I AM KOREAN AMERICAN

Own Words

Hi, my name is not important at this time, but what is to me is my experience growing up as a Korean-American, being half black and half Korean. Like many second generation youth coming from immigrant parents, it was a somewhat unique upbringing, parent(s) working hard, coming from literally nothing, struggling to give their kids every opportunity other (white) kids have. First and foremost, this isn’t a race thing, nor did my mother ever use any racial slur or term to define any struggle or define any set of rules to life. Our mother raised us (my brother and I) with one goal: to be the best we could be, to try our hardest and to be humble, meaning do not point fingers, and “If you call someone stupid, you are calling yourself stupid.” She wasn’t your typical Korean woman, in that she wasn’t on some judgmental high horse which looked down at everybody, she also didn’t drink much at all, gamble, or blame people for anything in her life. She is, to my brother and I, the big Jackpot lottery of mothers.

I was born in Seoul, Korea on July 1982, and not too long after my brother was born in Colorado. We spent our toddler years with our Dad’s side of the family in Virginia and North Carolina where my mother had two jobs working at KFC and another fast food chain. She was very scared as one could assume, putting all her trust and faith in our dad, who was a young black man in his early twenties that just got out of the military. My dad was the youngest out of ten kids, all from the same mother, and he was the youngest. Tragedy happened early in his development, having his mother (our grandmother) dead in a fire at the age of six; which left our grandfather to make it happen for ten kids in a two-bedroom shack with no running water (which I lovingly remember as a toddler) was no easy task, let alone an achievable hard task.

By the time I was 6 and in the first grade, my mother, brother and I moved to the west coast, Tacoma (40min. south of Seattle), and this is where my Korean-American experience starts. Let me just say, I went to three different 1st grades, two different fourth grades, two different fifth grades; so my background as a youth was one that may have been fraught with issues of acceptance and abandonment. Starting 2nd grade is where I’d like to say my childhood began; living in a household uniquely setup for single Korean mothers. My new family of siblings (cousins), Chiyon and her twin brothers, Jimmy and Tommy, in their parents’ small 5-bedroom house is where it all started. There was also Gloria, who was also half black, half Korean; Tina, half white, half Korean; Susie, half white, half Korean; and then my brother and I. So in all there were five families in this one household, the matriarch was “Harmony,” or, Grandmother. She was the glue that held it all together. Harmony didn’t speak any English whatsoever, and at first only tolerated us kids. All the single mothers, including ours, were gone seemingly months at a time working and trying to start over from scratch. Eventually as the years went by, each family left to greener pastures. Gloria went to Washington DC., Tina went to Idaho, and Susie went to Arizona while my brother and I stayed around the area. All of us “kids” stayed close through the years and remain a family regardless of not having blood ties.

Growing up, I never really fit in anywhere except for church where there were plenty of other half Koreans as well as a fellowship which laid a great foundation for years to come. I was a very happy kid with a huge imagination and sense of fun. The first time I was directly introduced to racism, I was in 7th grade; I walked home after a school basketball game with a friend, her name was Kelli Murphy, and when her mother opened the door she immediately took her daughter by the arm, led her in, and slammed the door in my face.  “What the Hell you doing hanging out with that dog?”  I was shocked when I realized she was talking about me, and simply walked off their porch and headed home. I also found out the hard way that some Koreans don’t approve of their daughters dating a Black guy, but even worse, dating a half Korean, half Black guy. After dating a girl for over a year, she went to introduce me to her father, upon meeting him, I bowed and then went to shake his hand. He looked at his daughter, then turned to me and spit in my hand, needless to say the relationship didn’t workout. Plenty of experiences in High School dealing with race, I could have easily lost myself, and at times, I did. To my black friends I was Asian, and to my Asian friends I was black. Both groups had some instilled disdain for the other and looked down at one another as both sides were very ethnocentric. It was hard to know what I was being labeled without any cause or action of my own, and simply being judged by my looks and not my character. Looking for acceptance, I turned away from God and started on a path of self-indulgence and living up to the hype. My brother stayed on the right path, and over the years of separation, we have reconnected. Even though he had so much built up resentment towards me for all the pain I caused our mother, we remain very close even at a distance, which has nothing to do with proximity. Our mother is our whole world, she led by example and only because of her tremendous heart of pure gold and true wisdom did I have the opportunity to fall multiple times and learn from it while still being given all the resources to grow and be successful.

Thanks for taking the time to read my short story. Perhaps one day I will have the opportunity to go into detail about the many impacting pages of my life and of what it means to be a Korean-American. Sorry if this wasn’t very insightful, I just wanted to give a quick broad over-view. Thanks again.