So, You Speak Really Good English

This week, Buzzfeed ran an article on a photography project from the photographer Kiyun, where she asked students from the Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus to “write down an instance of racial microagression they have faced.” If you haven’t heard the term “Microagressions”, it is a term used by Columbia professor Derald Sue, referring to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults towards people of color”.

Buzzfeed displayed 21 of the photos taken by Kiyun, each with a person holding the relevant phrase or discussion that they had faced. Phrases ranged from “No, where are you REALLY FROM?” held by an Asian woman to “So, like what are you?” held by a man of ambiguous racial background. Many of these hit home for me as ones I’ve also heard, and some were outside enough of my own experience that they did make me stop and think about what it would have been like to be that person and hear those words.

Today, I’m mostly sheltered in my comfortable life, living in a California liberal enclave, surrounded by my loving friends and family, and mostly just having a regular day-to-day routine. But just this last month I could have been in Kiyun’s project holding a card of my own.

“So you speak really good English, I don’t even hear an accent.” Those words jolted me into instant defensive mode. It’s not that I haven’t heard those exact same words most of my life. What brought my nerves instantly on edge was the setting and the person who was asking me the question. I happened to be in Paris, France, one of the most egalitarian and diverse cities in the world. I was seated next to a co-worker, sharing a meal at a hotel restaurant during a break from a corporate training session. The person asking me the offending question was a citizen of the Netherlands, and had just disclosed to me that she was married to a German, and she herself was of Persian descent, a native speaker for Farsi, and also spoke English and German. We had just finished a discussion about my 8 year old daughter and her dislike of Chinese school. This was the last setting I expected to hear a comment about my mastery of the English language.

I may be 46 years old, but those words brought me instantaneously back to my childhood when I was ridiculed for being different, for looking different, bringing the strange lunch, dressing in the strange hand me down clothes my family could afford. But I didn’t let my feelings or my thoughts show on my outward appearance. If there’s one thing that age has taught me, it is patience and tolerance of others as well as an understanding and pride of my own differences. And I remind myself, words are just words, and the person speaking them doesn’t realize the damage they cause, and had no intent to harm anyone with their words.