Ethnicity

Over lunch, while our son was out, my hubby, who is of mixed ethnicity shared that he is delayering the next level of feelings he has around having experienced a consistent and painful unbelonging around Korean people. It’s something he has largely integrated, but was revisting at a deeper level.

My take is that different people groups have different stories that lead them to feel the need to be insular, often ones that are outdated or have some element of truth to them that then gets distorted. It is also hard for people to deal with a situation of “You’re not a this or a that.” It’s somewhat instinctual for people who are relating in a survival based way to feel a strong need to categorize so they may feel the certainty that comes with knowing how to fit you into a comfortable box that has specific protocols that are epigenetic, cultural and socially programmed for how to treat you based on your demographics. After reassuring my husband that I adore every lineage that makes him up and it would feel all wrong to me if he was missing any of them - I encouraged him to find a Korean person with high vibes and ask them what are the stories in their culture that might tend for them to feel that he isn’t a member of their tribe if he isn’t all the way Korean or only Korean.

At dinner stereotypes came up. I think we were talking about names because I came across someone who has the same name as this guy who was a friend of mine in New Jersey. I was thinking of that old friend (haven’t been in touch since we moved - I gave him some books, he said he doesn’t like goodbyes and we never talked again,) because we had in common a supervisor for our Clinical Pastoral Education. I thought about him this week because I was thinking about Jung - and I had shared with my son that, like Jung, my supervisor was both brilliant and a bit of a dick. I think I understand more on a deeper level now though, both Jung and Cholke. Cholke, the supervisor, was always scheduling lunch with me and then blowing me off. The last time I arranged childcare and drove all the way to Camden to the hospital after I’d completed my program just to have lunch - only to have him blow me off at the last minute. Later, without rescheduling, he told me, “If I had more more, we’d be friends.” Shortly thereafter, he died. Did he know, unconsciously, anyway? Was he saving me pain?

Chuck - who actually showed up to have lunch - well coffee, actually, with me once a week when I lived in Jersey had a totally different relationship with that supervisor and had only glowing things to say about him. His relationship with him was only positive, and when Cholke died, Chuck grieved hard. I was pissed. Like, “Really, after blowing me off, three months went by, you never rescheduled and then you died?” Later I realized maybe he was sparing me. That keeping his distance was compassionate.

When I mentioned the other person I came across with the same first and last name, my beloved observed, “Well multiple people do have the same name.” It’s one of the few things he has in common with my dad, only his is a much gentler version of bemused and intentional stating of the obvious. I joked that yeah a lot of people are named Jemila Kwon - the name I bore after I got married the second time, before I legally changed my name to the one I have now. In contrast, my husband pointed out that Alicia Kwon is fairly common. I agreed, chuckling as I recalled that if I look my name my own identity pops up along with a Korean chic with an insta account smiles fashionably beside my pics, along with an older East Asian woman who has recently transitioned to the next realm. Then, if you scroll, you get alot of Alicia Kwons who do various successful things in healthcare and admin and science and education and other fields. I said, “Exactly what you would expect from a Korean woman named Alicia Kwon.”

He chuckled, noting the professions that most people with his name have when he searched his name. There is one guy with his name who has a blog that just says, “I’m not this guy, this guy or this guy…I’m just a guy who…blah blah blah.”

Alicia Kwon really works for me although I don’t fit any of the stereotypes for it. It is the name my soul wanted. The founder of my Sufi heritage had the last name Khan. And y’all know I love Kwan Yin. And I chose a husband with the last name Kwon, and although he would have been willing to take my maiden name (not my ex’s, understandably,) I was a hell no on going back to my maiden name. My maiden name just sounds weird. My dad’s side of the family were trying to avoid persecution and they changed it from Mermelstein to Mermey to sound more French. Although my experience as a teenager was that Jewish people generally welcomed me and were happy to know me and count me as Jewish enough for the welcome wagon, my views on the humanity of all and my sense of the history of Zionism along with recent history in that region, in the current milieu would most likely have me labeled a self-hating Jew or not a Jew at all were I to be openly expressive, as I tend to be, which ironically is a Jewish stereotype that I happen to embody.

Stereotypes often have something to them, but that doesn’t mean its okay to assume or to force people into them if they don’t fit. And if it’s a negative stereotype, it’s good ask questions like, ‘Well how did it get to be that way?” For example, how did Black Reconstruction get quashed? What influence or influences may have led to dependency and addiction in black urban communities? Who or what interests benefit from keeping certain populations in certain roles? If it’s a positive stereotype, it also is helpful to ask, “At what cost?” as in many societies/cultures that prize achievement and/or conformity, there can be higher suicide rates that accompany the pressures.

My son pointed out that stereotypes are really interesting and that when ever he notices he has one, he enjoys busting it. I asked what stereotypes he feels he has and he mentioned that he tends to associate deeper voices with people of color. I thought about it and brought up an example of a friend I had in Portland who was a lovely multiracial - or black if you’re going with if you’re part black you’re all black - gay guy with a fairly high pitched voice. Likewise, I observed I have a similar, low key in general association of deeper voices with black men. I thought of my husband’s med school friend who also was my friend when he had the time to have lunch with both of us - Tony Brown. Tony had a melodic, wonderful voice and a beautiful heart. Like my husband, he was a non-traditional student, meaning he did other things before going to med school and was a much more well rounded person than the typical person who goes straight from college, probably having been tracked from birth or slightly thereafter, with a few people deciding after a mission trip or a personal event.

Tony Brown gave my husband and me one of the best pieces of advice we have ever received:

Other people’s opinion of you is none of your business.

I came across the teaching again the other day in a class and thought of Tony, who mysteriously disappeared off the radar, never to be heard from again by any of his colleagues and friends from med school. When he disappeared, my husband and I, along with another of my husband’s classmates tried to contact him, to no avail.

When we knew Tony, he was one of those who is one of those fascinating people who, although fully black was considered an oreo cookie by his own community - ie white on the inside, black on the outside - for being too successful, yet experienced profound racism in medical school by the administration who, according to his own telling screwed him over when he was originally going for an MD/Phd. I preferred hanging out with Tony to any of my husband’s other med school classmates, most of whom I wouldn’t want to have lunch with or have as my physician. Tony I would have trusted with my life as well as with my ideas. It’s interesting that I have a stereotype that he fits - and for me, it isn’t a bad thing; it’s a lovely thing, but one that isn’t true of all people who resemble him physically. I just hope wherever Tony he is, and whatever he is doing, that he is well.