The Humor of Minority Youth
We know that minority children are those who fail to see the promise of the majority’s youth, but we don’t always realize that these are children who are encompassed by unfamiliar traditions and customs that are vastly different from those at home. These are children who are immersed into a system in which assimilating can feel unattainable, and this failure can be overwhelming and debilitating.
Quite often, these children are spoon fed with a seeming repulsion of their culture from their peers, leaving them with a choice: conform, or walk away with the threat of not being accepted. Conformance means self-deprecation -- a disrespect for and a deviation from those once pleasing traditions that would always having a soothing effect when they returned to their homes.
Quite often, I’ve been left with this choice -- an allegorical fork in the road of my culture and their culture at which I have to produce a decision. I have to choose as to whether or not to disrespect myself, my family, and my heritage. When a plane passes overhead while we’re walking around outside, I’ve been asked by friends if my uncle is in there, ready to crash into a building. I’ve heard other friends yelling Allahu Akbar. Friends have implied that underneath my sweatshirt may be a bomb vest. Everytime I hear one of these “jokes,” I have to decide: do I stand up for myself through reason and then walk away, or do I appease their ignorance with compliance so I can be taken in with open arms? The same happens for the Asian student who incessantly has a choice to make when vollies of stereotypes about his voice, his math skills, and whether he likes to eat domestic animals are fired at him. The same happens for the Mexican student who is questioned about whether he can jump high since he probably needed to in order to cross the border. The same is true for the African American student who is continuously offered watermelon at lunch. All of it may seem preposterous, but it cascades through the hallways of our nation’s schools, rushing with redolence of the racism that we thought had evaporated from America. Administrators and teachers here it but turn a blind eye, allowing for it to permeate while they post weightless messages about tolerance on their office bulletin boards and their Twitter pages.
I’ve always made the choice to do my best to correct the faults in their ignorance, then step away. But for many, the pressure of loneliness is too great; the constant feeling of being ostracized becomes insufferable, and that’s where the compliance begins. The Asian student begins to threaten that he will eat someone’s dog or cat, eliciting scores of laughter from those around him. The Mexican student says that he has to go pick some fruit, and he smiles when, finally, someone has appreciated something he has said. This is the humor of minority youth -- self-deprecation brought on by the incapacity of the majority.
The immediate response from the majority -- when they read this account -- would be that I’m crafting a dramatic account of harmless jokes that possessed no ill intent. But this is exactly where they err. They see that immigrants and the minority should have to pay the immigrant tax, an acceptance of the racist culture of America in return for the opportunity of living here and having a shot at the American dream. Minority children are being offered an education that we’re paying for and one that they wouldn’t have in their native countries and they can’t even appreciate it: such is the belief of so many.
But isn’t assimilation supposed to be the opposite of this? Shouldn’t assimilation be a mutual exercise? Isn’t that the basis of even the most superficial social interaction? As people enter this country, isn’t it our job to hear them and adopt them? Ultimately, that’s the only way assimilation can occur. The majority that permits this has to exterminate their ignorance, especially in their children. Otherwise, minority youth cannot embrace their roots and will strike an identity crisis as they drudge through the struggles of life in a land of unaccepting people.
