Blackface and Yellowface

When I was in Pennsylvania, I had noticed that black face students hung around with black face students and yellow face students hung around with yellow face students. Not always, but almost always they talked together played together studied together and even in the class room they sat together with the same skin color students.

One day, I asked one of the Chinese students why do you almost always hang around with just Asians? He could not answer, but just smiled. I thought the reason was because of a cultural gap or language barrier. However, I was still curious about that since between black faced students and white face students, there was no language barrier or cultural gap; they still hung around with the same skin color students. In sociology class, I asked the white face girl student the same question. She said that she could not even sense that circumstance until then. Finally, she asked the whole class the same question instead of me. No one answered a specific reason. They just shrugged their shoulders. Moreover, I had noticed that black face students almost always sat at the back corner of the classroom as if they were trying to make themselves invisible.

When I moved to Seattle, I realized that the environment is much different from Pennsylvania. The black face students often hang around with the white face students and it seemed very natural. Thus, when one student asked me how different Pennsylvania from Seattle, I answered that I thought Seattle seemed more liberal. But still, yellow face students usually hang around with yellow face students on the campus.

Since I love movies, I have seen many movies including racism and anti- racism movies such as A Time to Kill, The Human Stain, etc. In A Time to Kill, although I loved the plot of the story, but still I was wondering why the father, who got unfair treatment, needed to be helped not by the social system but by the white face lawyers.
In The Human Stain, the respected professor ruined his life and lost all of his achievements by just one verbal mistake. The irony and sad thing of The Human Stain was that he was not a racist and he could not be a racist because he actually had black face ancestors. But he could not tell his story because he never told the truth to anyone in his entire life. He lived as a white face man. His misery came to him maybe because of his not telling the truth and because of his actual race, but what I believe, however, was that the society forced him to lie.

As far as I know up until ten to twenty years ago in almost all American movies, the black face people were represented as not very good figures. It is also true that in almost all American movies, yellow face people are almost always represented as a lower class citizen than white face people. As movies reflect like a mirror of our society, then why do American movies express and treat black face people and yellow face people that way. The movie (or the media) could be misleading people or implant false idea into the society.

After my car was attacked by someone, one of my friends, who I met in the University of Washington, wanted to see my car, so I visited her house. When she saw my car she almost cried. She insisted to report to the police what had happened. I said to her that I was falling in love with Seattle, but after the incident and because of fear, I wanted to move to another place as soon as possible. She was so sorry for my having such a terrifying experience. She has a white face and I have a yellow face, but between the two of us, there is no difference or discrimination. We are just good friends who can talk to each other about our happiness and how to write a good composition. That is all.

After talking, she took me to her daughter’s track meeting which was held in a local high school. There were a lot of white faces, black faces and yellow faces: the students, the parents and the teachers. They cheered and applauded to the runners all together without any barriers.

During a 1,500 meter run, one of the white face boys did not look like he was feeling well so he ran slowly. He could barely run and he became the last one of the race. Everyone on the team went through the finish line except him, and he had to run one more track. He seemed very much in pain. Suddenly, a black face boy student started to run with him on the outer edge of the track. They ran together to the finish line as a result the white face boy did not need to give up the race. Everyone in the field gave them a loud applause. It was a beautiful moment.

The brisk wind came from the cloudy sky. I deeply breathed in my heart. At least at that moment, I could believe that in the future there will be no dividing into groups by face color. Slowly but surely, our young generations will break our typical stereo type of prejudice of skin color. I want to believe that our next generation would think that separation by skin color is the most unintelligent thing to do.