TOKENS PODCAST: S3E13
In light of the recent rise of anti-Asian-American hostility and violence, we interview Dr. Karen Korematsu, daughter of famed civil-rights activist Fred Korematsu, the namesake of the infamous 1944 Supreme Court Case Korematsu v. United States. Mr. Korematsu, a Japanese-American and American citizen, refused to comply with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s executive order which would have forced his re-location to an American “concentration camp.” In addition, we talk to Korean-born activist Eugene Cho, on his moving experiences as an American immigrant. Plus, live musical performances by Buddy Greene and the Most Outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys.
LINKS TO LISTEN:
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
Eugene’s Book: No Longer Strangers
Eugene’s Book: Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Rev. Eugene Cho’s many passions involve leadership, justice, the whole Gospel, and the pursuit of God’s Kingdom here on this earth. He travels throughout the world to encourage churches, non-profits, pastors, leaders, missionaries, and justice workers – whether this happens in churches, arenas, conferences, universities, or as a guest in underground churches or refugee camps.
Eugene is the President/CEO of Bread for the World and Bread Institute, a prominent non-partisan Christian advocacy organization urging both national and global decision makers to help end hunger – both in the United States and around the world. Bread has been engaged in this critical discipleship of advocacy for the hungry and vulnerable since its inception in 1974.
He is also the founder and visionary of One Day’s Wages (ODW) – a grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty. The vision of ODW is to create a collaborative movement that promotes awareness, invites simple giving (one day’s wages) and supports sustainable relief through partnerships, especially with smaller organizations in developing regions. Since its launch in October 2009, ODW has raised over $8 million dollars for projects to empower those living in extreme global poverty. ODW has been featured in the New York Times, The Seattle Times, NPR, Christianity Today and numerous other media outlets.
He is also the founder and former Senior Pastor of Quest Church – an urban, multi-cultural and multi-generational church in Seattle, Washington. After 18 years, Eugene stepped aside at Quest in 2018.
For his entrepreneurial work, Eugene was honored as one of 50 Everyday American Heroes and a recipient of the Frederick Douglass 200 – included in a list of 200 people around the world who best embody the spirit and work of Frederick Douglass, one of the most influential figures in history. Eugene was also the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Eugene is the author of two acclaimed books, Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics (2020) and Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World Than Actually Changing the World? (2014)
Eugene and Minhee have been married for 23 years and have three children. Together, they live in Seattle, Washington.
Dr. Karen Korematsu is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the daughter of the late civil rights icon, Fred Korematsu. Since her father’s passing in 2005, Karen has carried on his legacy as a public speaker, educator and civil rights advocate. She shares her father’s passion for social justice and education and in 2009 established the Fred T. Korematsu Institute to advance racial equity, social justice and human rights for all. The Institute’s work has expanded from K-12 civic education to promoting Public civic engagement and participation. Karen crisscrosses the country speaking to audiences from Kindergarten to Judges and inspiring and promoting Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution of January 30.
Karen’s work extends to advocating civil liberties and social justice for all communities and addresses current issues that draws upon lessons of the past. She has presented to Teachers College Columbia University, NY, New York and since 2012, the National and State Councils for the Social Studies and was Co-chair of the Annual National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Conference, 2017.
She has signed on to amicus briefs in several cases opposing violations of constitutional rights arising after 9/11, including Odah v. United States, Turkman v. Ashcroft, Hedges v. Obama, and Hassan v. City of New York and Hawaii v. Trump in 2018.
In 2015, Karen was inducted as the first non-lawyer member of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. She serves on the board of directors of Advancing Justice-AAJC and NAPABA Law Foundation. Karen has been interviewed on radio, podcasts and TV. Her Op/Ed’s have appeared in the NY Times and Washington Post. Karen has received numerous awards and honors including GMNY 2015 Isidore Starr Award, Muslim Advocates-Voice of Freedom Award; the “Key to the City of Dearborn, Michigan”; and the ACLU-Chief Justice Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. In May 2019, Karen received the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) Community Leadership Award, Washington, DC.
Karen received her first honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont in May 2019. By invitation: University of CA, Berkeley, School of Law for CA Law Review- Published essay: Karen Korematsu, L.H.D., Carrying on Korematsu: Reflections on my Father’s Legacy, WOMEN & LAW, page 95, (2020) (joint publication of the top sixteen law reviews).
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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TRANSCRIPT
Lee Camp: Welcome to Tokens Show, the variety show about things that matter. I'm Lee C. Camp. Today, "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Karen Korematsu: The government had these prison centers up and down the West Coast. And even President Roosevelt referred to these camps as concentration camps.
Lee Camp: That's Dr. Karen Korematsu, founder and executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, named after her father. He was a civil-rights-activist, who was imprisoned along with other Japanese-Americans in the United States following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We'll also hear from Euguene Cho, CEO of Bread for the World, describing his own experience as a Korean-born American citizen.
Eugene Cho: I don't know of a single Asian person in my life who's not heard the phrase “go back home.”
Lee Camp: Also a live musical performance from our friend Buddy Greene. Coming right up.
SEGMENT 1
Lee Camp: Hello friends. I'm Lee C. Camp, host of Tokens Show, the variety show honoring truth-tellers, justice-seekers, and those who do courageous acts of mercy. Today's episode: "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, among others, place a high priority upon hospitality. In some of the ancient stories told in these traditions, to extend hospitality may in fact be extending hospitality to God. To withhold hospitality, then, is a potentially foolish proposition.
The Greek word used for hospitality in the New Testament is the word "philo-xenia," which is literally translated "love of strangers." It entails a willingness to welcome a stranger into one's own home, to let a stranger make their own home in one's community.
This word--philo-xenia--is etymologically related to the word xenophobia: a fear of strangers.
Eugene Cho: I think so much of what compels and drives human beings is the psychology of fear.
Lee Camp: That's Eugene Cho, Korean-American activist and author. More he says this about modern day america...
Eugene Cho: Our society runs on the currency of fear.
Lee Camp: Given the prevalence of such fear, and given his own status as an Asian-American, he has a front-row seat to speak to the prevalence of xeno-phobia, that fear of so-called strangers:
Eugene Cho: I don't know of a single Asian person in my life who's not heard the phrase “go back home.”
Lee Camp: Both sociological studies and anecdotal evidence point to a troubling rise in anti-Asian-American hate crimes. And yet the existing long history of such seems little known. It's an American reality which I remember receiving little to no formal education in either my public or private schooling.
Karen Korematsu: He was born in Oakland, California.
Lee Camp: This is Dr. Karen Korematsu. She's the daughter of Fred Korematsu, who was a civil rights activist and namesake of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute.
Karen Korematsu: He was an American citizen, the son of Japanese immigrants. He grew up just like any other American kid and loved sports and to be with his friends. And when the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7th, 1941, he was suspicious that maybe Japan might do something crazy because they were going into China at that time, they were invading China and other countries. And then when the executive order 9066 was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19th, 1942, that would forcibly remove any one of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and put them in American concentration camps.
Lee Camp: U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order to displace Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, and put them in what Roosevelt called "concentration camps."
Karen Korematsu: First of all, the government had these detention assembly prison centers up and down the West Coast.
And then eventually they constructed 10 concentration camps across this country from as far, you know, as California to Arkansas. And even President Roosevelt referred to these camps as concentration camps.
Lee Camp: What were the camps like once they were incarcerated?
Karen Korematsu: This is another part of the story that people don't know about. The government in the military, in their haste, especially along the West Coast. So you had the entire state of California, half of Washington to the west, half of Oregon to the west, and then half of Arizona to the west, all those people that were in those zones, zone one and two, they found horse stalls basically, or racetracks. So race and tracks up and down the West Coast. And all the government did was to whitewash horse stalls. And you had a dirt floor. A light bulb, an iron army cot, a blanket and it still smelled like manure.
There was dysentery in these detention prison centers. And they had to live like that for at least four months and then they were shipped off by train to one of the concentration camps across this country. And they were just barracks. They were wood barracks with tar paper, no insulation. There was no central heating. If, you know, sometimes it would get my family went to Topaz, Utah.
It would be hotter than Hades in the summertime and freezing cold in the winter time. Some people die just because of the conditions. Uh, you might have a pot, belly stove, and, you know, you might have six families in one barrack and the way that they define those areas by a rope across the width with a blanket and people had to live like that for three or four years.
It totally disrupted families, but they had to learn how to create their own little communities, create their own education, build hospitals, try to carry on with their lives. And you know, they even had baseball in the camps. I mean, you couldn't take a baseball bat with you, mind you, because that was considered to be a weapon for goodness sakes.
So then they had to have people, friends send in kind of, you know, these sports equipment, or even educational materials or musical instruments.
Lee Camp: At 23 years old, Karen's father, Fred Korematsu, received the nationwide executive order to go to one of these camps.
Karen Korematsu: Everyone had been sent off to report to one of the detention assembly centers up and down the West Coast. And this was all done without due process of law. There was no access to an attorney, any charges or any day in court. And my father learned about the Constitution in high school. So he thought, why should he have to go to a prison camp when he had done nothing wrong?
And even though this was an official, executive order, by the president, he just wanted to live his life as an American citizen. So he refused to report. Two thirds of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were American citizens. Think about that. And one third were children under the age of 18 years old.
I mean, from the time of Pearl Harbor, I mean, everyone was scared. When they were ordered to report to these detention prison camps, they could only take with them what they could carry in two hands. Period. And you didn't know where you were going, how long you were going to be away, what the conditions were going to be like. And people lost their property. They lost their homes, they lost their businesses. it really wasn't injustice against American citizens, and all along my father just didn't want to leave his home.
Lee Camp: This phrase, that Fred Korematsu...
Karen Korematsu: didn't want to leave his home
Lee Camp: ...reminded me about something I heard the week before. The activist, pastor and author Eugene Cho told me this:
Eugene Cho: The phrase I heard ever since I was an immigrant, often probably set out of ignorance or meanness. But the sad thing is this question that I'm about to say never subsided. It actually only intensified. This question has been posed to us again and again and again, and the statement goes like this: “go back home.”
I don't know of a single Asian person in my life who's not heard the phrase “go back home.”
Lee Camp: This phrase, this fear of the other, echoes the sentiment that radically took hold in the U.S. following the attack on Pearl Harbor. That sentiment directly affected Dr. Korematsu's father, who like so many Asian-Americans, was not afforded his most basic individual human rights by the government, or many of his fellow citizens.
A famous columnist, Westbrook Pegler in the Los Angeles times said the Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now. And to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over. What do you do with that sort of blunt lack of consideration for the humanity of other people?
Karen Korematsu: The first reaction is prejudice is ignorance. And the only way that we can fight that in our most powerful weapon is education. So, this is the history of our systemic racism in this country. It kind of goes on and on and on. The faces may change, but the outright racism is still there. And it's a lack of education about our different cultures. We're all Americans. We, you know, this country was built on the backs of immigrants for goodness sakes, like my grandparents.
So all of a sudden it's like immigration has become a dirty word. And we treat people with this outright racism and disrespect, because we don't understand their cultures and the struggles that they've all had.
Lee Camp: Agnes Cunningham, nicknamed Sis, was an educator, musician, and song-writer. She often performed the protest and folk music of the 20th century, and was a colleague of the legendary Pete Seeger. Such music was always particularly attentive to the struggles of the poor, the migrant, and the marginalized. Here's our friend Buddy Greene on one of our live shows singing Sis Cunningham's song "How Can You Keep on Moving."
You're listening to Tokens Show and our episode entitled "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Remember you can always find out more about Tokens Show at tokensshow.com. We'd be delighted for you to join us for one of our live events, and you can find out more about upcoming shows at tokensshow.com. You can get our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitchr, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. More with Karen Korematsu and Eugene Cho, coming right up.
SEGMENT 2
Welcome back to Tokens Show and our episode entitled "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Eugene Cho: I don't know of a single Asian person in my life who's not heard the phrase “go back home.”
Lee Camp: Again, that's Eugene Cho, a Korean-American immigrant, as well as pastor, activist, author, and now CEO of Bread for the World, a non-profit seeking to end global hunger in our generation.
Eugene Cho: I was born in Seoul, South Korea, immigrated when I was six years old. I'm the youngest of three sons. My parents robbed me of the privilege of potentially becoming a K-pop star, that is not possible anymore. Uh, they weren't able to go to school. They experienced extreme hunger and poverty. Having so much hunger pains that memories of having to pull out grass from the ground and to consume it. And so, you know, it's an example of one of those immigrant stories where they were seeking a better opportunity for their children. A chance for their three sons to go to college, to become educated and to have a better life for themselves.
Lee Camp: So you come with your parents, age six. What are some of your memories as a young boy of being an immigrant to the United States?
Eugene Cho: There's many, even though simultaneously I think I've also repressed some of them because you experienced hardship and challenges being seen as an other. But some of my most vivid memories, number one, is getting on the airplane for the very first time in Seoul, Korea, to San Francisco. I had never obviously been on an airplane. Getting in on one that in itself was the most terrifying experience. The second, most vivid example is getting off the airplane and seeing for the very first time white people. And then one week later to be on the public bus system in San Francisco called the muni bus system and to be a student in the first grade, that was traumatic.
I became incredibly reclusive because I was so afraid to raise my hands during class. I remember my parents receiving a report card with the words “Eugene has very deep, intense social issues, including the inability to go to the restroom.”
It was the fear of raising my hand as a first grader in a room of 25 other people, not knowing how to speak English. And so on the one or two occasions a week when I could not hold my bladder, I would pee my pants and you know, first graders, kids, teenagers can also be very ruthless and blunt.
And so I had a very bad reputation as being a peeing Eugene. So it was hard. And eventually these things led to me wondering, you know, who am I, where do I belong? Where is my home? And the that I heard ever since I was an immigrant “go back home.”
Gosh, I'm 50 years old now. So about 44 years hearing that comment or question, where are you from? Or go back home.
Karen Korematsu: My father just didn't want to leave his home.
Lee Camp: Again, that's Dr. Karen Korematsu, daughter of Civil Rights activist Fred Korematsu, who as a 23 year old Japanese-American and U.S. citizen, decided simply to -stay- home: in San Leandro California. And by doing so, he was refusing to obey President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order which would have meant relocating to an American concentration camp for Japanese-Americans, following the attack upon Pearl Harbor. He was subsequently arrested, tried and convicted of violating the Executive Order, sentenced to five years probation, and then sent to one of the assembly camps in San Bruno, CA. From there he and his family were forcibly relocated to a camp in Utah. Meanwhile, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction. He had one last appeal.
Karen Korematsu: My father fought his case all the way to the Supreme court.
Lee Camp: But On December 18th, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld the conviction, by a 6 to 3 vote. Justice Hugo Black, for the majority, argued that "pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can."
Dr. Korematsu commented on the 3 dissenting justices, who had strong words regarding the decision.
Karen Korematsu: The three dissenting opinions are still relevant today. So Justice Jackson referred to it as this lies around like a loaded weapon, ready for anyone to pick up and use with the plausible cause.
Justice Murphy in 1944, called it the ugly abyss of racism. And Justice Owen Roberts said it was unconstitutional.
Now you can take this in two different roads, right? You can take the road that makes you angry and aggressive and a chip on your shoulder. Or you can go down the road where you want to make some positive change and to do the right thing. My father had moral principles. He was quiet, he was introverted. But he was a person of his conviction. And he never had a swear word in his life. I mean, I never heard him swear at all, which I know is very unusual. People kind of don't believe me, but he was like that.
My mother was like that too. Um, but it was that generation. He never blamed anyone. He wasn't, angry. In fact, you know, he said, protest, but not with violence. Otherwise they won't listen to you. But don't be afraid to speak up. And that's the way that he lived his life. He treated everyone, like he wanted to be treated and it's you know, it's that quiet conviction.
Lee Camp: That quiet conviction sustained him for decades. But in 1983 his court case reopened. The original court argument was that there was a military necessity for detaining Japanese-Americans. But turns out there wasn't.
Karen Korematsu: It took almost 40 years to find the evidence in Washington, DC, the smoking gun that proved there was no military necessity for the Japanese-Americans to be incarcerated.
Number one, there was never any evidence of any spying or espionage up and down the West Coast. Number two, Professor, uh, Peter Irons and a researcher, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga found this smoking gun. And at the time of my father's Supreme Court hearing in 44, the department of justice had lied to the Supreme Court, had withheld evidence and altered evidence.
And since my father had served his sentence and there was two other Supreme Court cases Hirabayashi and, uh, Yasui that had to do with disobeying the curfew, that they were able to reopen up these Supreme Court cases. Because of this information that was not given at the time, I mean, who knows what the Supreme Court would have decided had they had all this information. And there were even reports that were kept from this Supreme court. The Naval Ringle report said there was never any spying or espionage. J Edgar Hoover of all people even said that he said that there was no reason for the Japanese Americans to be incarcerated. So that type of evidence was withheld from the Supreme Court. It was absolutely a miscarriage of justice.
Lee Camp: At one point Fred Korematsu was offered a pardon. His wife, Karen's mother, replied that actually it was Fred who:
Karen Korematsu: Should really pardon the government. This is my mother, the outspoken woman from Greenville, South Carolina, a Southern girl.
Lee Camp: Yeah. A Southern girl. Yeah. We like that Southern girl.
Karen Korematsu: Yeah, absolutely.
Lee Camp: So the district court overturned Fred Korematsu's conviction. The legal precedent of Korematsu set by the Supreme Court in 1944, however, has not been explicitly overturned in a subsequent Supreme Court case. In the 2018 case Trump v. Hawaii, Chief Justice John Roberts did repudiate the Korematsu ruling, leading Justice Sonia Sotomayer in her dissenting opinion to conclude nonetheless that the Court has taken "the important step of finally overruling Korematsu."
Lee Camp: This is Tokens Show and our episode entitled "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience." You're currently hearing our Most Outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys at one of our shows at the Ryman Auditorium, performing a beautiful traditional folk song entitled "My Own Home."
Remember you can always find out more about Tokens Show at tokensshow.com. We'd be delighted for you to join us for one of our live events, and you can find out about upcoming shows, again, at tokensshow.com. You can get our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitchr, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
More, coming right up, from Eugene Cho.
SEGMENT 3
Lee Camp: Welcome back to Tokens Show and our episode entitled "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Eugene Cho: You begin to really ask that question, then, then where is my home? Where do I belong? What is my identity?
Lee Camp: Again, that's Eugene Cho, Korean-American, and CEO of Bread for the World, speaking of the psychological impact of being repeatedly told:
Eugene Cho: “go back home.”
Lee Camp: Eugene immigrated to the United States with his family when he was six years old. As noted earlier, his parents, in Korea, had experienced...
Eugene Cho: Extreme hunger and poverty. Having so much hunger pains that memories of having to pull out grass from the ground and to consume it. It's an example of one of those immigrant stories where they were seeking a better opportunity for their children.
Lee Camp: And yet experiencing others' fear, their xenophobia, led to Mr. Cho's particular adolescent struggles:
Eugene Cho: I think some ways every adolescent begins to have identity questions. But not one that I think speaks directly to belonging, you know, where is your home?
So I really began to wrestle with that, which then began to spiral me into some anger issues. I was really angry at my parents for making the decision to immigrate to bring us to the United States. And so when I was in middle school, I actually had the opportunity to go back to Korea, to visit for the summer for the first time.
And I looked at that as my source of deep liberation, in a sense of meaning, and what was shocking to me, which then only ratcheted my identity crisis even more. When I was in Korea for that two months, I actually heard that very same statement said to me, by native Koreans, “go back home.”
Lee Camp: He recounts then, what becomes a triple-challenge to his sense of identity and lack of being "at home." The loss of home in his original homeland; the challenge of being an immigrant in a new homeland; and his sense that his theological commitments as a Christian pastor have also on occasion contributed to a sense of alienation.
His acceptance of a status of being something of a stranger, a stranger in multiple ways, is reflected in his recent book entitled: Thou Shalt Not be a Jerk: A Christian Guide to Engaging Politics. The book has, unsurprisingly, gotten him plenty of critics from both the right and the left.
I asked him about one chapter entitled "Thou Shalt Listen, And Build Bridges."
Eugene Cho: Well, so going back to Jesus's words about love your neighbor. I can't imagine meeting Christians and even non Christians who would not be in support of the idea of loving your neighbors. But you cannot love your neighbors, if you don't know your neighbors. And you can't know your neighbors, if you don't understand the art of being a human, which means to share stories and to listen to stories, it's incredibly dignifying when you choose to listen to others and vice versa. I do want to acknowledge, yes, I think there's a reality that there are certain conversations that are so outside the realm, you know?
And so when somebody wants to speak about inflicting violence and harm, we have to be emphatically clear that in any healthy civil society, we can't leave room for violence and abuse. But I also want to acknowledge that I think a good chunk of our society may be seeing things differently. It's just that we're now being dictated by headlines rather than the actual opportunity to engage in friendships and relationships.
And I'm not here trying to sound overly spiritual, but I think the more I grow as a Christian and the more I study Jesus’ life, he is, hospitality personified in the flesh.
You know, his invitation to Levi, the tax collector. Who was hated by everyone for the obvious reasons. I mean, he was the worst of the worst, a betrayer of his own people who stole on top of the tax money for the other Roman villainous empire. And for Jesus to befriend him, to humanize him, to have a meal with him, to love him. I don't know. That is, it's stunning.
Lee Camp: So in this time, in which we are continuing to see such polarization, I would invite you to one or both avenues of response. What are things that give you hope? Or second. What are daily practices, habits, wisdom that you hold on to as crucial for you in living a good life as a human being in a time like this?
Eugene Cho: Yeah. Well, thank you for asking that question. Like you I'm fully aware even with our limited understanding and scope of the brokenness of our world and the last year and a half, 14, 15 months in our nation and around the world. I mean, it's unthinkable to try to grasp what we've experienced in collective trauma: that global pandemic, social injustice, police brutality to see black and brown bodies slain, we've seen the unimaginable surge and rise of Asian American Pacific Islander hate and racism. I've had conversations that are just really painful.
So it's not just news. It's very personal. About six weeks ago I had a really bad fight with my father. And I'll get to your question, but I just, I want your listeners to know how deeply painful, the surge of AAPI hate and racism has been.
Lee Camp: If you're unfamiliar with the acronym AAPI, it stands for "Asian American and Pacific Islander."
Eugene Cho: And it's been again, very dear, very close. You know, I don't know of a single Asian person in my life who's not heard the phrase “go back home” or to be labeled and to shout at slurs over the past year.
There have been churches in Seattle that have been vandalized with some of the most violent rhetoric. I just had a friend who was a pastor of a church in New Jersey during our good Friday services.
They got hacked in by folks that began to scream the most viral comments, bomb them with pornography. And this was a family good Friday service. Um, so I just want people to know that, you know, beyond these headlines, this is happening all around us.
But six weeks ago, I'm having a conversation with my dad. It escalates into a pretty difficult fight. Now I'm not afraid of my father anymore. He's 85. I can take him in a wrestling match if I need to. I just want him to know that in the case that he hears this conversation, but the reason why we're having this fight is because out of the blue, he is insisting on buying a gun. 85 years old, insisting on buying a gun. And of course, I'm asking what's going on? Why are you wanting to buy a gun? And, you know, there's something that just hurts when you hear your 85 year old father who literally shakes as he walks because of his age and how afraid he is. And he feels the need to protect himself and his wife, my mom. It just hurts so much to hear that. And you know, I don't share this too often. This year. Yeah, really weird. This past year was the first time since being a young boy post immigration, where after you hear the phrase, “go back home”, you know, my wife and I, for the first time this year, actually had a conversation. Is it time to leave? Which is ridiculous because this is my home. I grew up here. I love this country. I love Seattle. We're moving to DC. I've got a job that is hard, but it's making a difference in the world. But I think it's just, if anything, I'm not trying to overly dramatize, I'm trying to give people this sense that this is what a lot of AAPI folks are struggling with, which then I think makes your question that much more poignant.
Like what gives you a sense of hope during this time? And the reason why I wanted to first highlight some of these challenges is I don't believe in false hope. I don't believe in giddy hope. I think that's dangerous. I think it's actually harmful. It doesn't lead us to lament and we need lament in order to experience hope.
Jürgen Moltmann who wrote a seminal book on hope, the Theology of Hope. He once said something to the extent genuine hope is not blind optimism. It has eyes to see the suffering around and yet believes in the future. That's given me a lot of resolve.
I don't want to be blind to the suffering around me. That's dangerous fatalism. It's not a healthy spirituality, but at the same time, I don't believe that the answer to all things begins and ends on what we see and the circumstances around us. So that gives me a sense of hope and resolve. Also want to make sure that we leave plenty of room in our hearts and our minds to acknowledge the beauty around us, the joy around us, the hospitality around us, the friendship around us. It may not sell as well because our society runs on the currency of fear. But I refuse to believe that it is dominated by hate.
Because I do not believe that’s true.
Lee Camp: So on Moltmann’s twofold eyes that see, let’s first point to those eyes that see for just a moment and ask what might white Americans, what might we not see that you would wish as a person of Korean birth we would see?
Eugene Cho: Hm. Well, first of all, Korean food is the best. Um, it’s the greatest. I'm biased but I'm just going to go out there and just say it. Uh, that's number one. You know, let me just try to take kind of a circuitous approach to this. You know, I think so much of what compels and drives human beings is the psychology of fear in our world.
I think so many people are afraid. And so when I speak with my white neighbors, my white friends, my white congregants, I think there is a fear that they might somehow be overlooked, that they're losing something, that they no longer matter.
And I would just want to acknowledge that, in a culture where it's sometimes feels as if there's a lot of heaviness of accusation and pummeling of quote unquote, you know, white America and, for those who might identify as white evangelicals. My hope is just to acknowledge that there is that psychology that's impacting them as well as so many of us. And that when I, or others are speaking about wanting justice and equality, ultimately it's not just merely for ourselves. It's really a desire to see human flourishing, be about human flourishing.
It's really about all of us. This is the reason why I think we can't operate with a mentality of scarcity.
We can't operate on a mentality of those who have, and those who don't have. We can't operate on a mentality of hate and injustice. So again, I'm going to just first begin by sharing that. But I would just say from an Asian-American, from a Korean, from an AAPI experience, if there is a handful of things that I would ask people to consider to see, number one is this: we're not making these things up. This is real because I still get this question. Whether it's said to me respectfully or disrespectfully, it's basically something like this. Maybe you need thicker skin. Maybe you're imagining things, maybe you're just imagining all of this violence. But when there's documented, you know, an organization called AAPI hate, they documented about nearly 4,000 Asian-American hate crimes and incidents in the past year.
That's the first thing. We're not making these things up. Please don't tell us to get thicker skin. That's just cruel. The second thing that I would say is that Asian-American history is American history. It's not something separate. We're part of a larger collective in both its beauty. And also it’s depravity as well.
And so when I speak about some of the AAPI hate, we're not just talking about what transpired in this past year, as a result of the pandemic, as a result of the rise in anti-Asian rhetoric. We're talking about history like people in Hall, in 1854, we're talking about the China massacre of 1871.
We're talking about the Chinese exclusion act of 1882. We're talking about the San Francisco plague outbreak. We're talking about the Japanese incarceration during World War II. We're talking about KKK, their engagement with Asian communities, particularly with the Vietnamese in Texas. We're talking about the LA riots.
We're talking about 9/11 inspired kind of hatred, particularly against Southeast Asians. It's a part of our American history. And so even as we acknowledge good things, we need to have the courage to acknowledge some of those painful things as well. And I guess the last thing that I would just say for the sake of being concise is I would love for people then to say, how do I stand in solidarity?
And I think you can't do it without listening. You can't do it without listening. Listen to our stories, listen to our pain, and then listen to our desire to say, what does it look like for us to build a just society that speaks about human flourishing?
And during this time, you've got to speak up. You have to speak up. By now, some of us may have seen the video of a security camera that showed a 65 year old Filipino woman, grandmother, who was walking to church in New York about three weeks ago.
And she is kicked, I mean, pummeled with full force on the streets. And there are three security guards inside a building who see what's going on and one of them decides to close the door. So this is happening and we need everyone of every single ethnic group to speak about this, because, this sort of, anti-Asian racist rhetoric and violence it's not just happening from one small segment of people. It's being inflicted by black, brown, whites. It's happening all around our larger society and nation and actually around the world. And so we need people to speak up, that when they hear things that are racist and denigrating, we've got to speak up and say, hey, that's not cool.
That's not right. That's not proper. That's not acceptable. And certainly when we see violence inflicted, there needs to be strength and solidarity in numbers.
Lee Camp: How does someone who, as a first grader, had a fear of raising their hand in class, such that it led to sharp embarrassment in front of your classmates, who then as an adolescent develops a stuttering problem because of your social anxiety.
How does one move from that to being someone who has the capacity to stand publicly or to write publicly so that you're going to get castigated by people on either the right or the left? How does that happen?
Eugene Cho: Yeah, that's a great question. It's one that I ponder sometimes, and I don't want to over spiritualize my answer, but this is my most authentic answer. This is my truthful answer, small T truthful answer by the grace of God. I truly believe that, you know, to go from a very angry, suicidal, depressed young man who was struggling with all of those things.
And in high school. And this was as I was wrestling with kind of the more existential questions in my life during high school, I probably had one of those breakthrough moments of my life. As a junior in high school, at the Zenith of some of my fear and anxiety. I realized that I needed to confront some of my fears. If I didn't, it was going to paralyze me for the rest of my life. And so I identified the act, which I considered to be the scariest thing that I could ever do at that moment as a 17 year old.
And that was to audition for a school play. And I did, I auditioned for a school play. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, uh, by Bill Shakespeare. And it wasn't the fanciest role or the most robust role. It was a handful of lines at best, but I was cast for the wall.
And I remember it very vividly, the emotional wrestling I had to do every single day. But I look back and I'm so proud of that moment. I look at, I was not expecting to get so emotional sharing this story. It's been a while since I shared this story, but, you know, I think if I had the privilege of speaking to 17 year old Eugene, right at this moment, I would just say, I'm so proud of you. Because I know how much it took for me to do that. And then, you know, I think again and again, because, the phrase of being fearless I think is ridiculous. No one is fearless. I think we're all afraid. Courage is when we choose to acknowledge our fear and choose to engage it, even if that means we're trembling in doing it. And so you know, now as a 50 year old, every single day, I struggle with my fear and insecurity every day and I'm being very truthful here.
But I think this is what it means to be human. You know, we acknowledge these things and yet we decide to move forward little by little. Sometimes you take a couple steps back, sometimes you move forward, but that's been kind of the story of my life.
Lee Camp: Thank you for that. That's very beautiful, grateful for you sharing those things.
CREDITS
Lee Camp: You've been listening to Tokens Show and our episode entitled "Fear, Home and the Asian-American Experience."
Remember you can always find out more about Tokens Show at tokensshow.com. And you can get our podcast, including an extended interview with Eugene Cho, on Spotify, Stitchr, or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
The stellar team producing this show comprises: Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Ashley Bayne, Leslie Eiler Thompson, Tom Anderson, Cariad Harmon, and Jeff Taylor. Music beds by Zach and Maggie White, and Blue Dot Sessions, plus live music from Buddy Greene, Jeff Taylor, Aubrey Haynie, Byron House, Chris Brown, and Pete Hutlinger. Special thanks to Jonathan Shaub, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky, for historical and legal review.
Tokens Show on the radio is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.
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