“如果你从不了解自己的历史，你怎么能真正存在？”他如是说里弗代尔主演查尔斯·梅尔顿在3月19日出版的一篇强有力的文章中写道多样化.
这是一本非常重要的书，尤其是如果你想更好地了解多种族儿童like me. I’m a second-generation immigrant on both sides, and for many reasons, I was raised more as an “American” than I was a Filipino or a Jew. Both of my parents were born in New York City, and both of them were very, very Americanized. My grandparents, though, were immigrants from the Philippines, Belarus,还有乌克兰.
在很多方面，他们被同化了，但我们绝对是异类。上世纪70年代和80年代，我在洛杉矶一个种族差异很大的郊区长大，但我仍然不得不面对朋友们对我祖母烹饪的味道有多奇怪的评论，或者我祖父放在我午餐里的那些“奇怪”的东西。我记得我在家的时候对午餐感到很尴尬elementary school我一到学校就把书包扔掉，然后从朋友那里把食物扔了。
我有一百个这样的故事。一百。成百上千。
这些故事不仅是我的，也是我家人的。当我的罗丝阿姨第一次带她的弟弟——我爸爸——去上学时，她changed his name当她给他登记的时候。她知道，如果没有这个名字带来的额外负担，作为一个20世纪30年代布鲁克林的犹太孩子，他会很艰难末底改, so his name was forever changed to Martin in one pen stroke.
Hundreds of stories of discomfort and assimilation, and some stories that are much worse.
在过去的几年里，我一直在思考我在这个世界上的位置，思考我们对自己内心世界的漠不关心racism或者厌恶女性，以及我们这些少数宗教、种族和人种的人，以及我那些非独联体、非直系的兄弟们，是如何被迫在美国生活的。我想了很多关于我们为了在白人至上和厌恶女性的枷锁下生存而做出的妥协，以及它对我们意味着什么成为同性恋者+in a world like this.
更重要的是，我强迫自己面对我从中受益的方式白人至上because I “pass.” I think about the conflict of growing up in the culture of the oppressor when my ancestors were colonized or destroyed in pogroms. Who am I in all of this?
My history wasn’t taught in schools. Most Americans can’t even point out the Philippines on a map, and the only stories you learn in schools about Jews — if you learn about Jews orJewish historyat all — are stories of oppression, terror, and genocide. I was not raised on stories of our victories, our power, or our strength. If anyone mentions my people at all, it’s almost always as a punchline, or with a shrug, or a sigh over our history of tragedies. Am I the sum of the horrors that my ancestors endured, or am I a colonizer — an oppressor — too?
When I was 13, not much older than my daughter is now, I discovered Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Mickey Cohen, the Yiddishers, and the Bethnal Green Mob. My God — my people can流氓? We’re murderers, bootleggers, drug lords, and racketeers? Learning this was so liberating — this revelation that the story of我的祖先is not one long, miserable tale of displacement and horror but that we were capable of being feared, too. Yes, it sounds insane as I tell this, but it was cathartic. The only stories I knew were stories of genocide that reached back into the time before the Romans; thousands of years of tragedy. What a glorious feeling it was to find out that we could be monsters, too.
我从来没有听说过犹太发明家或菲律宾数学家。我从来没有听说过菲律宾人对科学或音乐所做的贡献，也没有听说过菲律宾人对科学或音乐的影响犹太活动家had on life in early America. I will never forget being taught that the Americans “liberated” the Philippines. I was in middle school, and at the time I accepted it. How could I not? I had been inculcated to American greatness since birth by the steady, inexorable drumbeat of美国例外论以及美国成为世界救世主的民族主义愿景。当然，美国是冲进来救菲律宾的！到了高中，我知道了真相：美国人占领了菲律宾，colonized it.
在我成长的过程中，有人给我讲了一系列有选择性的故事，这些故事基本上伤害了我的一半，而忽视了另一半。但我现在意识到，我是一个三个世界的孩子——犹太人、菲律宾人和美国人——当我努力调和这三个世界时，我再也不会把自己的一部分留给别人安慰了。
当我还是个孩子的时候，我对亚洲笑话、侮辱、污蔑、微词不屑一顾。这些评论对我的伤害不亚于casual antisemitism厌恶女人伤害了我，但我唯一能想到的保护自己的方法就是假装他们没有。好吧，猜猜怎么着？他们他妈的伤害了我。如果你正在读这篇文章，你爱我，你在过去说过这样的话，我原谅你，但请不要再把我放在这个位置上。
向前看，我再也不想耸耸肩了。我再也不允许种族主义者、恐同者、厌女者、反种族主义者、TERFs或任何其他偏执者在我面前对他们随意的偏执感到舒服。沉默就是允许，而允许会滋生非人性化和暴力。
So much of this silence springs from the “model minority” myth that we are indoctrinated with since birth. There is so much violence, oppression, and genocide intertwined withAsian Americans’ collective histories — from the deaths of Chinese railroad workers to the occupation of the Philippines to internment camps and the horrors of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. My father’s ancestors were scattered to the winds because ofpogromsthat engulfed the Russian Empire, and our patrilineal home town in Belarus was all but obliterated by the antisemitism of the Russian czars. Those that remained were eventually forced into the Zembin ghetto and exterminated by the Nazis.
My ancestors on both sides have experienced unimaginable trauma. The violence endured by the generations that came before us still reverberates horribly today, and it is incredibly difficult to navigate. In the wake ofrising violence对亚洲人在美国和犹太社区., it is definitely a time for us to reexamine our identities, our place in this country, and how we can protect ourselves and one another from the depravity of white supremacy.
我想让我的孩子珍惜她种族、种族和文化遗产中每一个分支的欢乐和力量——我的丈夫主要是西班牙人、危地马拉人和爱尔兰人——同时也理解使我们的人民成为他们的苦难、痛苦和悲伤。我会尽力帮助她包容每一个方面她的身份. 我仍然不完全理解我在这个世界上的位置，我的混血丈夫的位置，或者我的混血孩子的位置。但我知道，我永远不会，永远不会成为同谋，即使是通过沉默，在我自己的压迫或压迫别人永远。
标题图片作者：Ponomariova\u Maria/Getty Images
