Day 304, January 13, 2020

 Learning What It Means to Be American

Tonight's soundtrack: The Art Blakey Group, France, 1972 (Jeremy Steig, George Cables, Stanley Clarke, Art Blakey, Tony Williams, Ray Mantilla, Buck Clarke)

In October of 1976, I was visiting Korea for the first time and I remember seeing a presidential debate on the black and white tv in my grandparent's house. I also remember seeing the image of President Ford disembarking off a plane. I don't recall if anyone else was watching with me, or why it was on, except that maybe it was one of the few programs where people were speaking in English, and so that might have eased my displacement. 

At the age of 5, that is my first memory of anything political. Much later, I learned that my grandfather had a deep connection to the politics and political upheaval of postwar Korea, or at the very least, he was a constant bystander. He witnessed and survived the arrival and deposition of several waves of attempts at democracy that floundered in greater or lesser degrees into the modern era. So, it is feasible that he was watching and listening and trying to discern Korea's fate at the hand of Ford or Carter's foreign policy. But what I remember is the grainy television, the airplane, like the one I had just flown in, and the realization that I had some distant connection to these people on the television that the other people in the household, aside from my mother, didn't have. Perhaps, that was the start of my national identity.

Understanding one's national identity was a complicated thing for a Korean kid growing up in America in the 1970s where the playground and bus stop taunts included a lot of go-back-where-you-came-from sentiments. So, it is interesting to think that maybe the first time I felt like an American was the first time I traveled back to where I came from. As a child, you just exist, you travel in the world as a passenger, and it is through this journey that the earliest seeds of identity are planted, in the lullabies your parents sing to you, in the stories they tell, the food you eat, and the languages you hear. And maybe, in the places you visit.

This same trip, this politically-awakened-self, was sent on an errand to buy some bread from a street vendor. After getting lost for a good part of the journey, I finally found the bread vendor selling from a cart. Of course, by that time I had forgotten the word for what I was supposed to buy, so I purchased whatever the bread lady suggested. Her son lingered near by, and somehow, in the universal language of children, we struck up a friendship, and over the course of the afternoon, became fast friends. Late in the day, we suddenly found ourselves outside the walls leading to my grandfather's house. I was ecstatic at accidentally finding my way home and beckoned him to follow me in. He was wary and hesitated. One of my aunties came out and was relieved to see me, but shouted at the other boy and chased him off telling me he was dirty, the same word we used for things not to pick up off the ground. I was indignant and felt like a great injustice had just occurred.

Later, that same trip. Deprived of my playmate, I befriended the watchdogs that were chained to the dog houses by the main house. They were supposedly fearsome creatures assigned the task of keeping the household safe. Again, using the language of children, I ingratiated myself with the pair of them, eventually getting invited to lie with them inside their doghouse. My auntie, probably the same one, discovered me there lying with the dogs, and was horrified for my safety. She dragged me out saying I was ruining the guard dogs.

Again, I felt that there was something unjust about the denial of a child's love for a pair of dogs. I felt there was something wrong about a society that could see an animal only one way, and that to do so, one must not pet, shower with affection, or sleep in the dog house of said animals.

I wonder if the roots of my contrary ways of thinking extend all the way back then. And yet, how did I, even then, have a sense of justice, right and wrong, and the strength of indignation to understand it and retain it. I can't remember if I expressed my indignations to my mother or kept them to myself. I think I kept a lot of things to myself as a child, but I was always observing, watching, and thinking about things.

I suppose, somewhere in those early years I learned enough from my parents to know something of those things. I don't think they had a parenting curriculum or book. I'll have to remember to ask them at our next family Zoom call where that came from.

It makes me wonder, for all the ideologues who suddenly find themselves pariahs for siding with white supremacists, a capitalist robber baron, and militia groups, what was different about their upbringing? What allowed them to follow ideas and words so unquestioningly? 

I am thankful to my parents for whatever it was that instilled that sense of identity at such an early age. That sense of moral direction. It has been a source of fortitude and stability all these years.

Take care and be well,

Leo

Chicken or dinosaur footprints?