An Ethnic Trump - ethnic cultural education - Brief Article

In this column, which takes an intimate look at diverse cultures, the Chinese-American mother of a biracial child recognizes the need to teach her son that he is a child of color in a world that sees race before all else

THAT MY SON, LUKE, AGE 4, goes to Chinese-culture school seems inevitable to most people, even though his father is of Irish descent. In America, certain ethnicities are seen as more ethnic than others: Chinese, for example, trumps Irish. This has something to do with the relative distance of certain cultures from mainstream America, but it also has to do with race. As we all know, it is not only certain ethnicities that trump others but certain co]ors: Black trumps White, for example, always and forever; a mulatto is not a kind of White person, but a kind of Black person.

And so it is, too, that my son is considered a kind of Asian person, whose destiny is to embrace Asian things: the Chinese language, Chinese food, Chinese New Year. No one cares whether he speaks Gaelic or wears green on St. Patrick's Day, for though Luke's skin is fair and his features mixed, people see his straight black hair and know who he is.

But is this how we should define ourselves, by other people's perceptions? My husband, Dave, and I had originally hoped for Luke to grow up embracing his whole complex heritage. We had hoped to pass on to him values and habits of mind that had survived in both of us.

Then one day Luke combed his black hair and said he was turning it yellow. Another day, a mother I knew said her son had invited all blond-haired children like himself to his birthday party. And yet another day, Luke was happily scooting around the Cambridge Common playground when a pair of older boys, apparently brothers, blocked his way. "You're Chinese!" they shouted, leaning on the hood of Luke's scooter car. "You are! You're Chinese!" Even when I intervened, they kept shouting. Luke answered, "No, I'm not!" to no avail; the boys didn't seem to hear him. Then the boys' mother called to them from some distance away, and though her voice was no louder than Luke's, they left obediently.

Behind them opened a great, rippling quiet, like the wash of a battleship. Luke and I immediately went over things he could say if anything like that happened again. I told him he was 100-percent American, even though I knew from my own childhood in Yonkers, New York, that these words would be met only with derision. It was a sorry chore, Since then I have not asked him about the incident, hoping that he has forgotten about it, and wishing I could, too. I wish I could forget the sight of those kids' fingers on the hood of Luke's little car. I wish I could forget their loud attack, but also Luke's soft defense: "No, I'm not!"

Chinese school. After dozens of phone calls, I was elated to discover the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association in nearby West Newton, Massachusetts. The school takes children at 3, has a wonderful sense of community and is housed in a center paid for, in part, by karaoke fund-raising events. (Never mind what the Japanese meant to the Chinese in the old world. In this world, people donate $200 apiece for a chance at the mike, and the singing goes on all night.) At the school, there are even vendors who bring home-style Chinese food to sell after class, stuff you can't get in a restaurant. Dave and I couldn't wait for Luke's second class and a chance to buy more bao for our freezer.

But in the car on the way to the class, Luke announced that he didn't want to go to Chinese school anymore. He said the teacher talked mostly about ducks and bears, and he wasn't interested in ducks and bears. I knew this was true. Luke was interested only in whales and ships. What's more, I knew we wouldn't push him to take swimming lessons if he didn't want to, or music. Chinese school was a wonderful thing, but weren't we making it somehow nonoptional? Was that right? Hadn't we always said that we didn't want our son to see himself as more Chinese than Irish?

Yet we didn't want to deny his Chinese heritage, either. And if there were going to be incidents on the playground, we wanted him to at least know what Chinese meant. So when Luke said again that he didn't want to go to Chinese school, ! said, "Oh, really?" Later on we could try to teach him to define himself irrespective of race. For now, he was going to Chinese school. I exchanged glances with Dave. And then together, in a most casual manner, we squinted at the road and kept going.

Gish Jen is the author of Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land. Her newest book, Who's Irish?, will be published by Knopf this month.