Good for you, Bonita!
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| An Ethical Dilemma |
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Name: Bonita Leung College Attending: Herricks High School We were in the locker room, an unfriendly box of concrete walls and stale air. Wewere short but important little things, barely in fourth grade. Laughter and chatter bounced off the walls in harsh, muted clamor. Soon, the din quieted enough for a classmate to get bored and turn to me. “Want to hear a song about you?” Not really. “I guess.” “Me Chinese, me think fast, me eat pork chop, stray dogs’ ass!” I noticed two things. One, she was mislead in thinking that pork chop came from dogs. Two, that song hurt. “It’s true, isn’t it? You eat dogs’ asses for dinner because you’re a chink! Do you know what chinks are? They’re yellow, they have small eyes and they smell funny, like the lunches you bring to school!” Chink. It slipped out between her lips with ease but remained stuck on my frozen form. It was hard to move, to speak, to breathe. I saw only three alternatives. There was the option of a verbal dispute, harmless but satisfying. I could engage in physical fighting, harmful and satisfying. The other option was to stay silent and wait for her to leave–a logical decision that would sacrifice my pride. At the time, her words seemed like just another act of a malicious bully. Then I saw the bigger picture; a fellow fourth-grader was being exposed, at such a young age, to someone who used such derogatory names and exuded racist beliefs. The fact that this was my first encounter with racism made me more appreciative of the positive Christian environment that I grew up in, with loving parents who did their best to guide me to the right path in life. They taught me to be respectful to others, regardless of how others treated me. They taught me that success is measured by character, not power. They taught me how to be the better person, which meant moving on and learning from my experiences. This didn’t mean exchanging insults or physical blows. This meant learning how to deal with difficult situations and growing as a result. There were people who used intimidation to their advantage, and now I knew not to be one of their victims. There was a need to be nice, but there was a greater need to stand up for what I believed in. Fourth-grade me just tried to cope by smiling at everything while liking nothing. Twelfth-grade me smiles only at the things I like and is quick to show Chinese pride, provoked or not. There is no trace of the hesitant little girl who didn’t know how to respond to her first racial confrontation. Instead, there is a girl who is brazen in opinion, who now knows that insults are no match for quick wit, who meets every question with sarcasm. Who knows that because her fourth grade self didn’t say anything, she’d never give another classmate the chance to walk away.
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