Growing Up with Future Racists

Parents who teach their kids to shun children of other races are setting up their kids for hard lives at the bottom of the American socio-economic ladder—and setting up our nation for a heavy burden. Tom Kagy (00:01.038) This is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom. Being sentimental, I harbor mostly warm feelings for the people who made up my childhood and teen experiences. Most of these people were white, my stepfather, most of my closest friends, my first few girlfriends, my beloved teachers, the good-natured young army officers. who served as assistant scout masters and arranged army canvas top deuce and a half trucks to take us on hikes and campouts. My scout master, an Air Force sergeant, who passed over his own son to name me Troop eighty four's senior patrol leader, and its summer camp counselor. So just to be straight, I am not one of those people who can say I suffered much racism growing up. In fact, I had to dig deep to recall the few kids who gave me my first taste of what might be called racial hostility. In my experience, kids generally don't harbor anything resembling racist feelings until at least their adolescence. Though I do recall a couple of exceptions, which I'll get into later, let me flesh out my perspective on this issue. I am full Korean and the US military bases I grew up in until my early teens were in Seoul and later Tegu, Korea. Yes, I did perceive an attitude of superiority toward Korea in general, due to the nation's poverty at the time, with little of the modernization that the world has come to admire in more recent years. It's entirely possible that some of my schoolmates did also have some prejudices about my Koreanness, but I rarely experienced anything openly to suggest that. Tom Kagy (02:13.565) Especially considering that I had entered the Seoul American elementary school in the second grade with such a poor grasp of English that I got a zero on my very first arithmetic test, which consisted of a few simple word problems because I simply couldn't read the instructions. But by spring I was at the top of the class and stayed that way throughout my school years. I do recall two instances in the third and fourth grades in which I was referred to derisively as a Korean by hostile kids. I knew their intent was hostile, but I couldn't really object to the statement itself, which, of course, was true. However, I did take offense at their aggressive and disrespectful tone and showed my displeasure physically. Otherwise, my experiences with American kids, mostly white, were happy ones, and that continued after I transferred in the seventh grade to Taigu Elementary to follow my stepfather's job. It wasn't until the start of eighth grade, when I was thirteen, that I actually experienced what I recall as overt racism. It was Halloween night. I was about to go trick-or-treating with a friend named Joe, who happened to be half Korean, when we saw Rick and Lester walking toward us about forty yards away. Rick and Lester were both eighth graders, my grade, and popular in the way that easygoing cut ups and C students tend to be at that age. Neither had ever shown hostility toward me. I had been on friendly terms with both. So I was caught off guard when Rick called out, Look, Koreans. They lit up a couple of firecrackers they had been setting off and took a running start to toss them at us. The firecrackers went off harmlessly about twenty yards away from us. It was a brief, almost casual encounter, and no other words were exchanged as we both continued on our respective ways. Tom Kagy (04:31.356) But it did register in my mind as an act of racial hostility. Even then I did have a sense of what impulses might have motivated them to engage in that act of casual hostility. Both were without status, either in school or in extracurricular activities, while I was the leader in school, the scouts, and various extracurricular activities. To top it off, my teacher often assigned me to teach some of my math and science lessons. I'm not sure how much of this disparity my two classmates were feeling when they gave in to the impulse to act out this pantomime of racial hostility. But it did give me my first vague sense that my race, combined with my status, stirred up deep seated resentment on the part of some peers. In retrospect, I have a better understanding. of the impulses behind that little incident. Imagine being a kid who has never distinguished himself academically or with any other activity at an age when kids develop an awareness of status and pride. Even without any racist feelings, they would have felt an urge to attack me, a visible symbol of the status that was growing increasingly unattainable with each passing year for them. And of course, my being Korean made me easier to target, even in a mostly symbolic, ineffectual pantomime of attack. I embodied the talent, determination, and discipline. They already knew they could never match. And they would have loved to have done away with me if they could. And of course, it's this ability of anyone in America to give themselves status. Tom Kagy (06:37.423) through sheer will and effort that makes America fundamentally a non-racist nation. A black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or Asian person could elevate himself by sheer effort to a status that can't be matched by a white person who lacks the character or talent. So Rick and Lester hadn't yet become racist, but they were feeling the impulses that drive people into that desperate state. I use Rick and Lester as shorthand for the people who participated in my later encounters with more deeply entrenched racist attitudes, which I will get into in a later episode. I have no knowledge of what Lester and Rick ultimately made of their lives, but in the years since I've come to see enough to know that. There are a good number of lesters and ricks in our nation, white people who fail fare poorly in the American competition for status and feel the need to blame others for their failings. They seek a reason for pride and yet find it only in their race, which they come to imbue with special privileges and entitlements. They find purpose in styling themselves the defenders of these rights and entitlements. In short, they become MAGA, or as I like to call it, Ma Wa, M A W A, Make America White Again. I recently got more insight on what may well become of people like Rick and Lester. On a recent Sunday afternoon I took my granddaughters, ages five and four, to a local playground. It's an impressive playground, equipped with virtually every contraption you can imagine to challenge and engage kids. One was a giant jungle gym come towering slide set. My granddaughters are among a handful of kids who happen to be in various states of ascent and descent from this formidable fortress. Along comes a little blonde boy, age about five, eager to join in the fun. Tom Kagy (09:04.574) And began and began climbing the spiraling canvas ramp leading up this tower of fun. Suddenly a large, heavy set, bespectacled man with a beard rushed over and quickly yanked the boy off the ramp. I heard the boy protest, and the man respond with some irate words I couldn't make out, but I didn't think anything of it. Maybe they had to go home. Several minutes later my granddaughters decided they wanted to be pushed on a spinning platform. As I was pushing the platform, two more bo two boys their age climbed aboard. All were shouting with delight as the ride picked up speed. Then the same young blonde boy came running over, so I slowed the platform for him to climb aboard. As he was climbing on, I think The big fat bearded man with glasses rushed over to grab the boy and carry him away. To the boy's baffled question I heard him responding something like Don't want to play with those slope kids. At the same time, my granddaughters were both puzzled and asking me why did he take him away? The best I could come up with was Some parents have very strange ideas about what their kids can do and can't do. I made a point of speaking extra loudly so the fat dad could hear, adding, I feel sad for that poor kid. This incident did make me sad for the man's son. He was being educated to avoid Asians and probably other minorities, in a nation in which minorities will be the majority. By the time he reaches full adulthood and is raising kids of his own. Tom Kagy (11:06.607) In that nation, Asians and other minorities will likely be his prospective employers, landlords, bankers, colleagues, neighbors. I could imagine this poor kid struggling to find a place for himself because he had been taught that whites are somehow better than people of other races, and that the only acceptable people to involve himself with were whites. This sad excuse for a father was introducing a fundamental fallacy that violates bedrock principles of American society at the earliest stages of his poor son's intellectual development. This will not only ensure that he will come to struggle to see in what ways whites are superior or even as he finds himself eclipsed by even as he finds himself eclipsed by Asians, Hispanics, and blacks in classrooms and in the workplace, that fundamental and tragic fallacy will ultimately keep him low on the American socioeconomic ladder and become ultimately a source of blackballing as a racist. Tom Kagy (12:30.695) Supporting a permanent underclass of racists do pose a problem for American society, one that will reduce the quality of life for all and the cost of life for all Americans. Out of time now, but I will continue this podcast next week with some of the issues created by racists in the adult world, both for themselves and for the rest of us.