Don’t talk to strangers. Make sure to look both ways before crossing the street. Remember to always apply sunscreen before going swimming. These are all common phrases that were either told from our parents or someone older than us. Yeah we’ll always remember those words when we get older but why am I mentioning them now? Whoever was responsible for taking care of us when we were younger had a lot of power or impact on us and how we would turn out in the future. Their words and actions would shine through ours and reflect on our behavior. But why is this relevant? By looking at the title of this blog, you can already guess how this flows into today’s topic. Racism. Racism and how deeply it’s rooted into our history. 

As mentioned before, how we act is dependent on those around us, and whether we decide to change that or not, there’s no doubt that we took on the same ideas or actions that we’ve been taught from such a young age. Like these actions, racism didn’t just spring out of nowhere and stay. It had to be taught and passed on from person to person. Racism is so ingrained in our society that failing to recognize that is there and it is evident will just screw us over even more. By brushing off racist remarks and actions, we are just justifying it and projecting the idea that it’s okay. When people speak out about racist moments that they experienced, people backfire by commenting that “it’s not that deep” or that they’re ‘overreacting.” These reactions further imply that we as a society aren’t doing enough to have people recognize that racism is a real thing and how normalized we’ve made it turn out to be. This is why more creators are sharing their life story in hopes to help people realize and understand that it is much more important to take time to educate others on this topic so this repeated cycle can stop.

They Called Us Enemy. is a graphic novel taking us through the eyes of author George Takei and his experience growing up in America. Instead of having the life of an ordinary kid, having all the time in the world playing, having fun, making memories that would last forever, Takei decides to recall the moments in life that would affect him up into his adulthood. This story flips back and forth from the future, where Takei is an adult who is still figuring things out, to his younger self where his childhood was cut short from America’s response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His parents, both immigrants from Japan had spent years In America, adapting to their new surroundings, creating a better life for themselves as well as their children to have it completely disregarded when they are now viewed as “aliens.” This different perspective the government and the world had on Japanese continued even after Japanese Americans were “free” to come back to their homes. By having such a high, powerful figure project these false ideas and accusations against Japanese people, others begin to follow and believe in the way they think. They are being told that it doesn’t matter if Japanese people are born in America and have been living there, they still have connections to Japan. They still have connections to the enemy. This idea is depicted through the quote “They are Japanese and nothing else…regardless of how many generations may have been born in America.” 

As mentioned earlier, people learn from whatever they’re being told from someone they view as wiser, or someone who knows what they’re doing. When the government is blatantly proposing the idea that all Japanese people are so bad that they need to deport them and even put them in incarceration camps, people begin to follow whatever they say. Because who wouldn’t trust the government? They are the head of our society and they take care of everything. Eventually the government finally allowed its prisoners in the incarceration camps to return home and all that, but the damage had already been done. From there on out Japanese people would continue to face racist jabs toward them from what we’ve been taught. One scene from this graphic novel that encapsulates that racism is taught and not something that just rose out of nowhere was a scene when George was in school when he realized he stuck out. He recalled that his  teacher saw him in a different way and would treat him differently as well.

George finally realized that his teacher only thought of him as the “Japanese boy.” This captures and backs up the idea that people will follow the ideas and thought process of those they believe are higher in status to them. This teacher either learned from the government or someone had told her these false accusations and assumptions about Japanese people.and because she had learned from them, she continued to think as if she were them. This is why recognizing mistakes in history is so important. Racism is something that is taught, so we need to learn from these mistakes to avoid its repetitiveness. Another quote by George Takei and emphasizes this idea is “That remains part of the problem—that we don’t know the unpleasant aspects of American history…and therefore we don’t learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us. So we repeat them over and over again.”

In late November of 2022, the internet and many social media platforms were struck with a viral picture. However, the picture went viral for reasons far from good. 

At first the photo seems nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just a picture of a girl posing and smiling with her bowl of ramen. However, if we zoom in on the background, onto the people in the background we can see that they are blatantly doing racist gestures to the young girl in front of them. Worse is the fact that this little girl is being taught to do this by either her parent, or someone she looks up to. Rebekah Lee, the girl in the picture posing with the ramen is a college student who was dining at Ton Ton, a ramen and yakitori restaurant located in Atlanta, Georgia when she asked her friend to take a picture of her. It wasn’t until after her meal when she looked at the picture and noticed what was happening behind her. Rebakah said that “it was incredibly unbelievable that those two were doing a racist gesture like this in public in an Asian space,” and “I couldn’t believe the publicity of that act and the shock to see a recreation of a racial taunt I hadn’t seen since elementary school.” Although she didn’t see what was happening behind her, Rebekah states “But I can’t say seeing that gesture didn’t hurt.” 

Knowing that she’s seen these types of racist gestures and taunts since elementary school up until her late teen years, this shows that racism is not going to change  or randomly disappear if we don’t take initiative in educating. Kids in elementary school stem from the ages 5 to 11 and are undoubtedly the future of our generation and how we present our voices. So teaching them racist gestures and forms of othering are only going to normalize racism and its impact as a whole. It’s likely that the little girl in the picture doesn’t find anything wrong with what she’s being taught and will continue to proceed with her actions if she’s not told what’s right from wrong. 

Like everything else we are taught from a young age, racism isn’t anything different. We need to continue and teach the younger generation about the world’s racist past and how it still creeps into our society today. Yes it’s a touchy and sensitive subject, but ignoring it and fanning it away will only prevent education from prospering. Alluding to what George Takei said once, if we don’t dive into the deeper aspects of our country’s history, we won’t know about any mistakes we have to learn from.