Masks are part of the new normal in our coronavirus reality. Everyone is wearing them now, and when someone isn’t, most people give them a wide berth. It’s become so commonplace that I’m even a little jarred and disturbed when I see a bare face.
This week I have been noticing some of the masks I wear that prevent me from becoming my truest self. I put them on unconsciously but there were reasons, and as I examine them, I see that they’re mostly because I feared or didn’t like what was underneath. Behind my mask of perfectionism—imposing rules on others to follow and getting frustrated when they don’t do things “the right way”—the truth is that I can’t stand it when I mess up and dread harsh consequences from others when they see that I have. And under that mask is another—always keeping myself busy and worrying about things—because deep down, I am terrified that if I take my eyes off the balls I’m juggling for one second, everything will just go down the drain, so I can never stop going or else I’ll be totally screwed. And that is probably a mask in itself because under that, there must be more—perhaps doubt that there can really be grace for my failings, or that I can fully trust God to take care of me. I’m a Russian nesting doll of masks with a stranger in the middle.
So I want to make it a practice to ask myself often in all sorts of situations: Am I wearing a mask right now? And commit to taking it off and dealing with what’s underneath, to not just covering up the issues and pretending they’re not there. A hard question, yet the work of removing the layers of masks over one’s lifetime is necessary for growth. How can I ever become a better person if I don’t admit to myself who I am first?
Today is Pentecost Sunday. It is also six days after we saw the death of George Floyd by the hands of officer Derek Chauvin caught on video, which launched widespread protest in Minneapolis and in other cities across the states. Three days after the escalating protests turned into riots that resulted in a police precinct building and a Target being set on fire. Two days after the president threatened that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” (a phrase coined by Miami police chief Walter Headley who was known for his violent tactics against civil rights protests in the 1960s, such as having officers patrol black neighborhoods with shotguns and dogs, and strip-searching a black teenager and dangling him over a bridge).
I grew up in the Pentecostal denomination, which is named for the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the early church in a fiery way to transform and empower them to do the work of God. It was the fulfilment of prophecy of Joel—that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all people, that sons and daughters would prophesy, young men would see visions, old men would dream dreams, and women too would prophesy (Joel 2:28-29). Pentecostals believe that the gift of prophecy is still available today. Growing up, I was taught that the role of a prophet was to communicate what the Spirit was saying to the people of God, and that the intention of prophecy was to strengthen, encourage, and comfort others and to edify the church (1 Corinthians 14: 3-4). Jeremiah described his experience of being a prophet this way: “But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). I don’t pretend to be a prophet in any sense of holding an official office, but the roots of my faith are still Pentecostal—a legacy which, like every legacy, is complex and cause for both gratitude and internal wrestling. When I observe what is happening in our country now, I feel words in my heart like a fire, about a subject which I never felt adequate to speak on but which I am finally compelled to say something about.
As an Asian person living in America, all my life I have worn the convenient mask of being part of the so-called “model minority.” Aside from being called “flat nose” by one kid in elementary school, it wasn’t until I went to college in Missouri that I really felt a difference in how I was treated as a non-white person, compared to the white majority around me. But even though I often felt the difference, it wasn’t something I wanted to make a fuss about. I relied on my masks of being an English major and reading, talking, and dressing the part to show that I wasn’t a FOB (short for fresh-off-the-boat, a derogatory term for an Asian immigrant who hasn’t assimilated to America yet), that I liked the same music, TV shows, and books as my white friends, and felt embarrassed by my unconscious subtle Asian traits that white friends would often find funny, such as my love of fruit as a snack or dessert, wanting to eat rice with most meals, and not wearing shoes inside, but always laughed along with them instead of saying anything. I had a professor who chose to make me a target of jokes and asked in front of the entire class if I “spoke Anglo” and when I replied “excuse me?” he pretended to be scared and commented how I was “so serious,” but I just finished out the rest of the semester in his class, praying that he would leave me alone.
In 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson woke me up to the racism experienced by the black community, but while I closely followed the news and donated money, I still did not speak up. However, as a certain unattributed text image which has been circling around lately on social media says: “It is not enough to be quietly non-racist, now is the time to be vocally anti-racist.” It’s time for me to take off my masks of not being educated enough on race to speak up and wanting to keep the peace with everyone in my social circles to confront my cowardice resulting in complicit silence with white supremacy.
As I hold the mirror up to my own masked face and try not to flinch away from what I see, I invite and challenge you to look, too. With everything happening in our country during this time, I’m starting to ask myself these questions: What is the mask here? Who is wearing it, and do they know that they are? Am I the one wearing the mask?
To my friends who would like to stand next to me and look in the mirror:
If you are an Asian living in America, do you wear a mask of complaining about anti-Asian racism (such as that experienced by many Asians during our coronavirus pandemic), but beneath it you are silent about the anti-black racism among your community, from the overtly aggressive (that an Asian man named Tou Thao was one of the three officers who just watched when George Floyd stopped breathing under his colleague’s knee) to the insidious throwaway comments of your older Asian relatives such as “hak gwai” (a derogatory Cantonese term for a black person literally meaning black ghost)?
If you believe that peaceful protest is the best and only way to achieve social change, are you wearing a mask of ignorantly believing in the sanitized, suitable for white society image of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who actually said in his speech “The Other America”: “I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
If you condemn the rioting and looting that is happening right now, are you wearing a mask of propriety, respect for law and order, and belief that destruction of property is not a valid form of protest, but underneath it, you are unaware of the pain the black community is going through and that in your privileged ignorance, you are dismissing the murders of black people as not warranting escalated action and that you are essentially valuing property over human lives? Did you know that the Boston Tea Party was a riot and that the present-day value of the tea that was dumped is estimated at around $1 million? Did you know that the CEO of Target has issued a statement of sympathy with the protesters and that the owner of Gandhi Mahal restaurant that also caught on fire when the police precinct burned said, “Let my building burn, justice needs to be served”? Did you know that when Jesus went into the temple and found injustice and corruption, he ransacked the market? Do you really believe that “things don’t matter, people matter”?
If all of the above questions I have asked are not giving you second thoughts about taking off your masks, here’s one last one:
If you are one of the people who responds to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter,” or you take issue with Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem in peaceful protest or with other black celebrities making speeches because “they’re getting too political” and “they should stay in their lane,” and you do not approve of any of the forms of black protest you’ve seen, then I have to ask: what’s really under there? Is it just plain old racism?
As James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
Friends, no matter what’s underneath your mask, taking it off is a step in the right direction.
Ijeoma Oluo, the author of So You Want to Talk About Race says, “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including yourself. And it’s the only way forward.”
As I said earlier in this too-long post, the work of removing one’s layers of masks over one’s lifetime is necessary for growth. It’s hard work, but it’s good work. And as we work to take off our masks to confront and dismantle our own racism and that of others’, we are doing the work of love—the only work that matters.
Won’t you join me in this work? I have a lot of catching up to do—starting with my favorite activity, reading! Beginning with this resource doc and How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (once it’s in stock somewhere again). If anyone has any additional recommendations, I’d love to hear them! When you’re new to anything, it’s important to listen to the experts in the field—those who have been doing the work long before you—and to support them in tangible ways like donating to organizations like Black Lives Matter, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Minnesota Freedom Fund, Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, and North Star Health Collective. I am just at the start of my journey, but who knows? Maybe one day we’ll see each other in the streets making “good trouble.”
PHOEBE AU-YEUNG 