Before I made it to Longwood four years ago, I made the lushest cappuccinos at a Starbucks in suburban Northern Virginia. I could get that foam aerated just right under the steam wand, just like a cream puff if you add the vanilla syrup.
Every morning’s routine: After six espresso shots went straight down my throat as I clocked in right before the rush, I was ready to crank out two soy lattes a minute. You know, the decaf-double-tall-solo-sugar-free-vanilla-180-degrees-double-cupped kind.
You might have even called me an artist.
What always bothered me most though was that, not counting our regulars, everyone knew me as “that Asian guy barista.” And I was pretty sure that wasn’t what my nametag read.
Why not “skinny guy with crooked glasses?” Why not “guy
who always misses a spot cutting his own hair?” Why not just the “guy who gets my overpriced latte right every time,” even? He’s the one who keeps a smile on for you even after the local teenybopper horde spilled crumbs and complementary water cups all over the café right before closing— right after he had mopped already. Sure. It might have been unreasonable, even vain, for me to expect them to care about my life story or where I came from. They don’t need to know that I was saving up to go to school to become a poet. They don’t need to know that I am too thin from antibiotics. They don’t need to know I live out of my buddy’s basement and that expired breakfast sandwiches are awesome so long as you nuke them long enough. I was just “that Asian guy barista” who supplied them with caffeine.
“Racist?” That’s not quite the word to describe all of that; it’s too easy of a term. It’s more than
being known only for less than what you do, what you are or being categorized by a term that’s supposed to encompass half the world’s people. It’s more than your peers not even trying to pronounce your last names—or worse, not being able to. It’s a lonely feeling when you no longer live in a country where the sound of your name comes naturally. No one even thinks twice.
It’s more than semantics or political correctness. Look around you, at the café, student lounge or dining hall where you are probably reading this. Pay attention to every blue shirt with a mop or a rack of pint glasses. Look out the window at every flowerbed and lawn, the dirty overalls and weed whacker. On your way back to your suite, look into the baggy eyes of the people who work overnight to bleach that spot where you puked out a whole supper and ten beers in the Curry elevator or maybe the Landings carpeted halls.
They are, predominantly, either colored and/or poor. And they are not necessarily just the inhabitants of this town. I’ve worked at Java City. I even have a brother who does the best hedging on Brock Commons. Chances are, “that black guy in the grimy hoodie” next to you in ENGL 400 is not a pothead, but part of the kitchen crew that catered the mixer you just danced at last night. Yes, “that white girl with the stained pants” in Consumer Math just worked the morning shift at D-Hall, handed her crying toddler off to the grandparents’ and then sped off to that desk right beside yours. We are invisible—identified only by our job and overly-broad social categories.
Racist? The problem is more than that. It’s more than seeing the elephant in the room now. It’s how we don’t want to see.
