Asians in San Francisco: Teaching Race in a French Classroom
I teach in a middle school in a tiny French village. My job is to bring Anglophone culture to the classroom and teach them about the world outside of France. I was recently teaching one of my classes about American cities and I showed them the following video about San Francisco. This was meant to create a discussion about travelling to the States, but a discussion about race in America ensued instead.
I was expecting them to react to the food they saw, the different landscapes, the Golden Gate bridge-- which they did, but I was not expecting: It looks cool, but there's too many Chinese people.
Hold on, what?
Pause. Deep breath. What do you mean, too many Chinese people?
Well, it's the United States, it doesn't make sense for there to be that many Chinese people.
Let's focus on this statement: It's the United States, so it doesn't make sense.
These children have never visited the United States. All of their interaction with North American culture relies on me and American movies and TV. Whatever they see in their favourite TV shows or movies and whatever they see from my life is how they imagine our society. I am white, so I am already fulfilling their stereotype of people coming from Canada/US being mostly white. I cannot change that, but I can try to change their perception and show them that I am just a small fraction of what our society has to offer. Like many Canadians, I do not consider myself to be just Canadian. I am a Polish person who grew up in Canada. That in itself, not being Canadian first, makes me feel Canadian. My students cannot grasp that concept, but frankly neither can most adults.
My boyfriend and I both come from families who immigrated to Canada: mine from Poland and his from Indonesia. We were both born in Canada, we both grew up as Canadians with different cultural backgrounds and we were both shaped by our multicultural society. But when I go abroad, I am no longer the face of Canadian multiculturalism. I am seen as Canadian but without my Polish heritage. To others, I represent poutine, hockey and maple syrup, when in reality I feel better represented by Pierogi, singing Sto Lat¹ for everything and Smigus Dyngus². While everyone assumes everything that is Canadian about me, everyone assumes the opposite of my boyfriend. Where do you come from? But no, where are you from from? What languages do you speak? Did you immigrate? Tell me more about your traditions? By having a visibly different cultural background, which is often seen as a part of the Canadian identity, they no longer see him as Canadian. Of course they would assume his otherness, he is visibly Asian and as we have just learned from my French students, having Asians in North America just doesn't make sense.
Now, lets go back to the media. I could throw some statistics at you to show you how invisible Asians are on TV and in movies, but if you've ever turned on a TV, you already know that. You'll hurt your brain by trying to find enough Asian actor leads to count on both hands. About 5% of the American population is Asian; 13% in Canada, but you would never know that from watching American movies.
Some people argue that statistically speaking, there is equal representation for Asian actors in Hollywood. They make up approximately 4.6% of Hollywood roles, just like their portion of the population. That is extremely flawed thinking. It'd be like making a recipe that requires 1 egg in a cake, but instead of adding it into the delicious, sweet mixture, you put it on top of the cake after already baking it. Now you have a cake with technically all the ingredients, but the egg is not part of the main substance like it should be, and the token egg on top only gets to show its outer shell.
Equal representation would be if 4.6% of leads were Asian, leading complex lives and telling complex stories just like that part of the population does on an everyday basis. Having 4.6% in background roles, portraying stereotypes and barely speaking is not the role these individuals play in our society. But if people from outside our society only see that, you can't be surprised by them not being able to imagine otherwise.
Undoing the damage done by our media is incredibly hard for me at work. I am constantly faced by casual racism from the students and I have to constantly imagine ways to show them how proud we should be of multiculturalism and how hurtful and harmful their comments can be. I make a conscious effort to create English characters who come from various races and cultural backgrounds and to play them YouTube videos that correctly represent our society. Sometimes, even when I am race neutral, the students will pull something like this:
Miss, why is the stick figure black?
What do you mean? It's a stick figure drawing...
But, shouldn't the stick figure be white? White figure and black background?
This is the stick figure in question
Excuse me but, what the fuck? The casualness of the comment struck a chord with me. There was no meanness behind it or racial hate, just the naive understanding that white is the default. They have black students in their class, who thankfully weren't there, but I was shocked that they thought that this could be an okay opinion to have. I quickly said, well, this stick figure is black just like there are people who are black, I see no reason for why it should be the other way around. The students just shrugged their shoulders and nodded their heads, and just as casually accepted my answer as a very reasonable response to their very unreasonable concern.
I don't have a solution to this problem, but I do take every one of these moments one step at a time. Very often, the answer is right before their eyes but they've never been spoken to in a way that would allow them to consider it.
Have you ever been to San Francisco? No. So how would you know if it's not normal for Asians to be there? I don't know. Are there Asian people who live there? Yes, it's a very multicultural city. Oh, that's different, I didn't know.
Unfortunately, I cannot be there for every one of their racial blunders. I cannot be there to explain every consequence of their words or their actions. It would be incredibly helpful if the media they consumed on an everyday basis taught them in those moments when I'm not there to do so. If it normalized a black stick figure, if it made an Asian character more than just an Asian character, if it showed a TV show with two Indian leads without it being an big deal. Diversity in the media is a real issue and I've always considered how it harms our own society. However, my experience in France has shown me how flawed of a picture it paints of North American society for those who have nothing but that picture. I hope that one day, there will be no need for me to colour in those pictures for my students, the pages will already be printed in colour.
¹ A song that means "100 years" and is sung for birthdays, holidays, celebrations, name days etc. It gets awkward though it it's someone's 100th birthday...
² Easter Monday; spraying each other with water first thing in the morning. See: Anderson Cooper