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growing up my brother and I loved
reading the comics and every day we'd race
to get the newspaper.
but on one snowy winter morning when I was 10
years old
I saw something outside that left me
speechless.
as my brother and I opened the front door there
in front of us
was a burnt blackened cross stuck in the
white snow.
at 10 I'd experienced plenty of racial teasing,
people pulling their eyes back,
speaking in fake accents, calling me names…
but this time it was different I knew that
a burnt cross meant
something more but as Asian Americans I
never thought it would happen to me
and my family.
what
I now know is that we experienced racial trauma the psychological and
physical stress that follows experiences of
discrimination and racism.
how families respond to racial trauma is
critically important not only to their health
and well-being
but also to how we can address racism.
In our
communities and in our nation
but in the winter of my family did
not know how to respond
When people experience discrimination
and racism many of us are taught at a
young age to be silent we're
taught to ignore or excuse the behavior.
but these are not effective coping or parenting
strategies.
silence is not the answer.
I know this because for the past years I've
researched how minoritized
Youth and families are affected by and Respond
to racial trauma.
From these studies I've learned that parents
and children often struggle to
address these issues.
For instance in a study of white adoptive
parents raising korean-american
Children we found that four out of five
families could not have constructive
conversations about racial and ethnic differences
in their families.
In another study of Asian American parents,
two out of three parents
we're not able to have conversations about
racism with their children too often.
Families intentionally are not silence
these conversations
and this was true in our family as well.
When my brother and I saw the burnt cross
in the yard we went and told Our
Father who was getting ready for work what
I remember is that he went outside
pulled up the cross broke up the wood and
put it in the garage.
He
never said anything about it except something like stupid people.
no one in our family ever talked about that
event again.
It was the loudest silence in my life.
This is how racial trauma often plays out
we stay silent.
but racial trauma gets imprinted on us manifesting
as physical and mental
health problems throughout our lives.
It affects not only our well-being but also
our relationships and the life
choices that we make.
For me I started to believe that my memory
was a dream
I started to doubt my memory, no one was
there to validate my
experiences or help me make sense out of them
but people will try to make sense out of
their traumatic experiences for some it'll
lead them to identify
more strongly with their racial and ethnic
groups and for others
it'll lead them away.
and this is what happened to my brother
and me we took different paths in life
in high school I struggled with feeling
racially different from my peers and
over time I started to Rebel at home and
at school.
eventually it led to the point where I was
asked not to return to my high
school. but over the next few years, I found
people in my life who helped me
develop racial awareness and pride and a
sense of belonging as an Asian American.
my brother by
contrast worked hard to assimilate into whiteness
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and he never
talked about race and distanced himself from our family and
the Asian American
community
he also struggled
with depression and later in life attempted suicide After
High School
Looking Back Now I
can see how racial trauma and the silence that followed
almost killed him.
and we now know from Decades of research that
racism when it's not directly
addressed can shorten our
lifespans including by Suicide.
but why is it so hard for families regardless
of race to talk about these
things part of the problem is that we don't
have what psychologists call racial
literacy or a way to talk about racism.
Without
racial literacy parents often feel uncomfortable talking about these
Issues and over time parents and children
learn to avoid bringing up these topics.
Another part of the problem is that parents
overestimate how much and how
Well they talk about these issues with
their children
but our research has found that children
actually want to have more of these
conversations with their parents.
What we need is radical
change.
We need to share our stories and experiences
and learn from them.
My brother and I didn't talk about that burnt
cross for more than 30 years.
and then one evening as we were sitting in
my Minneapolis backyard
I asked him if he remembered that snowy
winter morning.
Of course he replied and vividly shared the
exact same memories
0
except he remembered our father saying “bad
people, bad people”.
I told him I had started to believe it was
a dream that I had made it up.
and it took over 30 years before my memory
was validated.
for the silence to be broken and for the healing
to begin
so how do we develop racial
literacy and
constructively engage in
these conversations ?
When parents hear inappropriate comments or
see racist behaviors
they need to break
the silence talking about racism
demystifies it.
It makes it less something to fear and more something that we can address
and there's never a perfect time
0
it needs to just be part of
our daily conversation
not only when bad things happen.
Parents also ask me what to say to their children
and I tell them
start by using words that your children understand.
but also introduce them to new words expand
their vocabulary
and share your own struggles and confusions
even if you stumble with your words it's
better to try a hundred times and get it right
once
than to never try and stay silent
your children will remember that one time you
got it right.
and over time those conversations add up.
We found in a study that youth whose
parents took the time
during adolescence to prepare their children
for discrimination
and racism reported fewer mental health
problems.
When they encountered discrimination as
young adults talking with your child about
racism
when they're or helps
when they encounter it at or .
what we do and say now makes a
difference years later
when parents don't create space for
racial conversations children then are
left on their own to make sense out of
it all
and by adolescence many
realize it this is not something their
parents can handle
and so they simply stop bringing up the
issue
but parents ironically are often waiting
for their children to bring up the issue
first
amplifying the silence comes at the
expense
of our health and wellness
looking back in my life
I now know that my parents didn't
realize the racial trauma we had
experienced they didn't realize
how the loud silence left us confused
and Unsure how to respond
and this is not an uncommon situation
especially for immigrant families
but we can and know how to do better
we just need to be motivated to make
change.
we
need to find a compelling reason to change.
in my journey toward radical change began
over years ago.
a mentor explained to me why my parents
remain silent and what that silence meant.
he shared that my
parents generation boiled inside with anger and frustration
because they
experienced discrimination on a daily basis
but they couldn't fight back. they stayed
silent, they put their heads
down and they worked hard.
They toiled in the fields in factory
Jobs, in restaurants, in the back rooms of offices.
In deed I rarely if ever heard my parents complain.
then
he shared he said but your generation this generation has
The King's English on your tongue.
your parents didn't sacrifice and endure just
so you can be successful
but so that you could fight for them, and
yourselves, speak for them.
That conversation changed how I understood
my parents
and their experiences with racism.
when my father said to my brother and me
“bad people”,
he was quietly expressing his hurt, his
rage, his helplessness.
and in his own way he was trying to have a
conversation with us.
but none of us had the racial literacy to
make sense of it all
even though it took my brother and me
more than 30 years to have our conversation.
that conversation has drawn our life paths
closer together.
now in our 50s we collaborate on a daily comic
strip the other ones by Lee
and using our childhood love of comics
we give voice to the experiences of kids of
color
using The King's English to speak for families
like our own
and it's our hope that our comic will
help parents and children develop racial literacy
because we need open and honest
conversations so that we can heal from racial
trauma.
you see racism wants to break us down
so we can't heal
but healing in the midst of racism is
the most radical thing ever
[Applause]
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