Unseen: When Your Cultural Identity is Devalued, episode 4
www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
John Yoder: Hi everybody! John Yoder here, your host for Cross-Cultural Voices. Welcome back to the final episode of our series “Unseen: When Your Cultural Identity is Devalued”.
In this episode, you will hear the end of a Zoom conversation between Kenny Sok and Michelle Lee-Barnewall. Kenny Sok is a fictional character being read by Joshua Fisher, a student at the University of Northwestern. Michelle Lee-Barnewall is very real, and very much herself, roleplaying a conversation with the fictional character Kenny.
Last time Kenny asked Michelle some very practical questions about how to build cross-cultural friendships. Today he ends with some questions about oppression, privilege, microaggressions, and more.
If you like this series, you will probably also like our concurrent series, “Christian Compassion without Culture Wars”. In it, I interview African American, Mexican, Chinese, Indian American believers about practices to build healthy cross-cultural friendships, families and churches without chronic arguing about racism, DEI, CRT, and more.
The series that will begin next week is titled “Cross-Cultural Families”, and in it I interview diverse couples from a number of ethnic backgrounds that share the struggles of being married to somebody from a different culture, and parenting children who are bi-cultural.
All of our podcasts, their transcripts and blog summaries are found on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org. And now let's join Kenny and Michelle for the conclusion of their conversation.
Narrator: Kenny Sok was really enjoying his conversation with Michelle Lee-Barnewall. So far she had given him great answers about coming to peace with his Asian American identity, and about staying in awe of God in his daily life. Now he shifted to the other questions he had, which were about racial issues.
Kenny: You know, Michelle, I hear mixed messages about Asians and race. Some say that I'm a minority and that I should join other persons of color in opposing white privilege. Others say I’m one of the oppressors, because Asian Americans earn more than whites. And I hear all these new terms like yellow privilege, white adjacency, and brown complicity.
So one person tells me I'm the oppressor, and the other person tells me I'm the oppressed. I'm really confused! What am I supposed to do with all this?
Michelle: Well, Kenny, first of all, I would say that's very insightful that you noticed that. It is a bit of a dilemma.
I think it is important to notice that as we're talking about these things like oppression and privilege, how do we handle what seems to be contradictory? Just like you said, we are both oppressed and yet we seem to be part of the privileged group.
I think one of the things is to take a step back and to look at what is happening and how we are seeing things. Because on the one hand, I think there are some things behind this are very real. In my book, I talk about things that I experienced being Asian. So bad things happen, but how we look at the bad things, how we define the bad things, not just for ourselves, but for society as a whole becomes really important.
The fact that you've noted, we seem to have two contradictory ideas, I think is a little bit of an indication to us that maybe our way of looking at what is happening is not quite right. Maybe there's something that we need to kind of reexamine here.
Now, when we talk about a lot of this language of, “Asians are oppressed”, or “Asians are part of this privileged group”, we are looking at what's happening through the lens of power and privilege. This is the lens that we've been given from the world. “Who is in power? Who has privilege?” And when you look at it in this way, that's why Asians can sometimes seem to occupy both.
But one of the things I think we need to consider is, Do we really want to view the world exclusively through these lenses of power and privilege? Because we also have to take a look at, How does this impact me? And as a Christian, how does this impact my soul?
And what I found is when I focus on these ideas of power and privilege or things that have happened against me, it leads to certain things in my soul. Things like jealousy, envy, and resentment. And so when I look at this, I think, What is our goal? Our goal as Christians is not just for ourselves to be successful or to have certain things. Our goal as Christians is to be the body of Christ. It is to be unified. It is to be one. It is to learn to love one another.
Kenny: Yeah, I totally agree. When we focus on what other people have that we don’t, it’s just natural to be jealous. But Jesus calls us to rejoice when others have blessings that we don’t have. That’s what it means to love one another.
So is the solution to be colorblind? You know, some people say we should just ignore that ethnic differences exist at all, and we shouldn’t “see color”.
Michelle: Kenny, we don't want to turn a blind eye to things. As we said, we don't want to just say, Oh, everyone just needs to be colorblind and ignore things. But I think it is important to consider how these ideas make us look at one another.
When I think about this, does this make me feel resentful towards someone else? Does it turn me against someone else or does it move me towards people? Is the goal to get my share, or is the goal for the body of Christ to be united and to love one another? And so when I think about scripture, what scripture wants is reconciliation.
Scripture wants us to be able to understand that we are individuals, that we are different, that people do bad things to one another. But somehow in Christ, the answer is that we can be one and we can love one another. And I'm not sure that simply focusing on who's in power, who is oppressed, who is privileged is going to get us there.
I think scripture has another answer in terms of how we can be both different and be both one, even when there have been things that have happened in the past. If you look at Jews and Greeks, they hated one another. The Greeks oppressed the Jews. The Jews hated the Greeks.
And yet, God called them to be one, to live together and love one another in Christ. And so we have to ask, What does God want for us to be one, and how does the gospel help us achieve that?
Kenny: Yeah. I know God wants us all to be one. But not everybody wants that. You know, Michelle, when I go to Barnes and Noble, I see these books on the shelf. And it seems like they're always talking about nursing their grudges and constantly bringing up the wounds of the past. But Jesus says, if you from your heart don’t forgive your brother his trespasses, God won’t forgive you.
How do we approach all this talk about grievances? It almost seems mean to tell these folks they need to learn about forgiveness. But it seems like that’s exactly what they need to learn. When people start talking about all their grievances, I usually just shut up. What should I do?
Michelle: Well, thanks so much for that question, Kenny, and thanks so much for your honesty. I guess I'll say one of the things that I try to ask myself is what kind of a person do I want to be? As we're talking about the importance of Proverbs saying “protect your soul”. And I will say from personal experience, the more I ruminate over grievances, the more I feel like it unsettles my soul.
I don't like being a bitter person. I don't like the way it makes me feel. But I also realize that there can be confusion. On the one hand, people can say, “We shouldn't forget what happens, right”? Or, “Do we just kind of pretend it didn't happen”? But here's what I think.
I think when we focus on the idea of shalom, the idea of peace and wholeness and Jesus being our peace, I think that will enable us to be realistic about what has happened. Because again, we're not just saying we forget everything. I think we can be realistic about what has happened because we see maybe what needs to be done without bitterness.
And I think that becomes really important. I think what is important is for us to be realistic. Not just sort of pretending things don't happen. But I think if we come at it from believing “There is peace in my soul” and “My identity is in Jesus”, then I think I am in a better position to do something that is gospel-centered to help fix what is going wrong. When I act out of my grievances and I'm harboring bitterness, that makes me want to lash out at people. It makes me want to get revenge or hurt them. I must do something that is more Christ-centered rather than just centered out of my own hurt and my own woundedness.
I think it is important to us to not go on either extreme, not just to nurture our grievances and our grudges. Neither should we say, “Oh, you know, forget it. It's not that bad. You guys shouldn't make such a big deal out of it.”
We need to be realistic about things, but coming at it from a place where our souls are at peace and we are working out of where Jesus would have us, acting out of his spirit rather than out of my own woundedness.
Kenny: That makes a lot of sense. If we act out of anger at past offenses, we’ll just stay divided. But let me come back to my question about privilege.
You know, Michelle, my parents escaped the killing fields of Cambodia. They were boat people who came as refugees with nothing but the shirts on their backs. And they are so thrilled that a generation later, my sister has an MBA, I went to Stanford, I'm working in IT and I make good money. And some tell me that it's inappropriate that so many Asians work in Silicon Valley and make the kind of money I do.
They say I have too much privilege. But this last year I read Genesis. And I read the story where God called Abraham and gave him privilege he didn’t give anybody else. And then God gave Isaac privilege he didn't give Ishmael. And he gave Jacob privilege he didn't give Esau. And he gave Joseph privilege he didn't give his brothers.
And in every case, it led to competitiveness, it led to rivalry and anger. But God still gave some people privilege he didn't give others. And as I look at that, it says to me that it's okay for me that I am a person of wealth even if some others didn't have the advantages I did Is that a valid paradigm to see this whole thing?
Michelle: I think when you look at scripture, you're absolutely right. Things are not monolithic in scripture. The ideal is not necessarily that everyone becomes the same. What you do see in scripture is a principle of stewardship. What do people do with the resources, the talents, that they have been given? Behind the idea of stewardship is, Am I using these things for self or am I using them for God and others? Do I use them just to make myself feel good?
Am I like the rich man who builds his house and tries to store for the future? Or I am someone who freely gives to help others? I think it is what you do with what you have and also your motive for doing it. Where is your focus? What is your reason for doing it?
Kenny: Wow! Thanks Michelle, that’s really helpful. Knowing that really helps me come to peace with myself as a person who has a lot.
You know, sometimes it’s really hard to have these conversations. Some of my friends are very open and ready to talk. But there were some students at Stanford who thought they had the only right view about race. If I said anything that didn’t agree with them, I was handing them a microaggression.
Michelle: I would say even the use of the term microaggression. A microaggression might be seen as maybe asking that question, “Where are you from” ? This is a question that I said can be wounding to some. But the idea that it's an aggression is a bit of an inflammatory term. I don’t think asking that question is acting aggressively. It’s not intended to be harmful. If I ask a question and it turns out to be hurtful, but that wasn’t my intent, then I’m not being aggressive to that person.
Hearing that I gave someone a microaggression is going to put me on the defensive. Relationally, if we're going to try to work this out as a corporate body, we need to have an environment in which we can be honest in both directions without coming at it right out of the starting gate with language that puts people on the defensive.
In other words, you have to think about it corporately. That means creating a space where it will take some time and space to kind of untangle these things, to work things out, to process these things, rather than I think the model that happens today tends to be more prosecutorial.
I'm not sure that is the best model. For the church as the united body of Christ, one and yet many, is to be able to work out what the New Testament envisions: a community of intimate relationships where people are connected with one another.
Kenny: Wow! Michelle, that is so helpful. There are so many friends in the church that are ready to have open conversations. I guess I’ll just accept that not everyone is at that place, and they will only get along with others who agree with them.
Narrator: Kenny and Michelle continued their conversation a while longer, and ended on a positive note. Kenny was so grateful for their conversation. It helped him clarify some things that had been rattling around inside his head for a while.
Kenny realized he was part of a small minority group. Some people will find that interesting and want to know more. Most people won’t. And that’s OK. Kenny had better health, education, and income than many people. And he didn’t owe anyone an apology because of it.
Kenny found many people who were willing to engage in open conversation with him. But there were others who wouldn’t really have a conversation with anyone who didn’t share their views. Kenny wouldn’t be able to get close to them. And that’s OK.
Like many other young adults, Kenny was in the process of learning what it means a friend, a multicultural person, and a follower of Jesus. His conversation with Michelle was a big step forward in that process.
John Yoder: Friends, I hope that you learned a lot from this series, and I hope that you were encouraged and edified by it. Remember that our next series beginning next week is called “Cross-Cultural Families”, with interviews between husbands and wives of different cultural backgrounds, all available on our website www.CrossCulturalVoices.org.
