racists

[People hard to love.]

So, I've had my fair share of encountering racists. When I was in 7th grade, we all had to play ultimate Frisbee as part of our PE requirement. Unfortunately, I was stuck with three racist white guys and two other Asian girls. Obviously, I wasn't very good at throwing a Frisbee, and neither were the two other girls. So, to spite us, they kept cracking mean jokes, like "Oh yeah, we should call this team Asian Pride." "Yeah! Asian Pride! We're so awesome at Frisbee...NOT." etc etc. You can imagine what a shock this was to my twelve-year-old sheltered self after living in a very Asian-Jewish-Italian-Hispanic town in Jersey (it's now nicknamed "Koreatown").

But those were pre-pubescent boys in 7th grade. I also remember one time, my dad got cut off in a mall parking lot, and the guy as he passed by, yelled, "F---ing chink!" as he sped on by. I was so shocked by the incident, I remember tearing up in the car.

In some ways, I guess that showed my weak-heartedness, because if I were resilient, why should that bother me? And I think sometimes, it's really easy for more PC Caucasians to just brush it off with a laugh and go, "Man, they're retarded." But when you're on the receiving end, it really does hurt.

So, as a staff writer at The Daily Pennsylvanian, I had to write a professor profile on this Italian professor. She's straight-up native and has a rather thick accent. She was very nice to me the entire interview and was very accommodating.

After the interview, she asked that I give her a copy of the story before it went into print. I consulted my editor and let her know that I was not able to do that because it is part of newspaper policy, but that I would be more than happy to send her the interview transcript/notes. She called me up during dinner Saturday night and demanded a copy of the story, saying what I was doing (preventing her from having it) was illegal and that she had a legal right to the story. (Not true.) I told her that it still was not possible, and she tried to convince me to keep it between me and her, but I still said all I could do was send her an interview transcript as soon as possible. She asked me to leave out the more personal details, which I ended up omitting from the transcript, because they would be of no value to the final story anyway.

After spending 40 minutes transcribing the interview, I sent it to her. The next day - today - she called me up after service and told me I had done the transcription completely incorrectly. The conversation that occurred was as follows: (paraphrased)

"Were you born in the United States?"

"No, I was not."

"Well, that is why your English is not very good."

"Um..."

"You misinterpreted everything I said. (rambleramble) This is why you should send a native speaker to the interviews. You made me sound very silly. But people will not laugh at me, they will laugh at you."

Then in the email she sent me with some of the grammatical corrections (to errors she made originally), she wrote, "The language makes me sound like a Chinese..."

Now, let me reiterate that she has a very thick Italian accent. 

With this incident, is it easy to love someone like this? Honestly, if she calls me up one more time after the story goes into print - I will probably just not pick up because I am done with her. I never want to talk to her or do any future stories involving her ever again. Just like I never wanted to see those 7th grade boys again or that hostile driver again.

But you know...Jesus was spat upon and cursed by the world. They called Him all kinds of names - liar, blasphemous, crazy - and they still call Him that today, but He still found it in his heart to love the world. Isn't that crazy? For me, this woman was just one person. But He had/has to put up with the whole world cursing him out every single day, every single second.

And I can't say that right now, in this moment, I can find it in my heart to forgive her, much less love her. But I can definitely try to prevent myself from harboring any hate.

Verses:

"Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs." (Proverbs 10:12)

"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4:8)