skin_deep : race / ritual / photography

This study examines race through photography. I asked fifteen people from diverse class, age, and sexual orientation backgrounds to perform rituals that are personally significant to them. The resulting photographs reveal ways in which race is — or is not — embedded in everyday life.

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Caco

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I was crossing the street in Fort Worth, and some guy yelled out of his window, “fucking nigger faggot.” And I was with my girlfriend, who’s Ukranian, so I didn’t understand. She got angry. I was like, that doesn’t make any sense. I have a girlfriend. And I’m Dominican. And it’s like I’m not any of those things you just tried to describe me. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to bother with someone who clearly didn’t understand anything or what they were saying. It’s not worth it to me.

I think I knew I was white, always. But in 5th grade, I moved to a black neighborhood and went to a school with a lot of black people in it. All my friends were black. But all the kids in my class — most of them were white because I was in the “smarter” classes. Maybe because I teach black kids and am around black people a lot, and I connect more with black people, I tend not to have many white friends. It’s on the basis of similar struggles. And a lot of white people I’ve met are pretentious assholes.

I can’t speak Korean. I tried to learn in college but was not successful. I think I identify with a generic Asian-American identity moreso than any particular mother country ethnicity because I was born and raised in the States. I appear probably more white than anything else. And I definitely have the privilege associated with whiteness. Both my parents had a college education. I grew up comfortably. Never really had to deal with any kind of racial prejudice.

The time where the shit hit the fan was when I went to India as a sophomore in high school. I think that’s when I woke up to how different my life is from the life my cousins live in India. And how my family, the impression that they had of me and how that actually matched up to the reality that I was: the fact that I don’t speak my mother tongue, but they considered me to be this sort of cultural ambassador because I do all this dance and I sing at the poojas.

One of the first few friends I made at Princeton whom I’m no longer friends with, thank God — an aspiring banker. I think he was an ORFE turned econ major — when he realized that I was Vietnamese, he made some really insensitive, off-hand remark about Viet Congs. I refused to talk to him after that moment. But I couldn’t believe that, even at an institution like Princeton, that I would come across individuals who are so ignorant. But it happens. He was white, so...even better!

When 9/11 happened, I was in New York City. Personally, I felt a really strong sense of unity. Under those circumstances, everybody had this overpowering belief that we all live in America, in New York, and that we should stop to help each other. I know so many people who worked all day and then spent all night volunteering. I’d never seen anything like that before and realized that Americans, regardless of what race they are, will come together in a time of crisis.

You can’t argue with religion. Or God, or the scriptures. It’s on a different level. You need logic and facts and reason to have an argument. And people who are deep believers who cannot detach themselves from their beliefs to communicate within the logic of real life...to them, that’s just how it’s been, how it is, and how it always will be. It’s the same with racism. “You cannot just put people together because they are different in essence.” You can’t really argue against that.

When I first came to the US and told people I was Mexican, they would immediately think that I have to fix a garden. Or that I like chili peppers. They would even ask, “Oh, where’s your donkey?” They had all these preconceived ideas. There has a been a lot more immigration since then. 30 years ago, it was difficult for me to encounter Mexicans who spoke both Spanish and English. Now, there’s a lot of people that are integrated into the community with children going to the same schools.

I guess the biggest negative in my life is in the gay community – just how Asians in general are expected to be passive about a lot of things. And I think that’s my biggest worry or something like that. It’s not like I’m not a passive person about certain things, but — I don’t know — I definitely overcompensate sometimes just to try to prove people wrong. I guess I just don’t like people making assumptions, and this is my way of trying to show them that it’s not what they expect.

Growing up I actually wore a hijab, a scarf, and so when I moved to Texas my freshman year of high school, September 11th had just happened. I wore a scarf, so I was obviously a target. They say the South is very narrow-minded, but I actually did not have any problems, surprisingly. I think that in general I am a bit naive to those things. I try not to see those things in people. My friends in Virginia had more of a problem. They couldn’t go to the mall for fear of things that would happen.

Stereotypes? Everyday. After a while you kind of just shrug it off because you get used to it. Like, I’m a black woman. I don’t have kids, but I’m 20-something, so I have kids, and if I have kids, then I’m on welfare, and if I’m on welfare, then I live in the projects. You know, like, just things like: I’m a black woman, so what are things that black women...I’m angry. I’m always angry. I’ll like throw pots and pans. And like, craziness, like Medea-angry I guess would be the word for it.

Mark: I don’t really think about race too much in the context of our relationship or Michael. I mean, I think we have a lot more in common that goes beyond.

Michael: In terms of the way an Asian person of my generation in America has always been, we just kind of drift to the background a little bit. Whenever I’ve tried to push myself into the foreground in various circumstances, it hasn’t always felt comfortable with attention on me.

A few people in my dorm kind of decided to hold their own contrived holiday, which was to hug a minority. I didn’t know about it initially, and one person kind of hugged me, and I was like, what are you doing? That was something where it’s obvious how perverse it is. But the things that honestly offend me more are the things that are more subtle and ubiquitous like the affirmative action debate. Because it’s not just a one-off display with one stupid person making some stupid comment.

Around Columbus Day, the Native American community tries to remind everybody that Columbus was the catalyst — the starting point of the invasion of the American continent, how there were all these nations before, some were eradicated, and this was just kind of the start. And I mean, I sit there and go, I understand, but at the same time I also understand that if that process hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t be here. A lot of good things wouldn’t have happened.