I hesitated to mention in this edition the kid who approached Kina and her other Asian-American classmate at gym class and just lobbed a mindbogglingly racist slur at them. I also hesitated before googling the specific linguistic formulation of this slur, and my stomach sank when no results turned up, because it suggested that this kid heard it from somebody, somewhere, who recited it from memory. I hesitated when she came home after school with Laurea and we sat on the couch to talk about it and tell her that we are bigger than the words the people use to hurt us; I hesitated as I considered what I wanted to tell her to do in the future—to tell an adult, sure, but to get in that kid’s face? To shout? To snarl? To spit? I hesitated before telling her she was strong, because I feel more conviction about the weakness of people who use these words, and the tragedy that little Asian girls have to be strong specifically to meet this weakness. I hesitated because the kid is also seven, and white, and has never had to hear his parents talk about being demeaned or passed over or dismissed because of the color of their skin, never had to see somebody who looked like them at work—somebody who has risen to the top of their field—called out by a senior leader not for their actual work but for the food eaten in the country of their birth. I hesitate to say that the kid might simply have found the language of the slur exciting and curious and was literally just telling Kina and her friend about the slur because he thought they might be interested to hear it—and because nobody, when it was said in front of him, suggested that it was a horrible thing to call a person. I hesitated to be angry yesterday, because Laurea was angry and I couldn’t afford to be angry. I was angry all day today, instead, unable to shake the memory of Kina telling me she got a couple math problems wrong “because the thing had happened just before and I couldn’t focus”. I hesitated to put this in the top slot because I think the dolphins are the thing that I want her to remember about yesterday, but at the end, I put it in the second slot, because I want her not to forget.
She’s fine. She’s safe. She has a good teacher and good friends. She has parents who are ready for this and who know it won’t be the last time. She loves dolphins, but it’s hard to say if they’re extinct.
dad