Unfinished people
By Deauwand Myers
For Daniel: Stay encouraged.
Being a university professor has many privileges, one of which is a paid and extended vacation. With almost three months of winter leave, I always try to either travel or find extracurricular work.
I was hired for a winter English camp. At these camps, I’m able to utilize skills and abilities I don’t normally use. I like to draw and sing, for example, which are not of much use to me at a university.
As with most camps I’ve worked at, the children were great.
Unlike most camps I’ve worked at, my superiors were kind and accommodating. My subordinates were the same. Most of the other instructors were good, too. But there are always a few foreigners who simply won’t do.
The older I get, the more I realize that for far too many adults, maturation stopped at high school: a world of petty rivalries, casual brutality, selfishness, emotional immaturity, and frankly, an obvious lack of breeding, or as we say in the Southern United States, a lack of ``home training.”
One such guy, a young, bearded, American white male, a professor at the very institution in which this particular camp was being held, fell quite easily into this category.
At a faculty get-together, in a rustic tavern, inevitably cold, dark, yet homey and charming (the town, peculiarly called a ``city,” doesn’t even have a movie theater, but I digress) I met this American on more intimate terms.
It wasn’t five minutes into our conversation, when he said, ``I have a ton of black jokes.” I was shocked at this for several reasons. I’m black, clearly, was the first. But more: he was American, and from a Southern state, steeped in the long and bloody history of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, burnings, and all the rest of the horrors of what former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls America’s ``birth defect.”
I had never, and do not ever, mention race, religion, marital status, age, salary, and other personal topics in conversations with perfect strangers. I thought to myself, what would make him think this was an appropriate thing to say to anyone, let alone me? Why would he think such a thing would impress me?
What kinds of friends does he have who’d think telling black jokes, or jokes about Jews, women, gays, Latinos, Asians, the disabled, in other words, ``the others,” was an appropriate thing to do at all? What, exactly, is funny about hanging young black men and women from poplar trees? What's hilarious about violence towards women, or gay people, or the poor and disenfranchised? What’s comical about Jewish children walking to their deaths, to Dachau and Belsen?
The cruelty of his comments, the rank disrespect, the implications of his character, are all very damning: the lack of breeding, or as we say in the Southern United States, a lack of ``home training," is what first came to my mind.
How many ridiculous foreigners have you met, complaining that, at a Korean restaurant, no one speaks English? Or spouting, as I was unlucky enough to be witness to, hateful, racist commentary? Or just, in general, not even attempting to be human, let alone adults.
Sadly, there are too many foreigners in Asia not worthy to teach or live here. No one is complete. No one is perfect, certainly not this writer. Yet, at the very least, I aspire to completion. I desire enlightenment. I seek wisdom. Yet, all around me, I find people, my own countrymen, no less, very happy in their unhappiness, content in their malcontent to play the part of fool and jester, assuming a familiarity with me they haven’t earned, nor have I given.
Be wary and beware. These are the ones who help make the rest of our lives difficult. These are the unfinished people.
The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. Contact him at deauwand@hotmail.com.