Thick as a Whale Omelette

Regular readers here know I've written a fair amount about the racist bullying I experienced as a child.

Well, I was just in a discussion over at American Family's about diversity and school choice. Some Asian parents discount diversity because academic excellence is such a high priority, so this idea of sacrifice and the importance of not being the only one or two of "your kind" was developed further in the comments. The commenter group was diverse, including a woman who discussed her experiences growing up as a blind person and how her identity issues compared to racial identity issues, a topic which I found quite interesting.

Then there were a couple bad apples. The most irritating one was a commenter called mccxxiii.

This comment puzzles me:

“by default, American society teaches Asian kids that they are weird, bad and freakish.”

Um... no. By default American society teaches Asian kids that they are super-smart and good at math and science. That has nothing to do with weird, bad and freakish. That’s, like, the polar opposite.

If you want to talk horrid stereotypes, the goth/theater kids are weird, the blacks and Latinos are bad (gangbanger, you know ...), and the closeted gay kids are freakish. Asian kids are the STARS... we *all* wanted to be them!!

Three thick-headed things:

1) Discounting what Asians (like me) have to say, because what do we know about being Asian.
2) Willful ignorance of the concept of "positive stereotype".
3) flat-out delusional statement about everyone wanting to be Asian.

Then in the next post mccxxiii strikes again.

I was the only kid in my class who stuttered, and kids of every race made fun of me. And it is most definitely *not* something I can just change or “make it go away”. (Should gay people just change and be straight, too? Huh?)

It will be with me for the whole of my life. It’s not the most pronounced or debilitating of any stutter in the world, but it’s enough to ensure that I spent my childhood being mocked and teased.

Talk all you want about white privilege, but I was just as sad and bewildered about that as *any* kid who was being made fun of about *anything*. Racism sucks, but it’s not the only thing in the world that sucks, and there’s no special martyr prize for anybody. We all have our crosses to bear. American society is set up to marginalize fat people, too. Should I be unpacking my backpack of skinniness while I’m at it?

Would I have wanted my parents to put me in a whole school full of stutterers so I wouldn’t feel different? I don’t know. Might have made me feel marginally better at the time, but it wouldn’t have helped me in the long run at adjusting to my difference. Certainly not enough benefit to warrant going to a “lesser” school academically.

Plus, if we had all stuttered we just would have found other things to make fun of people about. Kids are cruel. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.

Six more thick-headed things!

1) Oppression Olympics! Dripping with white resentment, they decide that racial minorities must have some special victimhood mojo. How can they get some? In this case, by stuttering.
2) Claiming that original post implies gay people can turn straight; exploiting gay people in the service of their dumbass argument
3) Lecturing everyone else about Oppression Olympics, when they were the one called the games and jumped the starting gun.
4) Condoning casual cruelty and bullying by children
5) Exploiting disabled people in the service of their dumbass argument
6) Ending their dumbass argument with an inane cliché.

Another thing that irritates me about the second post is that I also have a mild stuttering problem. It's never really slowed me down, and it goes away whenever I teach or force myself to get in front of a crowd. I also spent several years in a speech class in elementary school due to pronunciation issues. To this day, I'm suspicious of the reason why. I think it may have been just because I had an odd accent and pronounced my R's English-style instead of American-style. Anyway, I also got a fair amount of abuse for the way I talked.

But I'm not into measuring the amount of suffering, giving myself prizes for it and telling other people to shut up because they haven't suffered as much. All I want to do is talk about it, analyze it, and figure out how to keep it from happening to others. Going through what I did doesn't make me a better person. It just makes me more knowledgeable and more concerned about that particular topic.

I'm really not that knowledgeable about disability rights. However, I'm curious, and I read up on it when I can. One thing I've learned on a basic level is that there is a difference between illness and disability. I can instantly grasp that when someone has an identity as a deaf person, a blind person, an autistic person, a disabled person, that identity can become a really positive life resource and help build communities with other people. That's why I found the comment about blind identity so fascinating and thoughtful. On the other hand, comparing racial identity to an illness is just stupid and disrespectful.

Is stuttering a disability or an illness? It must depend on a lot of factors. I don't know the answer. Nevertheless, I wouldn't go to a stuttering forum or blog and say, "Wow, you think you people had it rough? Listen to what I went through, being Asian! I bet it'll make you feel like a bunch of pansies!"