Seoul Searching

Now that I’ve finished reading Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, I wish I had read it earlier. Not earlier as in before the election. I mean earlier in my life, when I was first grappling with my identity, before it had even been published.

His story, as a biracial man, is obviously not mine. His is black and white. Mine’s more yellow and white. But the struggle to find peace from an internalized conflict of identity is universal. As I read, my mind reeled with understanding at passages like this:

“It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks.”

It was in this way, as a “neutralized” Korean American, that I came to Africa. Boarding the plane, passport in hand, I held tightly to my national identity rather than my ethnic one. But here, my face represents bad Jackie Chan movies, not the stars and stripes.

Several times today, like every day, men called after me with my equivalent of nails scratching a chalkboard: “Ching, chong, chang!” I always take a deep breath after hearing this. (The thoughts running through my head, however, aren’t suitable for this blog.)

I first dismissed the chants as innocent, even playful, mockery. But today, after the fourth man spat it out as he was entering the Apostles of Jesus Technical Institute, I realized that mockery, no matter how rooted in ignorance, is derisive. And this particular mockery puts me in a hole with only enough space for a Chinese pigeon.

I admire Barack Obama’s unrelenting pursuit to know himself and his place in the world. I’ve always felt a subtle resistance to diving into the murky waters of race identity, choosing instead to accept the position of the “exotic” in the ranks. But I now realize America is one of the few places where there’s a chance to be both your ethnicity and your nationality. Of course, there will be the occasional “ching, chong” chumps when I’m stateside. But, at the very least, they’ll be chirping it to a flock of pigeons who long outgrew that hole.