Marching alongside thousands of masked protesters, I couldn’t help but note the irony in that the goal of protests was to unmask racism.
We’ve learned in the past few months that COVID-19 is such a formidable threat precisely because it is so efficiently spread through asymptomatic hosts. Similarly, racism under the cover of plausible deniability makes it that much more difficult to definitively identify and eradicate. What does it take for any person to admit that he is a racist when he compares himself to the obvious culprits from the antebellum South or Jim Crow America? How many people today will honestly see themselves as perpetrators of racial injustice?
So racism, like COVID-19, must be identified and diagnosed before it can be treated and traced. An unmasking must take place. It’s easier and more convenient to diagnose it in unjust systems — out there. It’s much more painful to pinpoint it in one’s own heart and worldview. But racism will never be rooted out and dealt with on a systemic level until it is first confessed and lamented on a personal level. It has to begin with me — and that’s exactly why this past week has been so personally jarring. God has been unmasking me, revealing to me a lifetime of deep-seated sin and resentment that I never knew or admitted was there.
The rallying cry of the current movement is “Black Lives Matter!” and it’s evident from recent and not-so-recent events that black lives don’t matter on a national or societal stratum — but do black lives really matter to me? From a theoretical or theological perspective — of course. I know that all mankind is created in God’s image and has inherent value, dignity, and worth. But if I’m honest, black lives had not mattered to me. There are many episodes in my life that highlight why, but I want to share just a few of them with you now.
“I don’t matter to them”
During my early childhood years, I was one of the only Asian kids in a predominantly brown community with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans as neighbors. Everywhere I went I would hear, “Chino!” As a four-year-old kid, I thought that “chino” was Spanish for “Gene.” When I asked my mom how everyone knew my name, she said that they were just teasing me. That was one of my earliest memories of shame and anger.
Things were compounded in the next few years when I began to be bullied. When my bike got stolen my mom told me that I should never play with Hispanic or black kids again. We promptly moved to a town that was 40% Korean.
When I was 11 years old, I vividly remember watching the news with my parents as riots raged in Los Angeles. My parents had close friends in Koreatown whose businesses were targeted and looted.
I asked my dad why the rioters were attacking Korean businesses when they were upset about the white officers who beat Rodney King. His answer was, “Because they’re bad people.” We watched on the news as Korean store owners armed themselves to defend their businesses.
My parents owned a women’s clothing store at Columbus Circle, so my next question to my dad was, “If they start rioting in New York, will you get a gun and shoot them?” He answered immediately without hesitation, “Of course.” That terrified me. I desperately prayed to God that night to protect my parents from the bad black people.
In high school and college, I dived headfirst into black culture. My friends and I mourned the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, and we idolized Wu-Tang and Gang Starr. We sagged our Karl Kani jeans and rocked Timberlands. I even waited for four hours in line outside of the Virgin Megastore in Union Square to meet Ghostface Killah and get his new album signed. But when it was my turn to meet him, he rolled his eyes and refused to take a picture with me. I was embarrassed, hurt, and angry. How could someone who got famous rapping about kung fu and Shaolin just summarily dismiss an Asian fan?
As an American History major at Columbia, I took a senior seminar called “Race and Color in America.” My professor and all of my classmates were black except for one White girl. In the entire semester, there was not a single reading or discussion about Asian Americans. When I asked my professor why, he couldn’t give me a clear answer. But it was clear to me. What I heard from him, and from all of these episodes in my life was, “I don’t matter to them.”
None of these memories are ones that I dwelled upon or really thought twice about. But I now realize that they have been instrumental in shaping my view of the black community. I have made numerous black friends over the years, and I never consciously resented or thought less of any of them as individuals. But the latent racism was there and would periodically bubble to the surface.
Like how I overreacted watching Chris Rock host the Oscars condemning Hollywood for its lack of diversity as Asians were represented only as the punchline of a joke. Or how I engaged in less-than-charitable conversations online when the media denounced the dearth of black students at Stuyvesant without mentioning the Asian students who comprised the majority of the student body.
So when the sheer onslaught of police brutality incidents against the black community began to surface I found myself unable to truly empathize. Of course, it was tragic and obviously unjust, but there were a million other injustices that I could think and pray about. What makes this issue more important than the others? But what was really going on in my selfish heart was, “Why should they matter to me if I don’t matter to them?”
“They profoundly matter to God”
The events of this past week have forced me to reckon with my callousness. The Lord has both tenderly and savagely unmasked me. He has revealed enormous blinders of privilege that have prevented me from responding to injustice with humility and compassion and shown me just how entrenched and ugly my sin is.
This past Sunday during our family worship service, we studied the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. I didn’t tell my six-year-old to be like the Good Samaritan and not like the priest or the Levite. Instead, I asked him to imagine that he was the man who was beaten. “You are lying on the ground bleeding and dying. A man who should have helped you ignores you and walks on by. Another man who should help you also ignores you. Finally, an enemy approaches and you expect him to pass by, but he doesn’t. Jesus stops and saves you.”
And for a brief moment, I imagined my little son beaten, bleeding, and dying with nothing I could do to save him. People who should have helped just walking by as he lies there calling out for help. As I pictured his frail body on the ground, God gave me a glimpse of his heart for the victims of injustice. What did God feel when George Floyd, His child, was killed while those like the Asian police officer on the scene did nothing, even though he should have helped him?
Why should black lives matter to me? Not because I matter to them. Black lives matter because they profoundly matter to God.
As I thought of these things as the march proceeded, I began to weep tears of remorse for my sin, my racism, and my indifference. I vowed to no longer stay silent and pass my black brothers and sisters by. The crowd began to chant the names of the victims. Ahmaud Arbery! Breonna Taylor! George Floyd! My tears changed and, for the first time, I wept for Ahmaud, Breonna, and George. I wept for their families. I wept for their community. Perhaps for the first time, black lives truly mattered to me.
Friends, before we jump straight into activism — before we pronounce moral judgments on perpetrators of injustice, and vociferously condemn unjust systems and corrupt leaders — can we take a moment to unearth and repent of the racism and sin in our own hearts? Can we engage in meaningful conversations with others and confess to one another our own failures and lack of concern? This will then help us to better lament with, learn from, and stand for our black brothers and sisters. And finally let us continue to place our hope in our Lord Jesus who hates injustice and who will one day wipe away every tear, make all things new, and establish a true and eternal shalom.