Boxes

by in Culture, Existentialism, Fear, Hmmm..., Identity, Japan, Mom, Politics

“We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection–which we have ourselves created.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

After my dad died, my mom eventually sold the family home near Soquel and moved down the coast to San Luis Obispo.  The town’s local “polytechnic” university gives a sort of nerdy, upscale air to its student-rental trashiness.  The broader area also hosts a Japanese-American community established long before the internment camps of WWII.

During a recent trip down for some business regarding my mom’s estate, I met with an attorney who’d been assisting with some of its details.  Sitting down across from her, she gave me a rather long, drawn-out look.  “You remind me of a Russian supermodel.”

I must have telegraphed a tersely doubtful expression.

“No, really!” she insisted, continuing that I reminded her of Irina Pantaeva, before writing the name on a slip of paper and sliding it across the table.  “Look her up.”

I did…  Ms. Pantaeva is an ethnic Buryat-Mongol, born in the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1967.  That makes her just slightly older than myself… though apparently rather taller and thinner.  But after watching an interview, I’m going with it.

In the US, I think I’m considered an ethnic “Asian” (whatever that means)…
at least according to the box I’m supposed to check on official documents.  In Japan, I might be described informally as “hafu”, the expression referring to those of mixed Japanese and foreign (generally non-Asiatic) ancestry.

Regardless, I don’t think either most Americans or Japanese really see the amalgamation in my hafu-face.  My mom had the kind of Asian-like European visage of a young Sophie Marceau, and that seems to have combined with my dad’s Japanese features to have produced an evidently ambiguous “Asian” appearance.

“Hafu” isn’t considered a derisive in Japan. In fact, during my last trip to the country, I noticed an article aimed at a somewhat younger audience discussing “hafu envy”.  Just as in many other cultures, some, especially younger Japanese associate “beauty” with what might be considered exotic features among an otherwise relatively monotonous sea of Asiatic facial characteristics.

Regardless, the unvarnished facts of Japanese origins is itself rather an amalgamation.  Paleolithic “Jomon” and later “Yayoy” peoples, combined with more recent additions of ethnic Koreans and Chinese all contribute to a wide variation in facial characteristics throughout the country.  Nowadays, most contemporary Japanese aren’t particularly sensitive to appearance-related ethnic differences, and it’s not even considered in census data.

So aside from apparently looking Buryat-Mongol, most people in Japan will address me in Japanese. But I’ve also been the recipient of some spontaneous Korean while in Korea, and Chinese (I think) of an unknown dialect while in Taiwan.  Attending a nearby Native American gathering with a friend, someone even inquired which Nation I was from.  But mostly, I seem to be addressed in what I consider to be my native language of American English.

My apparently “Non-Hispanic, White-Anglo” (whatever that is) husband’s attitude is merely that we’re all guests in each other’s crowded world, and so we have to be both tolerant and respectful of bumping into one another. Sometimes that means accepting a little discomfort, and at other times knowing how to adapt.

At a tiny, rural-Japanese eatery that mostly served the local fishermen from a town on the outskirts of the Bōsō Peninsula, my husband carefully picked the last grains of rice from a bowl of fisherman’s stew. The woman who served us said to me that it was the first time she’d ever seen an American show respect for his food.

Back in the US, my husband and a friend went for an overnight ski trip through some local mountains. Late the next day, after driving my husband’s car to a meeting at the state capitol, I picked them up at a trailhead.  Heading home, a police officer drew alongside for a moment.  Sure enough, he pulled us over.

The officer moved along the car cautiously, and in the rear-view I could see a hand covering his firearm as he examined the skis and packs laying in the back. Regardless, the whole stop only took about a minute before he sent us on our way. Supposedly, he’d had trouble seeing a dirty registration tag on the license-plate, but it had come up okay on his computer just after we stopped.

A small, nicely-dressed Asian woman driving a car registered to a male, and with two scruffy-looking men as passengers. “Discrimination?”… perhaps.  But I understood; and it was actually a little reassuring.

Americans used to call it “prejudice”, referring to the ignorant judgment of character or the nature of a situation based on superficial characteristics, such as one’s outward appearance. But somewhere along the way, the term was replaced with the appellative of “discrimination”, the word loaded with the implication of harm based in the vagaries ethnicity and race.

Of course, where any form of discrimination excuses harm, it’s a basic obligation of society to address that harm.  But much of the current American fixation seems to have emerged from the narrative implied by those boxes into which we are checked.  Defining ourselves by our most superficial yet unalterable of characteristics resigns anything else as forever, irreconcilably, contrary… even a police officer simply endeavoring to make certain that everything is okay.  It’s an at best futile recoil into pack mentality.

The laws of a just nation should protect everyone.  But it’s mere self-deceit to conceive of some force that will bend others’ attitudes to make how we feel about ourselves more comfortable.  Self-determination requires both tolerance and adaptation, as well as perhaps the patience to pick out those last grains of rice… even if you happen to look like an over-privileged American,
or a Buryat-Mongol supermodel.

 

10 thoughts on “Boxes”

  1. I have wondered how much understanding fashion plays a role in all of human endeavors. Used to be a thing that one would joke about hem lines and the stock market. But I reckon it plays with team dynamics and personal insecurities too.

    Some folks seem to stick doggedly to a particular fashion for their whole lives and others adapt more or less rapidly. I’ll never forget a few elders who held onto the flat-top hair style for men and some variant of a beehive for women. Getting the hair done for Sunday morning is still a huge deal in a lot of communities around here.

    It is interesting to study old fashions in dress and pick out the ones that look most and least silly.

    Nowadays I wear long trousers for jury duty and funerals. Almost forty years after a college crush told me I looked like the actor in Starman, I got reminded of the same resemblance by a U-haul clerk who said I looked like the Dude; the clerk immediately apologized and was trying to turn it into a compliment, but I just smiled.

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    • Driving with cruise-control on some long and near-empty sections of four-lane, I’ve often observed how someone miles back will reach near light-speed in order to rapidly catch up to me, and then slow to ride just off a quarter-panel. Humans definitely have a herding-instinct.

      Star Trek writers seem to have understood this, perhaps intuitively. Alien races didn’t really need much makeup as they were primarily recognizable by their uniform fashions… big shoulder pads, diagonal sashes, bushy eyebrows… identifiable herds. Individuality is, I think, actually a frightening prospect for most people. It implies some amount of commitment to leadership, even if only of one’s self.

      Jeff Bridges… I can’t speak for the characters in the films, but I wouldn’t consider a resemblance to be a negative. Actually, kinda’ cool.

      I think that after my one experience actually on a jury, there must have been some notation never to call me again. That was years ago… something like the frequency at which people ask me for fashion advice.

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  2. I think “prejudice” mainly refers to ones ignorant prejudgments, while “discrimination” is using that prejudice to violate someone else’s rights/break the law. We all make snap judgments whenever we meet someone, and by necessity that starts with the person’s superficial looks from a distance. Only when we engage and the person speaks can one get a sense of their intelligence, language/accent, style, bigotry, etc. (and they of ours). All are normal sensory inputs that enable us to assess our environment (maybe innate fight or flight). With some people I click immediately; others it feels like we’re talking in different time zones, with no regard to any of the usual discriminated-against differences between us.

    I wonder if, in the US at least, we’re slowly “regressing toward the mean” (in the statistical, not demeaning, sense). The US has always been a nation of immigrants and with world travel relatively easy these days the probability of meeting someone from a foreign land is getting higher all the time. [Ditto for meeting people who differ in sexual preference/orientation, religion, etc.] Which means more relationships, intermarriages, kids, While one of the reasons I like travel is because of the diversity of cultures and historical backgrounds I get to experience, maybe we’ll all hate each other less if the “one of them” is just like some member of our own family or coworker or club member. Or maybe we should just all feel less mentally insecure.

    Curious, apropos to nothing – does your husband speak Japanese?

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    • I would argue that a good police officer has to be able to “discriminate” between that which appears reasonable and that which could pose a threat. And race doesn’t necessarily play into that. I’m sure the police officer who stopped us did so either to make sure I was okay, or to see that I wasn’t involved in some kind of questionable business… or both. Either way, I understood and didn’t see any problem. So I think the word has simply become loaded.

      Mere ignorance has also become loaded with the baggage of an “aggression” when the two are truly different things. Just recently, I heard someone explain (in a friendly manner) to a small group that he personally identified as “Black” as opposed to “African-American”, giving a brief explanation of the difference. I think everyone appreciated the clarification, and there was no sense of hostility from anyone.

      “Bigotry”, however… that’s where I think one could argue it describes a willful, comprehending and unjustified hostility toward others. Fear and/or ignorance can certainly play into that, often of the intentional variety. And that also describes a case where there’s a potential for real harm, especially when it becomes organized.

      I’ve wondered the same thing about that “regression toward the mean” myself. It’s a slow process, and doesn’t necessarily announce itself. But the US is far more cosmopolitan and accepting of difference than in just the time of my own youth. I also think we tend to see the fits-and-starts as opposed to overall trends. American culture is problem-oriented, so I think there’s generally more emphasis on what’s wrong as opposed to what’s gotten better. The Loving v. Virginia ruling that state bans on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment happened just a couple of years before I was born. Nowadays, however, attitudes have changed enough that most people are surprised to find out that such laws even existed in the 20th-century. So despite the momentary upheaval, I suspect that in another forty-years, US culture will have again changed just as much. I’m more worried about how short-term focus on the “fits” and cause-profiteering might affect the idea of a liberal democracy than I am about whether or not the US can be made more just and egalitarian.

      My husband’s Japanese is… eh, serviceable. His Mandarin (learned in his teens and now applied to his work) and Spanish are far better. He can also communicate some in Cantonese (which he says is actually quite difficult), and used to be able to speak some Thai and a little Lao. I suspect his language skills are actually quite crappy, but that he just has the kind of personality that doesn’t care… so he eventually gets better through use. 😉

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      • i agree the officer did his job well

        for the sake/safety of some illegal immigrants who have been overpowered by the middlemen for transportation, i applaud officers and border patrol for being extra careful

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        • It’s easy to vilify police and people in law-enforcement. But it’s a difficult occupation. I think the vast majority have no interest in harming anyone, and really just want to make a positive difference.

          Curiously, this has really made me look closely at the news coming out of Hong Kong right now. Crowds of people are jeering the police as they try to stop demonstrators from destroying the city’s infrastructure. And yet, they’re all citizens of the same city. It has to be terribly discouraging.

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      • I agree with what you say. Perhaps the difference is between “discriminating against someone” vs “being discriminating in decision-making” (though that too is perhaps too vague). As for words becoming loaded, that’s certainly true, but the loading doesn’t eliminate the occurrence in all cases, just perhaps creates something akin to false positives. I like your comment about “bigotry.”

        I’m afraid your last paragraph describing your husband’s language adeptness just reinforces my own feeling of ineptness. Oh well.

        Will look to see if I missed any of your posts. Life has been rather distracting lately.

        Best always.

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    • Thanks for the comment.
      San Luis Obispo’s “Japan Town” still shows on maps. But if you drive through the area, there’s nothing there. All of the area’s residents were relocated to an internment camp east of the Sierra Nevada mountains during WWII. Most lost their homes and businesses during the war. Those who returned to the general area tended to spread out into local the communities. So despite the large Japanese-American population, there’s no central Japanese area anymore.

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