I grew up in Puerto Rico from early childhood. My family spoke Cantonese at home. I attended Catholic school; my teachers conducted our classes in Spanish, save for our English class. Along with our regular classes like reading and mathematics, they taught religion. Naturally, they taught religion in Spanish; therefore, I learned the Spanish names of the apostles. During one of our grades, they prepared us for our first communion.
In early childhood, I grew up with each foot planted in two different cultures. We spoke Cantonese at home, and along with the language came the culture, though we learned this in a trickle. We didn’t attend an intensive Chinese language program. Instead, we learned our culture much like others hear stories around a campfire. To this day, I don’t know if certain ideas (like aversion to going to bed with wet hair) were strictly my mom’s baggage or a genuine Chinese belief.
Then my dad passed away. We already made plans to move to Florida, but his passing simply accelerated that timetable. My mom, my sisters, and I moved to Fort Lauderdale about a year after my dad died.
My friend, David
We arrived in Florida, and we enrolled in a bilingual program (Spanish and English). I confess that I failed my English class in Puerto Rico. Now, they threw me into the deep end of the pool. Consequently, I learned English with a gun to my head. I spent that fifth grade in a convertible classroom off to a corner of the school grounds; I shared that classroom with other Spanish-speaking children spanning first through fifth grade.
During recess, we escaped into the wild with the remainder of the students into what I remember to be a large field, but what I assume to be modest as an adult. The language barrier deterred some English-speaking students, though there were some notable exceptions. This is the field where I met my friend David. He demonstrated genuine kindness and interest in me. Our friendship grew steadily while I developed a command of the language.
As the weather turned colder and the winter break approached, I innocently asked David what his family was going to do over Christmas. His face grew stern; I could feel his apprehension. He responded with, “We’re Jewish; we don’t celebrate Christmas.” In complete honesty, I did not know what that meant. Everyone I knew was Catholic. Even today, Puerto Rico is nearly 70% Catholic.
David might as well have been an extraterrestrial.
What I did know
To this date in my young life, I have learned three languages. Additionally, I lived in three cultures. Lastly, I lived among three races. However, I had really only known one religion, Catholicism. The very fabric of my life had been built on tolerance. I learned to navigate this maelstrom of languages, cultures, and races, even within myself. Not only did tolerance of diversity allow me to give myself grace, but it also taught me to empathize with others. Furthermore, I survived through the tolerance of others.
Honestly, I knew nothing about Judaism. Until that very moment, I had not heard of other religions. However, I knew David. I knew him to be curious, kind, and genuinely care about me as a friend. That’s all that I needed to know. My Catholicism did not trump his Judaism. Even if I didn’t know precisely what it meant, he was a genuinely good person. Being Jewish couldn’t be that bad.
David would end up moving to a private school shortly after the holidays, and we’d rarely see each other after that. However, he was the first to allow me to challenge my belief system. He was the first step in a lifetime of learning.
The bullying
Merely a year later, my education moved to Parkway Middle School in Fort Lauderdale; the bullying started shortly after that. At first, they simply called me names; “Eskimo” or “Chinaman” are the ones I remembered most. They targeted me once I got off the school bus, shoving me to knock me off my feet onto neighbors’ yards as I walked the many excruciating blocks to the safety of my home; the other kids watched in morbid fascination, but no one intervened.
The bullies sat immediately behind me on the bus. Sometimes, I could hear them plotting their torment with words like, “When the bus stops, everyone jump on the Chinaman.” Of course, they did precisely that, along with elbows and fists. Other times, they tormented me by spitting gum in my hair, which I could not extricate. I walked to a friend’s house, whose mom cut it out of my hair with scissors. These bullies often ditched school; their truancy was my salvation.
On one fateful day on the school campus, I got into horseplay with a friend. Our casual exchange eventually came to throwing fists; other kids quickly surrounded us to watch the melee. After a few minutes of exchanging jabs, my friend’s mother, a teacher at the school, runs in and pulls her son out of the fight. They left me by myself, and everyone dispersed. I wasn’t punished for that incident; they couldn’t punish just me. That fight got me some unexpected street cred, which helped me navigate my remaining time at Parkway Middle.
Yes, indeed… Kids can be cruel.
More than just being cruel
However, I detest that expression, “Kids can be cruel.” While it’s completely accurate, it is not actionable. You might as well tell us that gravity exists. “Uhm… Thanks.” I hear this expression in the same way that I hear that 100,000s of women are raped each year, almost entirely by men. How about if we word it like, “Men commit 100,000s rapes of women each year.” Yes, these are your brothers, sons, spouses, and even fathers. To simply say “women are raped” doesn’t identify the problem; men are disproportionately the perpetrators. Fix the men, and the rapes will decrease.
Similarly, bullies don’t simply appear out of nowhere. Studies show that children are not born with racial biases, but they acquire racial biases before they enter first grade. We’re not naïve enough to believe that children naturally gravitate towards racism like gravity, are we? Here’s the blunt, unsettling truth. They learned those racial biases from somewhere. Do we care to speculate who is most influential to them before they reach first grade? Let’s reword that sentence with accountability in mind. Even to say “kids learn to be cruel” dodges accountability.
Even when everyone I knew was Catholic, no one taught me to hate Jewish people. As I discovered that fact about David at 10 years of age, I held no animosity towards him.
We teach kids to be cruel
On one particular day, my family shopped at the local K-mart in Fort Lauderdale. A young girl, probably about five years old, points directly at us and quietly asks her mom something. Upon getting an answer, she uses her index fingers to pull her eyelids narrow and jubilantly shouts, “Chinese! Japanese!” A young child showing this much contempt towards us shocked me so much that I don’t remember her mom’s reaction.
Let’s use “We teach kids to be cruel.” Only then can we start the productive conversation about the source of the racial bias. To bury your head in the sand and pretend that your child learned that racial slur through osmosis is not productive. I won’t go so far as to assign blame strictly to the parents, but statistically, parents likely contributed to it. You may look at the collection of day laborers at Home Depot parking lots with a certain disdain; that’s enough.
It may be as simple as permitting that weird uncle to ramble on with colorful words during Thanksgiving dinner in your home. It’s your home, you can set boundaries. He can still have his food… on a paper plate, with plastic utensils, in the car.
In 2022, students from Capital High School staged a walkout in protest after one of their own classmates shouted “Gorilla!” at a visiting basketball player. If they can speak up in allyship against one of their own classmates and say “this is not acceptable”, so can you. We can fix this; we need to want to.