White Is Right... Right?

I wake up every morning the same way. There's the jarring sounds of the various alarms that I have set up, both on my clock and on my cell phone. I open my eyes to shapes and colors, all indistinct, all blurry, and yet all retaining the vividness that is associated with objects that have become familiar to me in their unfailing, daily presence. Very possibly, I could get up from my bed, make my way to the bathroom, and engage in my daily morning ritual with my eyes closed. I usually opt not to, as the feeling of being considered legally blind from a very young age forces me to use my eyes as much as possible, to the limited extent of their abilities.

Once I get my contacts in, or my glasses on, depending on how rushed I am that particular morning, I am once again made aware of a ubiquitous realization. I am not white. Or rather, I am Asian. There may not seem to be much difference in either statements; they are both true, and they are both qualifying identifiers. I am not white, but I am Asian. However, these two sentences are loaded with implications of ethno-centrism, racism, pride and nationalism, and self-worth that strike me as both liberating in my consciousness of them, and yet limiting in my effort to achieve a consciousness that reaches beyond the realm of the physical, tangible world. I can compare it to a prison I suppose, given what I know of prison is limited by movies like the Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Escape from Alcatraz, and shows on the Discovery Channel. Looking through my eyes, I have the ability to see the world through my perspective. My perspective sees the ethnocentrism, the racism, and nationalism. This is my prison. My perspective ties my proverbial hands behind my back, as I cannot use them to force open other people's eyes, to see through the lens that I have created for myself. I feel as though my truth can be a liberating truth, but a prison when no one else can see what I feel that I can see.

A certain amount of ignorance is necessary in order to live a blissful life. Knowing too much, being aware of too much can be very discouraging. It seems that God had a reason for not wanting Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's ironic how some stories, dated as they seem, still retain validity throughout time. Ageless.

I'm very aware of being who and what I am. I am not white. I am Asian. And how did this awareness develop to the level of acuity that it has? When I first came to the States at the age of three, this categorization of race, culture, and color was no more present in my mind than any idea of where I was really headed on this big shiny airplane, the kind which I had excitedly been watching take off and land at the major airport in Seoul. I was going SOMEwhere was all I knew, and I did not know that the childlike optimism and excitement that I retained at that point in time would give way to curiosity for answers in a land that promised material wealth freely but gave little in the ways of true contentment. A land that I would find out later in life wrongly equated wealth for fulfillment. Furthermore, this equality was the only equality I would have to look forward to.