Erika Chester
South Korea
I’m an American living in South Korea, married to an American soldier stationed here. I grew up in what I recently articulated as aggressively homogeneous culture in the Midwest.
Fortuitously, I became friends with one of the very, very few students of color in my high school. Her friendship has done so much for me, and it was the first to challenge my internalized aggression and general angst toward the “other.”
Aggressive homogeneity is manifest in bullying and ostracizing, which I’ve experienced, and racism, which I haven’t. It hurts everyone it touches.
