Notes from Antho Class…

Why do I get self conscious when there are black people talking behind me? I’m being self conscious, that’s all. Besides, I haven’t said anything for them to talk about me yet, not like in my Hist 642 class. When I first went into the class, this black guy said, “I’m glad that there is another brother in the class.” Then a week later, I saw and heard him mumbling about me because I took the side of a white guy who got beat up by some black guys. “The editor of the student newspaper, The Gater, was physically attacked by several black students after he wrote an editorial opposing outside funding for the college’s “special programs,” which included those of the Black Student Union. The argument was about if the students who attacked the editor should have been suspended and reinstated back into the school. I argued that the students shouldn’t be allowed back to the school because they attacked another student. The black guy said that in this case the, black students were justified in their attack.
In another instance, cause I ignored some black guys soliciting outside the Student Center, I got called a Tom and a sellout. And stuff like this happens to me all the time, when I don’t side with other black students in a class.
Out of all the racial comments that I have received or had to endure, the cruelest ones, the ones that have hurt the most, have come from other black people. The first time I was called a nigger was from another black person. This is the main reason that I have ignored my black heritage and focus more on my Korean and Asian heritage.
But on the other side is that I feel like that I can’t be accepted in the Asian or Korean society. In my Korean American class, I had to prove myself to my other Korean classmates, including the ones that knew nothing about Korea, never been to Korea, or spoke the language.
Where do I belong on the racial scale? It’s a question that I, for the most part, try not to answer by not acknowledging it at all. But America is a land that still uses race to measure itself, and sometimes I can’t ignore the racial line.
**sigh** I’m just proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free….
Current mood: depressed
Current music: Jars Of Clay – Tea And Sympathy