimensional.
The Columbus City Schools elementary curriculum includes reading “The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” discussion of the civil rights movement and a Martin Luther King oratory competition.
But is there a broader discussion of race? Recognition that not judging people by the color of our skin includes not just black and white, but yellow, red, brown, all shades of humanity?
What would you do? I wonder, when I walk with my son in front of the sparkling, recently renovated Clinton Elementary School in Clintonville.
A yellow school bus sits at a red light. A young African American boy, maybe seven or eight years old, raises his face to the open window and shouts gibberish mocking the Chinese language at us.
I shout back that we speak English, but the bus drives away.
What I should have done was run in front of the bus, stopped it, no matter the scene or backed-up traffic and honking horns. I should have talked to the bus driver.
Sir, I want you to know that one of the students on the bus was mocking our race. He’s a child, he doesn’t know better, but it’s important that he learns, that his classmates learn that looking different does not warrant derision, that we are all people worthy of respect.
Please tell the teachers of the students on this bus. Because otherwise in 30 years, these cute children might be ignorant racists telling anyone who looks Asian to go back to China.
I would like to think that bystanders would speak up if someone on High Street told an African American that they should go back to the plantation.
That the person making those comments would be shouted down in shame. But no one said anything when I was told to “get out of my country.”
Fighting racism is not a zero-sum game.
We can stand up for people of all backgrounds when they are harassed and discriminated against. This will be all the more important in the coming years with anti-immigrant invective from Trump in the White House.
Columbus: we’re better than this.
Joe Tien is a professor of mathematics at The Ohio State University. He studies infectious disease dynamics and online ecosystems and has been a Cavs fan since the days of Mark Price and Brad Daugherty.
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