PLN at KIS

Living among people that are a part of you, but then isolate you from society is quite a sad and depressing thing. When I first came back from the States into Korea I was just amazed at how people treated me. The fact that I spoke English made me a foreigner and the fact that I was Korean also made me inferior. Why? As a kid who spent most of his life in the States, I never had the chance to learn Korean. So when I opened my mouth the only words that came out were English for the first few months in Korea. But then the people around me weren’t quite satisfied with the language that came out of my mouth, they treated it as if it were bullets and arrows.

As I spoke more and more English, especially in public places, I was judged as a rude child or non-patriotic. The basic stereotype about English speaking Korean kids is that we were rude and spoiled infidels to a certain religion called Korean. But this doesn’t mean that Korean is like one of the worst languages to learn, and I agree with the idea that Korean in definitely of beautiful language. The root of evil - isolating English speaking Koreans - doesn’t come from the language but more from the people who practice this religion and make it into a cult.

Due to my fluency in English I was accepted into an international school, and through this special school I participated in multiple activities and competitions. It wasn’t until a couple of days ago I realized the difference between my life at school and in the real world or simply the “jungle”. The source of inspiration was from a short video from Crushing Stereotypes (from the post A Black Man in a White Man’s World). It really gave me a chance to think about who I was and what part of society I represented.

When I’m on the court I always hear things that seem to be so stereotypical, I mean saying that we can’t beat another team because of the difference in skin color or the idea that “Asians are good at math but suck at sports”. To be honest with you I’m sick of these stereotypes, but I wasn’t always like this. In the past I had my own stereotypes that Asians were just too inferior in playing a sport against another ethnicity because it didn’t run in our blood. I’ve also had some experiences in which other teams would come up to me and say if I was pure Asian, because of the fact that I could just simply jump and run. But after some experiences and tough games with a sweet victory waiting for me at the end, these stereotypes seemed to fade away. I’ve also learned that the competition I play in has never required me to be afraid of the other team.

I’ve had my stereotypes in the past, especially during sports events. But I’ve learned that these stereotypes don’t really help me in my performance but make it worse most of the times. Since that moment of realization I asked myself, what made me have my own stereotypes in the first place? I could definitely blame the media for presenting me with the stories or headlines that showed certain stereotypes. I could also blame the school for setting up examples of stereotypical ideas, or the textbooks for having pictures and videos that seemed stereotypical. But then I could blame myself as well, for not having the insight of looking at things in different ways. Just hope it isn’t too late for me to realize how the world seems now.

Technorati Tags: Stereotype, Sport, Racist, Asian

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 8:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.