Out of the Mouth of Babes
By Terry Hong
Special to AsianWeek
My young daughter has remarkable perspective. Last Sept. 11, she was just 5 and in her first full week of kindergarten. When I picked her up that day at her Washington, D.C., school, she was still somewhat oblivious to what was happening. The school did a remarkable job shielding the younger children from any of the horrific images constantly being replayed.
So she was somewhat surprised to see me at school so early, though not too surprised, as many of her classmates had already left for home. I tried to explain to her what was happening in the outside world, that “bad people” had hurt many, many others by stealing two airplanes and crashing them on purpose into two very large buildings in New York City. She knows Manhattan well because she was born there and has visited there countless times — “I’m a New Yorker,” she proudly tells anyone who might seem remotely interested. But on this day, after much silent, solemn listening, her first reaction was, “But Mommy, do the bad people’s children think they’re bad?”
How do you answer to that astoundingly clear, unblemished perspective?
Perspective is something we seem to lose on the way to adulthood. And in adulthood, it gets muddled by the media, by politics, by people around us, by our own myopic blindness. Perspective is something we Americans seem to be lacking, even more so since the tragic events of Sept. 11.
Like most viewers of that day’s tragic events, words could not describe the horror of witnessing the attacks. But as soon as my daughter asked her question of who indeed is “bad,” I, too, began to question my own perspective. And the single-minded horror and shock became something else: the timeless adage, “two sides to every story,” took on a whole new meaning.
Do the “bad people’s children think they’re bad?” Most likely not. Most likely, if the “bad people” even had children, those children will forever memorialize their fathers as martyred heroes. Indeed, it’s all about perspective. Is the United States always right or always righteous? Is the U.S. government always justified in its actions, especially in terms of foreign policy? Have we ever been, or are we now, the “bad people” in others’ eyes?
Throughout the coverage on Sept. 11 and in the year since, the phrase “America’s loss of innocence” has been repeated over and over again. And I cringe at the hypocrisy of such words. Where is the innocence in a history marked by brutal slavery, colonialism, continuing discrimination and blatant racism? Where is the innocence in a government that sent some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent to concentration camps during World War II, merely because they physically resembled the enemy, and then ordered its sons to the fighting fronts while their families languished, stripped of their basic guaranteed rights? Where is the innocence in a government that ordered the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And where is the innocence in a country where once again anti-Asian violence is rampant because of a misplaced, overly zealous patriotism, where people who might vaguely resemble the enemy are being locked away without evidence, deported en masse, where they are being harassed, bullied, injured and even killed?
Being an ethnic minority in a country where a “real” American connotes white European descent has always been a problematic liability, made even more so since Sept. 11. Still, this is home, the only home that I could or would ever choose. But choice does not, must not equal blind
acceptance.
With the latest so-called security measures at airports, even my 4-year-old — as frequent flying as our family is — is not beyond reproach. Random computer checks, they call it, but too many times my son has been chosen to be sent for the full-body search. [Nine out of 10 times, I, too, am stopped — and I am never surprised.] Our last trip, in both directions to and from London, my son was wanded for hidden metal, his small sneakers removed and checked, his backpack filled with travel toys emptied and examined and finally his blunt, plastic, kid-safe scissors confiscated.
Small price for security, I know. But as the guard commented, laughing, to another guard, “Look, the little boy already knows what do to,” as my son stood before her, arms outstretched in a “t,” looking too much like a small sacrificial victim.
Watching my son, his eyes raised so trustingly, I think about the “bad people” and wonder if they might have had a son, a 4-year-old like mine, who so willingly cooperates with the powers that be. Or perhaps they might have a daughter, who like my own child, expressed grave concern about the people who were hurt by the stolen airplanes.
With the “War on Terrorism” about to take another major step toward further destruction, this time in Iraq, I shudder to think what will happen to all the children who will inevitably be caught in the crossfire. Not to mention the countless children already lost — all the children of the so-called “bad people.” Who will protect them? Who will save them from their enemy? Who will save them from us?
Terry Hong is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer.
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