Listen, Keaton –
I'm getting more and more frustrated because you keep hearing and saying what I didn't say.
You're right. I shouldn't be using 4-letter words, and for that, I apologize.
But you act as if you hurling words like "moral" doesn't implicitly imply that I'm "immoral."
Not every insult is couched as a 4-letter word.
And I've spent more than 10 years of my life learning Korean, learning the history, and spending countless amounts of time doing all kinds of good work in this country NOT just teaching English, not all of it paid, and much of it for or with people many other Koreans would dismiss as "undesirable." Or so I justify to myself.
And I am also saying that if you read my many many other blog posts and understood the background of other things I said, as well as the details of what I actually said in those particular posts, you wouldn't imply that my arguments are "simplistic" or have anything to do with "race-haters" or that I don't have "simple respect" for this country.
If you knew me, you'd know that I have earned the right to say something about this place, and that I do it because I care, not because I want to "bash" it. In the end, no matter how many times I am called "nigger" on the subway, or watch people snicker at persons different from themselves, or see my people or foreigners represented on television as buffoon characters or whatever – sitting down in front of a computer and writing about it in what amounts to an academic way takes an emotional, affective committment.
And if you saw many other blog posts I had, you'd see that I write on a great variety of things and have a complex set of emotions about Korea, both positive and negative – as any person should about even their own culture.
So when you negate all these things by saying I don't have "basic respect" for this place, considering all the things I feel I have done and am doing in Korea that I feel come from a deep respect for this place – I feel deeply, deeply insulted.
As a person with obvious pride about this place, you can understand that, can you not?
And yes, no one likes to be mentioned in the same breath with Nazis. But to the extent that I made a formal comparison and brought up a point of historical connection very worth following, I don't think I'm doing what you say I'm doing, which is calling Koreans Nazis or potential mass murderers.
What I am saying is that extreme nationalism ANYWHERE is dangerous and any one of "us" can do things in the name of the national father that "we" can later come to regret.
If I do it with a bit of irony and sarcasm, I know that hurts, but that's my style. But I don't do it lightly, and I don't mind being criticized. I just mind the constant reference to me being an "outsider" and that I should or shouldn't say certain things as such.
In the end, that's what you're saying. I'm an outsider and I shouldn't say certain things, and by saying those things, I am "disrespecting" Korean culture. I don't think it's that simple.
This is one of the many threads of conversation I've had on my blog. One major thread I got flak for was for attacking my own government here and here and here as being criminally responsible for their lack of action in Katrina, or for just betraying our nation's own ideals.
For these threads of conversation, I got labeled as a person sympathizing with the terrorists, or a "traitor." I'd rather be called a 4-letter word, frankly, because as a person standing up to look my own country's undeniable reality of its immorality, I know that being a true "patriot" with a critical eye is much harder than standing and cheering, ignoring what is uncomfortable and inconvenient.
Do I lack "respect" for my own country? Am I a "hater" of my own people? Of course not.
But I have given every bit as harsh a blow to my own country and culture as I ever have Korea, both in public and in private. And on the other hand, there are aspects of this society that I find bright, promising, and refreshing in a way I don't find at "home" in the US. This is natural, since they are different places and peoples.
But on the matter of "race", Korea is in sore need of an outside social critic. Maybe certain Koreans don't think so, but with all that I have done that many Koreans laud me for – because it is easy and convenient to do for them at the time – I feel I have a right to have a voice.
And I hate playing this card – but you've forced me to get deeply personal about this – I think that from my mother's pain in having been shunned and ostracized by making the choice to marry someone whom most Koreans looked down upon (and quite frankly, largely continue to), I have earned the extended right to "say something back" in place of her voice having been silenced every time someone whispered behind her back because she was with a black man, every time people snickered at them walking by, every time she had to hear that I or my brother were successful in life "because of the Korean side."
No, one doesn't have to have a Korean mother to be able to be critical of Korea; but in terms of personal motivations and right to speak, I think that not only have I earned the right through my own actions and affective commitments to speak about this culture, my very existence speaks to the fact that someone needs to be deeply, deeply critical of certain things in this culture.
Does that mean I'm always right? No. But please don't tell me that by saying certain things, I lack "respect" for this place or the Korean people, or that certain things should never be said at all.
