I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (7 page)

The part of O-Lan went to GERMAN actress Luise Rainer, who went on to win an Oscar for such an amazing job of acting under all that makeup (not unlike Charlize Theron in the recent, magnificent
Monster)
. It was the final nail in the coffin for Anna May Wong's ill-timed, ill-fated career. For the rest of her life—or, rather, her Hollywood life—she would bitterly discuss this injustice with all the people around her (not many, by her own choice) before dying alone and angry in 1961.

Imagine. Knowing that you were unable to play a part because you were the right race at the wrong time. When Paul Muni was cast as the male lead, that's when the hope died. She knew that since the male and female leads were to be lovers—in fact, married—there wasn't a chance in Hollywood hell that she would win the role. Miscegenation was a misdemeanor, perhaps even a felony, punishable to the full extent of the law. Yellowface was not. Yellowface was the safe route. Yellowface was the politically correct answer. Imagine.

Even the illustrious cinematographer James Wong Howe was taken out of the running when the crew was being assembled, even though he had experience shooting all over the world, and was perfect for the job—BEHIND the camera. Imagine.

Any assumptions about how things are so much better today, how we should thank our joy luck club stars that we are no longer living in that world, seems a bit ironic. When we read the play, retelling this story of insane racism that was considered acceptable—in fact, morally responsible—behavior at the time, against the backdrop of my own television nightmare, when particularly shortsighted Korean
activists were taking me to task for not hiring Korean writers or Korean actors to play the parts of my Korean family. They boycotted the show, wrote articles, mobilized en masse. We had Asian American actors, really fine ones, in all the roles, and Asian American writers in the writers' room, but the fact that they were not Korean, and that we were charged with Yellowface for this and other reasons, got the show taken off the air. IMAGINE.

The play never did get produced, although it's a spectacular work, and now it might get some attention. Anna May Wong lives on in the minds of fans and scholars of cinema's odd transition between the silent era and the talkies. She is not well respected by Asian American activist-academics, if they know of her at all, because she falls into that Charlie Chan category, a period of Asian American complicity that is, for some, best forgotten. However, she is a gay icon, worshipped by drag queens for her icily androgynous beauty and her tragedy.

John Lennon would never have written that song without Yoko Ono. Imagine.

in defense of michelle malkin

M
ichelle Malkin, the author of the controversial book
In Defense of Internment
, spoke at the University of California at Berkeley, fiercely trying to defend her position against the loud and angry
demonstration outside protesting her appearance. Malkin's views are incredibly unpopular, especially on such a liberal campus. Her take on the racial politics of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is quite outrageous, especially coming from an Asian American. Just because she has a white name doesn't make her white.

Malkin is living proof that bigotry has gone multicultural. She claims that the comparison of internment to the racial profiling of Arabs and Arab Americans is unfair and a foolhardy tool of the left, who are gambling with the safety of all Americans in order to be politically correct. Advocating racism to secure our borders is part of life during war, and Malkin is here to remind us again and again how we are at war.

She ponders why affirmative action is perceived as a good thing and scrutinizing the Arab names on airline passenger lists is a bad thing. She is infuriated that the left keep on playing the internment card, seriously compromising homeland security with its insistence on those pesky civil rights.

Malkin tried speaking louder into the microphone to drown out the chants of the protesters. The American flag taped to the wall behind her fell down, which got a smattering of ironic applause among the confused and scared-looking audience. I don't blame them for being scared. I was scared for her. The protesters kept breaking into the hall, interrupting Malkin's train of thought. But she hunkered down, and kept on going, tough and diligent. She's a lot like me, I think, an "Anti-Cho." The protesters chant "SHAME!!!SHAME!!! SHAME!!!," but she refuses to be shamed by their taunts.

I feel kind of proud that the politics of race have progressed to the point where a young Asian American woman doesn't have to live within the constraints of a minority identity, which presumes a liberal bias just by virtue of the fact that if you are oppressed by the majority you would want to work against it. Malkin's position is kind of genius, actually, a new way to look at our role in American politics. We don't have to assume the mantle of the distressed minority anymore. We can be as prejudiced as whites!

Race really doesn't matter. Michelle Malkin is a revelation and revolution both. It's fairly obvious that she is being courted by conservatives, fussed over and groomed as the all-new Manchurian Candidate. She fits their need to diversify like an orthopedic shoe. It's a match made in GOP hell, an unholy union that works to everyone's advantage. The right wing gets a brand-new bag, a Skipper for Ann Coulter's Barbie. Not only that, Malkin's Asian, so that liberals will have a harder time calling her a racist even though she holds completely racist views. Malkin gets a lot of publicity and talk time for her book, which generates sales on both the right and the left. The right buys it to support their own; the left will buy it to see what all the screaming is about. And, boy, there's lots of screaming. Not since Salman Rushdie's
The Satanic Verses
have people been so pissed off at an author. I would love to issue a fatwa against her, but I'm not sure how to go about it.

The protests are counterproductive, because the right wing loves it when the left gets angry. The off-camera shouting makes us look
like savages, and that's exactly the image they love to show again and again. Malkin bravely fords onward. She seems like an intelligent and interesting young woman, albeit a misguided one, and I feel protective toward her. I hope the right treats her well, and doesn't throw her away once the fury has died down. Perhaps she'll write a follow-up book, about how the Holocaust didn't happen.

Malkin's story reminds me of Errol Morris's documentary
Mr. Death
. Mr. Death, Fred A. Leuchter Jr., is a nerdy electric chair specialist who boasted an expertise on all things related to execution. He is hired by a white supremacist organization to go to Germany and disprove the existence of concentration camps. Mr. Death had never had any attention paid to him in his life. He was this dorky academic who had spent most of his life under the radar. Suddenly, he's thrust into the spotlight. Never mind it's the glare of hateful, racist, ridiculous white supremacists, the accolades are no less seductive. Here's a tragic tale of a man deprived of recognition to the point where he will attempt to revise history just to get some kind of acknowledgment. Mr. Death becomes the ultimate Holocaust revisionist. He serves the white supremacist agenda by backing up their hokey theory, and he gains redemption for his years as a "who cares?" nobody. Who could blame Malkin for wanting to follow in those footsteps?

The terrible thing about invisibility is the lengths we will go to be seen. If spouting racist propaganda and being a tool of conservatives are worth the right to live in the monochromatic world of right-wing political pandering, then I applaud Malkin's effort. She inflames the
need to uphold the ideals of equality and fairness, and she puts a new face on hate. I'd be happy to argue with someone who looks a bit like me for a change.

African Americans have Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. There's a new race traitor on the block, and her name's Michelle Malkin!

why I'm political

W
hy am I political? Because society's consistent and constant disregard and lack of respect for minorities, even the title "minority"—when in many areas of the country, in fact, we are the majority—is too much to bear silently. Their insistence at our invisibility, whether it is as subtle as noninclusion, or as loud and violent as hate crimes, is contagious, and can make me hide from myself.

I see evidence of my own racist brainwashing when exploring the landscape of current foreign policy. I have not been able to make myself think or talk about the situation in North Korea. My avoidance stems from fear that my Americanness, hard won and fought for on a daily basis, might somehow be diminished because of my ethnic association with the perceived "enemy." My family is Korean, and we are defensive about our allegiances. There is great suspicion expressed when referring to North Koreans, as if we must distance ourselves from them as much as possible so as not to disrupt democracy.

Going out of my way to prove that I am an American does not support the idea of being American. I shouldn't have to be less interested in what might happen between North Korea and the U.S. in order to reestablish the image that I have cultivated for myself as a patriot. Also, I want to refute the assumption that being Korean might lend me any particular expertise when expounding on the political climate there. I stamp my feet and claim ignorance like a child, because it's the color of my skin that says I'm supposed to know. Trying to cut my ties with North Korea doesn't reinforce stereotypes that I currently do my best to fight; rather, it fosters new ones. I become the "one who refuses to see the self." I add to the culture of invisibility by becoming complicit with it.

I am diminished by not seeming to notice that North Korea is there, even though my family is from there, even though many of my family still live there, even though my ancestors were literally torn apart there by civil war that split the people while the people were still one. My association is so painfully close that avoidance is the only way I know to retain my American identity. It's ridiculous and embarrassing. I hate feeling this way, because it forces me to see how deeply racism has affected me. It has gotten into the way that I think, the way I live, the way I feel about myself, the way that I fear that I'm being perceived. Not only that, it's gone completely unnoticed, until I step outside myself and acknowledge the truth. I'm a racist, but it's gone underground and become distorted and returned to me utterly unrecognizable.

Prejudice and bigotry rot me from within, and the strains of these
viruses are hearty and hard to kill. When I was younger, I would rudely ignore the bright-eyed Asian American kids who would stand in the courtyard and hand out sunny yellow flyers advertising after-school meetings for the new Asian Student Union. It bothered me that the flyer paper was so undeniably yellow, and that they would single me out in the crowd to give me one, as if the yellowness of my skin was a secret homing device for them. It felt like they were targeting me, because, if anyone needed it, I did. I could have used Asian unity more than the other Asian kids who rushed through the same courtyard with me. I think they sensed that, and tried harder to push the flyer into my hand. Fortunately, my racist tendencies did not keep me from having great relationships with other Asian kids in my class. We just didn't have a "union." There was no need to speak of politics, or any desire to change the status quo. If we did, it was entirely unintentional, and just part of the daily ritual of being a teen.

My insistence at being apolitical, as if that were possible, didn't end when I was young, when it could be blamed on youthful ignorance. About a decade ago, I was asked to appear on a comedy special that featured political comedians. I declined, quite plainly stating that I was not a political comedian and therefore didn't belong in the lineup. I was replaced, and I was relieved. But I look back now and think how wrong I was in my own self-assessment. Even though I lack deft impressions of befuddled politicians in my routine, that doesn't make me an apolitical entertainer. My very presence as an Asian American woman talking about race and sexuality is a political statement. I had always regarded the world of political humor as the exclu
sive domain of white men and immediately disqualified myself from participation. I know better now, and it's immensely pleasing when I'm referred to as a political comedian because it rings true. It feels right. It feels strong.

However, I belie my own strength when I act like North Korea isn't there, that it doesn't affect me, that I'm exempt from having to comment on it. The problem is, the conflict with North Korea unearths an unbearable conflict within myself. It brings to the forefront my own self-hatred, supported by a lifetime of suppression by the world in which I live. Self-hatred is a devastatingly difficult habit to break, especially when we are mostly unaware of it.

I try every day to challenge myself further, and I believe by doing this I slay the monster bit by bit. This is why being political is an essential part of my life. In the end, it's all I have.

emmett till and matthew shepard

I
n 1955, Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old black boy living in Chicago. He was on his way to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. He came home without himself, just his dead body, mutilated beyond belief. Emmett Till was a baby, just a boy, fucking FOURTEEN!!! He wasn't a civil rights activist. He wasn't a criminal. He didn't come to Mississippi to file complaints against the Jim Crow laws. He was
visiting his great-uncle, Mose Wright. At first, he was having fun; his cousins and he became friends quickly, and they were playfully teasing one another outside of Bryant's grocery store in the middle of town. Emmett was showing off a photo he had of himself with his girlfriend, a pretty white girl. His cousins were shocked, and didn't believe him, as things were so different there in Money than in Chicago. This was the kind of town where a few weeks earlier a young black girl had been beaten almost to death for "crowding" a white woman.

Another pretty white girl, Carolyn Bryant, daughter of the grocery store owner, walked by and went into a store. Emmett's cousins, knowing he would never do it, dared him to flirt with her. Little Emmett Till had been raised in the North and had no way of knowing that taking this little dare, harmless and sweet, would cost him his life. His cousins were shocked when Emmett followed the girl into the store. They tried to stop him but didn't get to. There was not much interaction between Emmett and the girl. Speculation ranges from a possible catcall, a whistle, maybe a "Bye, bye, baby." Less than two days later, Emmett Till was no longer Emmett Till. He was a broken symbol instead of how hate lives, and kills, and rots us from the inside out.