生活在黑與黃之間
剛搬來伯克利不久的有一天， 我騎車經(jīng)過了一個(gè)玩具店，想進(jìn)去給逛逛。但發(fā)現(xiàn)店門口沒有停自行車的欄桿。正在我推著車干著急的時(shí)候，玩具店旁邊的自行車店里出來一個(gè)黑人男性，他和善的告訴我可以把車放在他們店里。我不好意思的把車推進(jìn)他的店，一眼就看見店里有很多小孩子玩具，一個(gè)開心的坐在地上玩兒的一歲左右的小姑娘，和一個(gè)掛著笑容的亞洲女人。
當(dāng)時(shí)匆忙，沒有多聊，卻也記住了陌生人的善意和忙碌卻溫暖的一家人。
后來在在開始上幼兒園托班，才發(fā)現(xiàn)那個(gè)小姑娘是比在在大幾個(gè)月的 “學(xué)姐” K。她的爸爸，也就是那個(gè)自行車行的主人 Brian，總會(huì)騎著一個(gè)明亮的黃色自行車，放著輕快的音樂，風(fēng)一般的踩著車接送女兒。后來也經(jīng)常在學(xué)校碰到了K的媽媽，Lin, 發(fā)現(xiàn)原來她是會(huì)說中文的新加坡華人, 于是我們兩個(gè)經(jīng)常在學(xué)校碰到就用中文聊聊天，覺得她樂呵又爽朗的。
有一次公共假期，家長們約著一起帶孩子去 playdate，Lin也帶著K和剛出生的弟弟去了。我坐在她旁邊，聽到她打電話，似乎是因?yàn)閷Ψ皆趛elp上為了一個(gè)5刀的零件弄錯(cuò)而留了差評，她提出了各種彌補(bǔ)的方法， 請求對方修改差評。聲音里滿是生活的疲憊。
后來在臉書加了好友，發(fā)現(xiàn)了Lin的另一面。她轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)的新聞或自己寫的評論，讀起來頗專業(yè)，畫畫和做首飾也都讓我驚艷。尤其是最近幾個(gè)月關(guān)于新冠和抗議游行，她發(fā)的內(nèi)容都是優(yōu)質(zhì)又視角多元。作為一位和非裔結(jié)婚的華裔，她對族裔問題的體驗(yàn)和表達(dá)里有復(fù)雜又微妙的層次。于是哪怕知道她要照顧兩個(gè)孩子，做家務(wù)，幫忙自行車店，還是嘗試和她約稿。沒想到她立刻答應(yīng)了，兩周后發(fā)來了這篇精彩的文章。
族裔問題背后的歷史、政治、法律、社會(huì)等等知識(shí)都很復(fù)雜。不同立場的人們也很容易爭吵起來，各種拉黑。但讓我們先放下那些理論，研究，數(shù)據(jù)，爭端，讓一個(gè)華人媽媽帶我們看看她的婚姻讓她看到了什么曾經(jīng)未知的。作為兩個(gè)深膚色孩子的媽媽，又和我們的養(yǎng)育方式有什么不一樣。
撰文 | Lin
翻譯 | 小 樂 鳳 潔
● ● ●
● 給我們的商店加裝更多的監(jiān)控?cái)z像頭。
● 詢問我的丈夫他去工作是否還安全。
● 在女兒問我：“ 爸爸會(huì)活著回來么？” 的時(shí)候?qū)λ隽酥e。
● 把手機(jī)的指紋開機(jī)功能撤銷，保持輸入六位密碼，這樣警察過就不能強(qiáng)迫我開機(jī)。
圖為Lin和Brian
Lin 的英文原文：
Living Black and Yellow
I have worked as a journalist for over a decade, throughout Asia and the US. I have covered international disasters and recovery efforts, investigated global crime and immigration politics, challenged the United Nations, written about drug lords and had to think about the deaths of many, many people. But this is the hardest piece I have had to write in my life.
Why? Because we are going to talk about the lives of my husband and children and how my reality includes thinking of all the ways they might die before it happens.
I was born and raised in Singapore with friends, classmates, neighbors, and coworkers of all skin colors. In 2012, I moved to the US to attend UC Berkeley. As a graduate student, my thoughts were focused on learning in school and building my career. I had always thought of myself as a lifelong learner, it’s why I chose to go into journalism. I enjoy the expectation that I learn intensely every day. But nothing prepared me for my married life.
I am a Singaporean Chinese woman married to an African American man. Together we live in Berkeley, California, with our 4-year-old daughter and 2-year old son with no family close by. In the last week, I have:
One [2] day, my husband and I were talking about our earliest memories. Mine was of music lessons, playing with friends at the playground, and sharing food with family. This was one of his earliest memories: “When I was 4, our family went to the beach. I remember a group of boys playing Marco Polo (A game where kids throw the ball to each other and the kid in the middle tries to catch it). They said: “Don’t play with the n----r. ”
As a child, my husband loved to learn, and as the youngest of five, learned fast. One day, he went to his teacher to ask for more work. He remembers his teacher saying: “What makes you think you’re better than the others? Go back to your seat.” He left that school, enrolled himself in a private school, and started working in a restaurant kitchen at 14 to put himself through school.
Black kids are not told they can be anything they want to be. They’re told to get back in their place.
One [4] day, I was nagging him about all the grocery shopping receipts around the house. I asked him to throw them away and then I realized that sometimes, I just told the cashier that I didn’t need a receipt. My husband said: “I can never do that.”
Two days later, I bought some sushi from a Safeway supermarket. After paying, a man ran after me and stopped me in the middle of the road, accused me of stealing, and asked to see my receipt. It is the first time in my life that I have been accused of stealing from a supermarket, even when I did shoplift when I was a teenager. As I dug through the basket of my baby stroller, I thought to myself how lucky I was to have kept the receipt after having that chat with my husband. Later on, two black staff members of the supermarket who knew me came and shared: “We understand how angry you must be. We work here, and we keep the receipts of every single thing we buy during our lunch break to eat.”
Black people never throw away receipts.
Most [5] people have experienced one or two of the situations described above in their lifetime. They are annoying and hurtful. But when you’re black, they happen all the time, constant, unrelenting, and sometimes concurrently. Black men are constantly fighting to stay alive, to clear their names of false accusations and drugs [6] planted by the police, and their families are constantly thinking of what they can to prevent them from escalating into life or death situations.
In any of the instances, if the police were called, my husband’s risk of being killed increases dramatically. Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely than whites to be killed by the police.
Having grown up in Singapore, I was taught to call the police if I were in danger. Today, the first thing I think of when I feel like I need the police is where my husband is. I am always conscious of the high possibility that engaging the police places my husband at risk. They can shoot him faster than I can defend him. Bullets fly faster than words.
In TV dramas and movies, wives often suspect that their husbands are having affairs when he comes home late from work. In our marriage, there is no room for distrust. I tell my husband to text me when he arrives at work, and before he leaves work. If he takes longer than usual to get home, my biggest fear is that he’s been stopped by the police. My anxiety builds up with each minute of the possibility of hearing that a black man’s been killed, or getting the call to go identify a body. I plan what to do with the children for situations like this. If you’ve never had this thought, you have privilege.
In non-black families, children are encouraged to be friendly with police officers. In our family, both our children know that when we call their names, they return to us immediately. And if we tell them to shut up, they do so immediately. This may sound harsh. But a police officer looking to find fault with my husband can claim inappropriate behavior if my daughter were to say something as simple as: “My daddy bathes me.” It doesn’t matter that she is 4 years old. The same story that is cute and makes a white man a “family man” can be used to accuse black men of being sexual predators.
Black children must learn to watch their mouths early. Their words can cost them their fathers.
When I first arrived in the US, I was sitting outside a popular downtown train station with my friend who was black when the police approached us. An officer first asked me: “Are you ok?”. I said that I was, and they then asked my friend for his ID. I watched in horror as they called in their colleagues to ask them to run his ID to check for outstanding warrants after he told them he had none. When they were done, they told him that he was lucky.
Luck keeps black people out of prisons. Not the truth.
Many of you have probably heard of the murder of George Floyd, a man who suffocated to death when a police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Since watching the video, I have thought thousands of times what I should do if that were my husband. Yes, I look at that black man and my mind and body feel poisoned with fear that my husband could be next. A shop owner said he called the police on George because he tried to use a fake $20 bill. Till today, no one has proven that the $20 was fake, and as a wife to a black male business owner, I would not call the police over a $20.
Because not thinking that the police will kill people comes from privilege .
The [10] main difference between my husband and I, is that I am a cute Asian woman and he is a scary black man. People don’t take me seriously sometimes, but that doesn’t kill. Racism kills and people have absorbed Hollywood’s portrayal of black men as murderers and thugs. There is no room for the black man who is a community man, who teaches children to ride bicycles, who mentors at-risk youths, who started after-school programs to take care of teens in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, one of the areas many people identify as dangerous, dirty, and drugged out. Yes, my husband did all that.
In 2015, I had one of my most traumatic experiences in my life. We had just opened our bicycle shop in Oakland, California. What we did not know was that our landlord was a Korean racist who had a history of evicting small businesses of color. What started as harassment became so unbearable that we obtained a restraining order against him. He began sending thugs to the bike shop and I was scared every day as my husband worked in the shop alone. I had a job in San Francisco then.
One night, he stood outside our shop, yelling and screaming racist slurs, scaring our customers and keeping them away. As he stepped towards our shop, I stepped in front of my husband, between him and the landlord. I was just a woman and I carried my newborn baby on my body in front. All I knew was that this man might hurt my husband and get away, but he would think twice about hitting a woman with a baby.
That is my privilege.
A week later, he came to our shop when my husband was alone, and told him: “I can kill you with one hand”. He then strangled my husband. My husband quickly broke his chokehold and walked to the back of the shop to call the police. When the police arrived, the landlord said that my husband had hit him first and that he wanted to sue him for elder abuse. He did not know that we had security cameras.
His elder abuse charge was thrown out of court when the cameras showed him strangling my husband and then stalking him when my husband tried to walk away. In the end, the man was given probation for coming to our business and strangling my husband on camera.
If you don’t think this is a problem, please think about what would have happened to a black man if he had gone into an Asian business and strangled the owner.
The easy answer is: he would be dead. The owner could shoot him and claim defense. The police could shoot him because he was “threatening”. Whatever the method, the black man would likely not have lived. Not when George was killed for $20.
That is why we will never call the police because of a fake $20 bill. You are not welcome in our business, but no need for the police.
If this experience sounds like a simple ordeal, just know that I begged strangers to help me hold my newborn baby outside the courtroom in Oakland so I could go in and stand with my husband. No one should have to choose between their baby and husband, but I did because the man I love is black.
As soon as that traumatic experience ended, with about $100,000 in losses from having to close the business to deal with him and move to Berkeley, another major one started. There is no shortage of racists in America. There are great people, kind souls who understand our struggle as the only black-owned business in North Berkeley, the area we live in, but many also live with a lack of understanding that our reality is completely different from theirs.
When we look at the news and see Breonna Taylor killed in her sleep because the police barged into her house and shot her, we cannot rest well even in our homes. When we learn that her boyfriend was charged for murder because he fired back at the people who killed his girlfriend because they did not announce that they were the police, it acts as a law enforcement reminder that only white people can defend their home. Only white people can kill. Only white people can rest at night.
Two years ago, a white man spat in my face after I told him that we didn’t have a bike part he wanted. The next day, he came back and called my husband a n----r, and said: “I hope you have good insurance because I am going to f--- up your business, your wife and your baby.”
My husband called the police. When they arrived, they tried to arrest my husband and the white man quickly left.
Initially, the police officer told my husband he could not do anything. It was only when my husband said to the officer: “How would you feel, if I, a black man, told you I am coming after your business, wife and child? Your everything? You would send your whole squad after him,” that the officer said he understood now.
Just like America often is, many things are theatrical. The police told us they had arrested the man two days later. But four days later, I saw the same man walking down the street. I crossed the street as fast as I could but he saw me and began shouting racist slurs and cursed our family loud enough for everyone to hear. Later on, the police told us he had been let out because they couldn’t do anything. Freedom of speech belongs to white people.
To protect us, the police obtained a restraining order for our family and business against him. He was not allowed to come within 30 feet of us. We hoped it would be the end of everything.
But last year, as our family of four came home on Christmas Eve, we noticed someone following us. As soon as we did, he began shouting racial slurs, telling us how he was going to hurt and kill us. We were about 15 feet from our home and had our baby and toddler with us. I did the only thing I knew – I used my Chinese privilege to protect my family.
In fight or flight mode, I told my husband to take the kids and go in. Now.
My husband did not argue.
And I’m glad he didn’t.
I’m thankful he didn’t.
The fact is, in America, I am more likely to survive any interaction.
Alone on the dimly-lit streets, I faced the man who stood about 10 feet from me, shouting and gesturing as I called 911 and asked for help.
I kept my eyes on him. And when for a moment he looked away, I ran home.
From a window, I watched as he continued shouting into the night for 10 more minutes before leaving.
Later that night, a police officer stood in our living room while my daughter silently watched us talk and my son played with a toy truck. “Beep, beep, beep,” he said as he nudged the police officer’s foot with his truck. I glared at him.
