Listen

"If it's a broken part, replace it
If it's a broken arm then brace it
If it's a broken heart then face it." -Jason Mraz

This issue is going to take years to figure out. I recognize that this was why I loved Josh so very much. I have a dear friend, who is African American, and identifies very clearly as such. When it comes to real racial dialogue, I learn so much from this person outside of the anthropology books and education readings. There are concepts of race, theories of oppression and statistics galore but it doesn’t hit home until it’s recognized in a form of a human being opening him or herself up to you- and how complicated and hard that is.

I want to believe so badly that I understand or am striving to understand the luggage, the baggage, the pain. Not at the academic level but at the human level.

But I catch myself being idealistic and pretentious; on the side of the scholar and not on the side of the people. Like a scholar who knows the system is wrong but still wants to make it right, and knowing that the oppressed people are being oppressed, and they’re (we’re) the only one that cares, thus places not so much the blame, but the responsibility on the oppressed group to advance ourselves and assimilate. I suggest it to people. It’s patronizing and a little naïve and almost like internalized racism… but then I have to ask myself, what the alternatives are.

I’m on my high horse like I do things that are right, but I don’t. And I understand exactly why that person closes off and stops being vulnerable to me. It hurts but it’s occurred a few times from a few people and it happens for a reason. I’m symbolic of something else and a different experience.

So how can I judge the luggage and pain? Every time I heard from Josh, he’s in poverty, he’s in pain, he’s doing all the wrong things, all the time, and I give these vain, idealistic, high horse, “common sense” suggestions – but I’m not there, I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

My heart is open. I try. I try. I try. I fight and I strive so hard to understand. It’s so important- it’s vital, it affects me in some ways too. But my perspective and my trajectory is so different, I was manufactured and shaped in a different way, I’m not here to artificially understand or to be an academic but how can I truly understand?

I see it. It hurts me. It hurts me in realizing that it affects people around me. But I don’t truly understand. Not here, not at Colby while having “token” friends of color. I’m here to listen but sometimes both they and I feel like I judge instead.

I wonder how the perspectives can be so different and then I realize that it’s about the lack of exposure and the privilege again. Part of me is the middle class Colby student and part of me is Vietnamese, black, and working class. I feel like I have empathy, but is it really there? How come I can’t relate? Is this what pretentious and elitist is?

I came to Colby with the most naïve thoughts in the world and in love with a man who’s been through too much and not being exposed to my mother and father’s real lives, and their real hardships and inequalities that they shielded me from. It’s because of race, it’s because of class. But I still had a very old fashioned view on the whole thing, like it could change, like the oppressed just need to work harder, like it’s not the responsibility of the white man to try to understand oppression while he’s simply trying to live his dandy life.

I’m missing psychological pieces, internalized structures, just the mere humanity of the situation, the unfortunate truth of the either-or situation of assimilation and giving up one’s culture or having no say in American culture or their own livelihood. And then there’s how much harder does one have to work to gain the same position… and how much one is willing to “sell out”. Wouldn’t it feel more satisfying and authentic to keep one’s identity? But then one’s society is stagnant, and the stagnant society enables the perpetual pain and suffering. All of which I’ve been so lovingly shielded from, I don’t even know my identity or where I lay on the scale.

How do I get people to open up to me? But how do I, at first, learn how to listen – and acknowledge that although I would like to relate – although I look at you and want to feel your experiences and emotions to the core—my sister—I just want to be given the opportunity to listen and acknowledge that I don’t know anything, but please give me that opportunity and forgive my ignorance.

The friends I chose when I was young were done to shield myself from myself. The conversations I chose were to protect myself from the real world. And I feel so intensely that I don’t know my roots. I don’t know what I am, I don’t know where I come from.

Then out of the blue, I realized how I loved the black man, how I love his fight, his soul and his rebellion—his middle finger to those who think they own him, which is silly because I don’t know anything.

I care for his pain. I love his eloquence. But I judge him for being stagnant, rebelling and dealing with his pain his very own way. It’s the high horse again, How can you love and hate rebellion at the same time?

I love him so. I love my people so. I love the pigment in the skin. I love the deep culture. But I want to change the “hims” to make his standing higher in this world and his fight easier. But --- I can’t and maybe shouldn’t assimilate him like I assimilated myself. What’s the trade of? How do I get off my high horse and talk to people about things visceral, vulnerable, and humane?

White people don’t upset me but it’s hard to find me, it’s hard to be inspired and find inspiration, unity, relatedness, and understanding when all I see is them. All I become is them and that’s not me at all.

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I’m not allowed to hurt. It’s not because they don’t allow me the right to be hurt- or to complain and whine- but that I don’t allow myself that.

Because to me—my body is smooth compared to their scars – and I always get a chance to think about butterflies and the many guys that pass my way – and I get a chance to forget when I move to the next stage of life – while those there must live through the stages.

I get to explore the stages – understand the stages – feel the feelings of the stages but when the time is right, I get to escape the stages and not live it out. I get to explore it – like the typical anthropologist/ sociologist that I hate. People’s lives are not for my scholarly knowledge – to fill up my mind up with random thoughts – to fill up this blog and my books of poetry – people’s lives are real.

And of all people, it is I who always asks for the permission to be given the opportunity to listen to their lives as though it were a story. As though I am so high up that the only thing they need is for me to listen – and that the act alone will heal them – that my love alone is the answer to all things – that I am the martyr. “Give me the opportunity,” I say, “I am different. I care.” But my life is all about moving on. Moving on from my country, moving on from the lower class, moving on from my parents, moving on from my lover, moving on from all struggles.

How dare I let the struggle of their daily lives authenticate me and make me more real, more human, and more complex when all I do is move on?

How dare I complain about not being given the opportunity to be heard when all they want is to live their lives how they want? How dare I say that I must be given my right to listen to them when it’s their choice of whether or not to speak – whether or not I am the one to speak to – whether or not my belief that I can make a difference is once again part of my pretentious belief that I am better or more important than the reality?

It took me years to figure this out.

But then, it doesn’t matter so much, because I am still me and I still hurt – and I wish to be human and have more of voice than an overly privileged ghost who is not part of them. It’s a line too thin to walk and too hard to balance.