Johnny Vae
South Korea
Sometimes it sucks to be a “white” male. Especially when you’re ethnically 1/4 Native American, which I’m told means I’m more Native American than most. My life was hard growing up, so much so that even my closest friends don’t know about it. My father was a criminal who hid under an alias to avoid the FBI and we had to flee the state where I was born when I was just 2 years old because he had owed some dangerous people money–the kind of people who wouldn’t think twice about erasing his whole family.
I don’t even like writing my life as a sob story. At this point, all the adversity I faced has made me a strong person, but it still pains me that there are conversations I am not “allowed” to have simply because of my skin color. I recently started hearing about this “white privilege” thing and all I wonder is when and how I missed that train. Nothing in my life has ever been easier because of my skin color, and I get quite upset when it’s suggested otherwise. My mother worked 13 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week after she threw my dad out to make sure that we, her sons, didn’t know we were poor. Most of my college was paid for by financial aid because my mom made less than 20k a year and she was a single mother. Not because I was white, but because I was poor. The rest I took out in loans, which I am still paying back. I chose, maybe out of foolish pride, not to claim my Native American ancestry because I don’t want that fact to weaken the hard work I’ve done to be where I’m at now. That and I’m still not sure I trust my dad enough to believe him, even though a decade of searching for records about his mother has turned up nothing to prove or disprove his claim. Either way, that’s how I was raised.
I live in South Korea now where I have a job I’m not qualified for simply because I asked for the chance to prove my worth, and someone listened. Given the chance, I made certain that I proved my ability. No part of my life has been easier because of my skin color. Nothing I have ever done has been made easier by my skin color. I’ve failed and I’ve succeeded, purely based on my own efforts, and it pains me that so many People of Color can’t see the disservice they do to themselves and others when they ask for understanding without giving it. I grew up on multi-racial carpentry crews, working alongside Hispanics and black men who were more like family to me than some of my own blood. Mine was the only white family in a middle class black neighborhood for years, and my mom was routinely pulled over by the police because the only reason a white person would be in that area was to buy drugs.
In short, don’t judge a person by their skin, no matter what color it is. It’s petty and divisive and you might be shocked to find out that no skin color precludes someone from a terrible life. I turned my around with my own effort.
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