And Now, the Lectures and Chastising
It was sweet while it lasted. Which wasn’t long.
An [the not-famous mother of a mixed-race child] told Kim [the mother of Superbowl MVP Hines Ward] there was much she wanted to talk to her about. “If I had the opportunity to get out of Korea right now, I would do it without a moment’s hesitation,” An said. Kim silently held her hand. Then she said, “Yes, that is what you should do. I always used to think that too.”
When she had composed herself, Kim said she had spent 30 years “without looking at Koreans and without thinking about them. What do you think would have become of us if I had kept living here with Hines? He would probably never have been able to be anything but a beggar. Do you think I would even have been able to get work cleaning houses?”
Thwap!
Kim said this was the way Koreans are. “Even in America, Korean’s [sic] don’t get along. Koreans who immigrated ignored us. Koreans of the same skin color are even more racist among themselves. It doesn’t make sense. If everybody hates our children so much because their skin is a different color, then why do Koreans run around dying their hair blond and red?
This is now officially too complex for me. Yes, my kids are half-Korean, and no, I wouldn’t take them to live in Korea for all the laundered North Korean funds in Macau. At the same time, I don’t pretend for an instant that my family would face a modicum of the discrimination little Hines, with his African features, must have faced. Nor do I assume that Hines didn’t encounter discrimination in America because my kids haven’t.
Kim noted the contrast between her difficult early years in the U.S., when no one wanted to help, and the sudden interest sparked by Hines Ward’s success. “It’s hard, but that’s just the way it goes,” she said. . . .
Yeah, well, some people do tend to be like that. Take this Yonhap story from today, in which the government announced that it was moving to ban discrimination against mixed-race Koreans. That’s nice, I guess. This is 2006. The Korean Constitution (see Article 10) doesn’t prohibit discrimination based on race or ethnicity. The National Human Rights Commission Act doesn’t either, although it gives Koreans and foreigners residing in Korea the right to file complaints with the human rights commission if they are discriminated against on the basis of race or ethnicity.
I don’t mean to denegrate the beneficial effects of someone finally holding up a shiny mirror in front of Korean society. Nor do I denigrate the fact the Korea is finally talking about its views toward Koreanness, which are at least tangentially related to its views about race. I just wonder about the black, white, and hispanic American soldiers who’ve structured their idle hours around the camp-follower culture because the rest of Korean society confronts them with shit like this. Ditto the Bangladeshi workers who sit behind sewing machines in dingy Korean sweatshops.
So what can they expect? Without some Korean blood and at least a Heisman to your name, it’s back to the barracks and the sewing machines with you. All of which suggests that the Hines Ward phenomenon, welcome as it may be, is something other than an attack of conscience, or consciousness.