Jeanette Yep - Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents

ON THAT 1-10 SCALE MANY OF US LIVE BY, WHITE FOLK WERE always a 10. I was convinced, as an Asian American, that the highest I could ever hit was a 7. I grew up in a predominantly white suburb in the San Francisco Bay area. It was clear to me, even as a child, that whites set the standards and I had to fit into their society if I was going to prosper, or even just survive.

In third grade at Hamilton Elementary, two large fifth-grade boys took me aside. OK, kid, open your eyes as wide as you can. Yessir, two large fifth-grade boys, can do, I thought. I practiced all the time at home in front of a mirror. All the Japanee, Chinee, slant-eye jabs from my classmates told me round eyes were much better than my more angular model. With all the elasticity my eye muscles could muster, I made like an owl, which sent my fifth-grade antagonists rolling in their racist laughter.

When we took the standardized tests in sixth grade to determine how we measured up to the rest of the country, I penciled in my name: Paul Michael Tokunaga. I proudly admired it. When my mother later saw it, she did not. She sat me down to write five hundred times: My name is Paul Minoru Tokunaga. I was doing all I could to blend in. I was embarrassed by my Japanese heritage. I wanted to be as white aS I could. White was right. Japanese was not.

The physical comparisons wouldnt let up. No matter how much I yanked on my nose and pinched my wide nostrils, they still wouldnt look like Joe Montanas or Clint Eastwoods. My jet-black hair would not curl unless I slept on it the wrong way, and none of my stretching exercises made me into a six-footer. Of course, the worst came in the high-school locker rooms: why, why, why couldnt I grow hair on my chest like my Italian friends?

Going away to college and having friends who werent so hung up on appearance, I was able to relax some. But it was clear: if I could choose, Id pick being white over Japanese any day. Any day.

It took an earth-shaking breakup with a Caucasian woman in college for racial reasons (her mom: What will the neighbors say? What will your children look like?) to make me face reality: Paul, you aint white, you aint never gonna be white in fact, why do you even wanna be white? That Damascus Road-like experience forced me to stare at the mirror to see my face and my heritage. God did make me Japanese. Did he goof? Was it a celestial computer error? Was I supposed to be Paul Michael or Paul Minoru?