Internalized Racism: Can we talk about it?

Two weeks ago, I sent out a newsletter pointing to a topic that has come up for me a lot lately -- Racism -- and I know I’m not the only one banging my head against this rock.  It’s a topic that fundamentally determines how we treat each other in this lifetime and whether we choose to walk forward in love or hate, and the fight is too big to ignore.  In the 10 days following the election of Trump, the Southern Poverty Law Center tallied 867 hate incidents across the country, and all but 23 of them were carried out in support of the new president-elect.  It appears that the dark side of white privilege has been given license to rage, bleeding out of the shadows and into the blinding light.

If you’re a minority like me (I’m of 100% Chinese descent), we really have two choices.  We either give our power to the white people, or we claim the power that is our human birthright (and only then can we stand tall for ALL of our non-white brothers and sisters).  The choice seems simple -- I’ll take my power, thank you very much; but if you’re a minority who grew up in America where the white population was clearly dominant, and you didn’t have the tools to adequately cope with and respond to the racism that you inevitably experienced, then it’s a trickier choice than it seems.  

Of course we want to stand in our power.  But we gave it away a long time ago.  ​

I remember very little from my childhood, and I think it’s because I was in a constant state of trauma because I didn’t belong.  Here are a few things I do remember:

• The older boy next door, Jay Hakim, who always called me Chink and told me to go back to China.  Once he kicked me out of his house when I was playing with his little sister, and I was never invited back.  I remember his angry, arrogant grip on my arm.  
• The little boy I was friends with in Kindergarten, Brent Yen.  But when we got to first grade, a classmate made a comment about how cute we were playing together, me and the Chinese boy, and I immediately cut our friendship because I did not want to be seen as Chinese.  My survival strategy was set by the age of 6 -- belong with the white people.  Separate from the non-whites.
• In grade school my best friends would sing and chant the lines, “My mom’s Chinese, my dad’s Japanese, I’m a mixed up kid!” while moving the sides of their eyes up and down to mimic slanted Asian eyes.  And then they’d make me do it.  I would, and I’d laugh with them, a willing prop, playing along while silently dying on the inside.  
• Walking down the halls at school, with sounds of mimicked Chinese coming at me.  If possible, I would pretend not to hear.  Sometimes it was directed so forcefully that I could only lower my head and try to disappear as the other kids laughed and watched.  The humiliation was fierce.

Incidents like these began early on, and although they were fairly minor, they scarred me deeply.  But I never told anyone.  I was too ashamed, too embarrassed.  I felt weak because I was being picked on, and I felt powerless to fight back, and I felt shame towards my parents.  Logically, they would have been the ones I confided in, but in my mind they were the reason I was being tormented.  I was, in fact, angry at them for having me.  I wanted white parents.  They were the reason why I wasn’t white.  So I began to separate from them, too.

This is how it started for me.  Kids being kids, and me wanting so badly to belong, that I surrendered all sense of self to become what society asked of me -- culturally White, submissive, and complicit in the oppression of myself and others.

First, there was self-hatred.  Then, there was hatred of my family.  Then, there was hatred of all Chinese people.  And all through junior high, high school and college, I ran and I denied.  I refused to be Chinese.  I refused to speak it, to eat it, to accept it, to befriend it.  (Ok, not entirely true -- I did have some Chinese friends from the Chinese church we were forced to attend, but that was a safe non-white bubble where such expression felt safe.)  

My friends by choice were White, and if I happened to become friends with a non-White, it was purely circumstantial.  I simply wasn’t comfortable around people of color because they reminded me of our collective inferiority, and that, to me, was even more embarrassing in numbers.  

At school, kids called me a Twinkie -- white on the inside, and yellow on the outside.  By definition, this is considered a racial slur, though personally I found it satisfying.  I wanted to be White, and it was as close as I was going to get.  And whenever someone commented that I looked mixed-race, I delighted in it.  “No, I’m 100%,” I would say, proud to appear otherwise.   

I, of course, went on to have a mixed-race child.  I needed to dilute my race for future generations to feel less alien and foreign in a place that was supposed to feel like home.  In my perfect world, race would no longer be distinguishable.  

All of this has a name, and it’s called Internalized Racism, or Internalized Racial Oppression.  Karen D. Pyke, a Sociology Professor at the University of California Riverside who is one of a handful of people tackling this discussion via her academic paper “What Is Internalized Racial Oppression And Why Don’t We Study It?” defines it as:
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• “… the individual inculcation of the racist stereotypes, values, images, and ideologies perpetuated by the White dominant society about one’s racial group, leading to feelings of self-doubt, disgust, and disrespect for one’s race and/or oneself.”

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Donna K. Bivens, an education consultant fighting for social justice at Union of Minority Neighborhoods in Boston says:
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•  “As people of color are victimized by racism, we internalize it.  That is, we develop ideas, beliefs, actions and behaviors that support or collude with racism.  [...] just as there is a system in place that reinforces the power and expands the privilege of white people, there is a system in place that actively discourages and undermines the power of people and communities of color and mires us in our own oppression.”

And in “Internalized Oppression and the Culture of Silence”, Professor Keith Osajima at the University of Redlands discusses the impact of internalized racism on the attitudes and actions of the oppressed:

• “First, it hinders one’s ability to think and reflect.  Second, oppressed people come to believe that the source of their problems lies, not in the relations within society, but in themselves, in their own inadequacies and inabilities.  Third, the feelings of inferiority, of uncertainty about one’s identity, lead oppressed people to believe that the solution to their problem is to become like or be accepted by those in the dominant group.  They live in what [Paulo] Friere calls a “culture of silence”, where the oppressed believe and feel that they do not have a voice in determining the conditions of their world.  The important outcome is that internalized oppression makes it difficult for the oppressed to take action to transform their world.  It serves to perpetuate oppression, without necessarily resorting to overt forms of violence and force.  The oppressed become unwitting participants in their own oppression.”

When I read these articles, I feel a sense of validation both in terms of my own experience, and in the shared experience of other minorities.  My story isn’t just my story.  This isn’t a singular experience of a girl who was too weak and too introverted and too easily influenced to fight back.  This is widespread, and it is systemic.  Internalized racism is how we give our power to the White race, how we reproduce racism in our communities, and how we will continue the cycle of oppression until we learn how to acknowledge and heal the suffering we have been inflicting upon ourselves.

So why aren’t more people talking about this?  First of all, racism is hard to talk about, especially when you’re the victim, and especially when you’re the perpetrator (and those experiencing internalized racism are both).  In addition, most of us don’t choose to willingly dive into the shame and pain of our deepest wounds.  Healing this is not simple, and there is no magic pill.  It is a journey of introspection, vulnerability, honesty, compassion, and courage.  It is the dismantling of an identity that has been constructed over a lifetime.  Not everyone knows how to go there.  Not everyone wants to.  

Secondly, I don’t think everyone who is a victim of internalized racism realizes it.  I personally did not come to acknowledge that I’d grown up with such deep hatred of my race until I was in my thirties.  Racism was a program that I’d downloaded well before I knew how to think critically about the world, and it was the operating system upon which all of my beliefs about self and other were based.  I could not see the distorted lens with which I was viewing the world, because it was the only lens I’d ever used to see.

And even when I did acknowledge it, though fascinated by the mind’s ability to repress and knowing that my identity was tangled up in a painful past, I didn’t realize that it was something I needed to address in the present day for everyone’s sake.  Intellectually, I no longer felt inferior in my environment (moving from Illinois to California played a large part in that due to the Asian population, as did age and maturity), I no longer (consciously) chose friendships based on color, and race as a topic had descended into the background of my awareness.  I thought everything had turned out fine.  I’d moved on, and I’d survived. 
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​It wasn’t until this year, this moment, with our country in a state of mass confusion around whether to love or hate our fellow neighbors, that I finally acknowledged the power of my story:  Internalized racism is my deepest wound, and it is the basis for all of the suffering in my life.  I heal this, and I heal myself.  I heal myself, and I can heal the world.  

In other words, if I want to change racism, I must first change myself.  Pyke states that “Every instance of internalized racism among the racially subordinated contributes to the psychic, material, and cultural power and privilege of White folks.”  

By not addressing the racism within myself, I perpetuate racism in the world.  By not being in full integrity with what I ask of others, I collude and conspire to keep racism alive.

So I sit here, wondering -- what percentage of minorities in America suffer from Internalized Racism?  How many of us are out there, claiming solidarity with the oppressed and their rights to equality, while our deepest selves are wounded by the racism we internalized long ago, while we unknowingly, unconsciously, perpetuate the very racism we wish to eradicate?  How can we free ourselves from this prison of Internalized Racism so that we can fully participate in a world that needs us now, more than ever, to be whole?

I’ll leave you with these questions while I too, go searching for answers.  From the writing of Haruki Murakami:  “Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional."