growing up my brother and I loved

reading the comics and every day we'd race to get the newspaper.

but on one snowy winter morning when I was 10 years old

I saw something outside that left me speechless.

as my brother and I opened the front door there in front of us

was a burnt blackened cross stuck in the white snow.

at 10 I'd experienced plenty of racial teasing, people pulling their eyes back,

speaking in fake accents, calling me names…

but this time it was different I knew that a burnt cross meant

something more but as Asian Americans I never thought it would happen to me

and my family.

 

 what I now know is that we experienced racial trauma the psychological and

physical stress that follows experiences of discrimination and racism.

how families respond to racial trauma is

critically important not only to their health and well-being

but also to how we can address racism.

 In our communities and in our nation

but in the winter of  my family did

not know how to respond

When people experience discrimination and racism many of us are taught at a

young age to be silent we're taught to ignore or excuse the behavior.

but these are not effective coping or parenting strategies.

silence is not the answer.

I know this because for the past years I've researched how minoritized

Youth and families are affected by and Respond to racial trauma.

 

From these studies I've learned that parents and children often struggle to

address these issues.

For instance in a study of white adoptive parents raising korean-american

Children we found that four out of five families could not have constructive

conversations about racial and ethnic differences in their families.

 

In another study of Asian American parents, two out of three parents

we're not able to have conversations about racism with their children too often.

 

Families intentionally are not silence these conversations

and this was true in our family as well.

 

When my brother and I saw the burnt cross in the yard we went and told Our

Father who was getting ready for work what I remember is that he went outside

pulled up the cross broke up the wood and put it in the garage.

 

 He never said anything about it except something like stupid people.

no one in our family ever talked about that event again.

 

It was the loudest silence in my life.

This is how racial trauma often plays out we stay silent.

but racial trauma gets imprinted on us manifesting as physical and mental

health problems throughout our lives.

It affects not only our well-being but also our relationships and the life

choices that we make.

For me I started to believe that my memory was a dream

I started to doubt my memory, no one was there to validate my

experiences or help me make sense out of them

but people will try to make sense out of

their traumatic experiences for some it'll lead them to identify

more strongly with their racial and ethnic groups and for others

 it'll lead them away.

and this is what happened to my brother

and me we took different paths in life

in high school I struggled with feeling

racially different from my peers and

over time I started to Rebel at home and

at school.

eventually it led to the point where I was asked not to return to my high

school. but over the next few years, I found people in my life who helped me

develop racial awareness and pride and a sense of belonging as an Asian American.

my brother by contrast worked hard to assimilate into whiteness

0

and he never talked about race and distanced himself from our family and

the Asian American community

he also struggled with depression and later in life attempted suicide After

High School

 

Looking Back Now I can see how racial trauma and the silence that followed

almost killed him.

 

and we now know from Decades of research that racism when it's not directly

addressed can shorten our lifespans including by Suicide.

 

but why is it so hard for families regardless of race to talk about these

things part of the problem is that we don't have what psychologists call racial

literacy or a way to talk about racism.

 

 Without racial literacy parents often feel uncomfortable talking about these

Issues and over time parents and children learn to avoid bringing up these topics.

 

Another part of the problem is that parents overestimate how much and how

Well they talk about these issues with their children

but our research has found that children

actually want to have more of these

conversations with their parents.

 

What we need is radical change.

We need to share our stories and experiences and learn from them.

 

My brother and I didn't talk about that burnt cross for more than 30 years.

and then one evening as we were sitting in my Minneapolis backyard

I asked him if he remembered that snowy winter morning.

Of course he replied and vividly shared the exact same memories

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except he remembered our father saying “bad people, bad people”.

 

I told him I had started to believe it was a dream that I had made it up.

and it took over 30 years before my memory was validated.

for the silence to be broken and for the healing to begin

so how do we develop racial literacy and

constructively engage in these conversations ?

 

When parents hear inappropriate comments or see racist behaviors

they need to break the silence talking about racism demystifies it.

 It makes it less something to fear and more something that we can address

and there's never a perfect time

0

it needs to just be part of our daily conversation

not only when bad things happen.

 

Parents also ask me what to say to their children and I tell them

start by using words that your children understand.

but also introduce them to new words expand their vocabulary

and share your own struggles and confusions

even if you stumble with your words it's

better to try a hundred times and get it right once

than to never try and stay silent

your children will remember that one time you got it right.

and over time those conversations add up.

 

We found in a study that youth whose parents took the time

during adolescence to prepare their children for discrimination

and racism reported fewer mental health problems.

 

When they encountered discrimination as

young adults talking with your child about racism

when they're  or  helps

when they encounter it at  or .

what we do and say now makes a

difference years later

when parents don't create space for

racial conversations children then are

left on their own to make sense out of

it all

and by adolescence many

realize it this is not something their

parents can handle

and so they simply stop bringing up the

issue

but parents ironically are often waiting

for their children to bring up the issue

first

amplifying the silence comes at the

expense

of our health and wellness

looking back in my life

I now know that my parents didn't

realize the racial trauma we had

experienced they didn't realize

how the loud silence left us confused

and Unsure how to respond

and this is not an uncommon situation

especially for immigrant families

but we can and know how to do better

we just need to be motivated to make

change.

 we need to find a compelling reason to change.

in my journey toward radical change began over  years ago.

 

a mentor explained to me why my parents

remain silent and what that silence meant.

 

he shared that my parents generation boiled inside with anger and frustration

because they experienced discrimination on a daily basis

but they couldn't fight back. they stayed silent, they put their heads

down and they worked hard.

 

They toiled in the fields in factory

Jobs, in restaurants, in the back rooms of offices.

In deed I rarely if ever heard my parents complain.

 

 then he shared he said but your generation this generation has

The King's English on your tongue.

 

your parents didn't sacrifice and endure just so you can be successful

but so that you could fight for them, and yourselves, speak for them.

 

That conversation changed how I understood my parents

and their experiences with racism.

 

when my father said to my brother and me

“bad people”,

he was quietly expressing his hurt, his rage, his helplessness.

and in his own way he was trying to have a conversation with us.

 

but none of us had the racial literacy to make sense of it all

even though it took my brother and me

more than 30 years to have our conversation.

 

that conversation has drawn our life paths closer together.

now in our 50s we collaborate on a daily comic strip the other ones by Lee

and using our childhood love of comics

we give voice to the experiences of kids of color

using The King's English to speak for families like our own

and it's our hope that our comic will

help parents and children develop racial literacy

because we need open and honest

conversations so that we can heal from racial trauma.

 

 

you see racism wants to break us down so we can't heal

but healing in the midst of racism is the most radical thing ever

[Applause]