My time in Madison winding to a close.
Whenever I’m walking around downtown these days, passing all the places I’ve frequented for so long, I can’t help but start feeling sentimental.
You could say it’s bittersweet, but I think it’s more on the bitter side… It’s like I’m saying goodbye to everything.
I’ve been here for over three and a half years now and it’s been quite the ride.
Good things come to an end though. And the time has come for me to prepare for the end of a chapter.
The subject of race has become a hot topic this week due to accusations that Rachel Dolezal, who stepped down as President of the NAACP, isn’t black.
Race isn’t a topic I chat about often, especially here in the Midwest, but here goes.
I owe it to my family and home environment that I didn’t really see race until I started school. Everyone was the same.
I remember the first time I felt racism. It was in elementary school. The kid who sat behind me tapped my shoulder, and used his pointer fingers to pull his eyes into slits. “I’m you!” he said.
“What?” I looked at him kind of befuddled, not really understanding. That’s not what I looked like. He had to explain to me that thin, slanted eyes was what all Asians had. Is that how I really look?
From that point on, I noticed it more and more: how I was different from the other kids, my skin color, my lunch, what my parents taught me.
We are not the same.
When I moved from one of the most diverse places in the country to prominently white middle America, I didn’t really know what to expect. Wisconsin has a lot of nice and hospitable people, probably the nicest I’ve ever met, and fortunately I don’t feel much discrimination.
But it can be the subtlest of things. I definitely notice when I’m the token Asian walking around.
I do participate in some self-deprecating racist humor from time to time, and sometimes I think that I’m sacrificing a little of my culture and upbringing in the process. Those Chinese stereotypes? A lot of those are important to me and who I am.
But sometimes, it’s easier to fit in, more comfortable to fit in… No one likes to say that, but it’s true.
Gives me some doubt to that age-old saying, “we’re all in this together.”
Sometimes, it feels like we’re not.
I feel like I’m in limbo.
I’ve been feeling this a lot lately.
Maybe it’s a little exaggerated because of the community of friends and people I know in Madison. Everyone seems to either be in a relationship/getting engaged and settling down or moving away.
It’s pretty crazy how many friends I know who have gotten engaged or bought a house recently.
And of those who haven’t, many seem like they are moving on.
I’m 25, almost 26 years old. It feels weird to be stumbling along through life without that rock or defined path.
It doesn’t make me jealous or sad or anything like that, but it gets me thinking…
I’m in transition with no end.
Watching the racially-fueled Baltimore riots earlier in the week, I couldn’t help but think how senseless and stupid all of the violence was.
The looting and burning doesn’t help. It just hurts the lives of innocents and sabotages the community you live in.
Stepping back though, it was a tough situation.
It’s easy to stick our noses up and criticize. It’s harder to try to empathize and understand.
There’s been times in my past where I’ve experienced discrimination and injustice. It felt awful and took some self-restraint to not punch something or someone.
But I can’t even imagine how much I’d have to be pushed down to resort to looting and setting a car on fire. And obviously, at least some of those who rioted reached that point.
That’s not to say that we should remove all blame, as I still believe what happened at the riots was wrong.
We should be building, not destroying.