All my life I spent most of my time playing video games, so when I met Brandon in middle school and figured out that he played the same types of video games on the same platform, we instantly clicked with each other. And for the next six years, we spent most of our time out of school playing various types of video games with each other. But one thing that we never really spoke to each other about was our backgrounds. So that’s why I chose to do this interview with him: so I can learn more about his past, at other schools in the rough parts of the neighborhood, and how being of Asian descent has affected him growing up.
After my second question, I was already surprised by one his answer. He told me that “When I was little I always thought I was a normal American and that I wasn’t Asian because at home my mom really only spoke English and I barely knew how to speak Vietnamese.” (00:30) I could see where the thought process comes from. When I was young and just playing around with all the other kids at school, looking hard at one another and trying to figure out everyone’s differences wasn’t the main priority. The main goal was to just play and have fun. With everybody learning English and being too young to understand that people could be different, kids could easily come to the conclusion that everybody is the same.
Continuing on with the interview, I found out that his parents fit the Asian stereotypes. He told me that when he was going through school, his parents pressured him to succeed, and if his grades started to fall behind then his dad would make him pick up a book or start studying so he can raise his grades back up. His dad would also forbid him to play video games so he could solely focus on studying and improving grades. This wasn’t too surprising to hear; this is one of the most common Asian stereotypes that people hear. Following with the next question, I was told that kids at his school would only reinforce the stereotypes because they would talk about Asians being smart, which was another part of society pressuring him to succeed and to continuously adhere to the stereotype. But this was just one “positive” stereotype, the kids at school would also make fun of him with the negative stereotypes, such as the one about Asians eating dogs. They would just poke fun at him saying immature things such as, “Do you eat dogs?” And the best way Brandon could face the problem was to just go along with jokes, so then everybody could move on and there would be less conflict. However, that just continued to reinforce the stereotypes. It didn’t solve the problems in society.
This leads to why Brandon spent most of his time playing video games. “I felt truly accepted when I was at home playing video games with my friends online because I could relate to them and had fun playing and sort of forgot my pressures and could enjoy life.” (02:21). He used them as an escape mechanism. Instead of having to deal with the trouble makers at school while also dealing with the pressure to succeed from his parents he could just have fun playing games by himself at home or a few people who he met online. This isn’t too surprising to hear as games being used as an escape mechanism isn’t anything new. Lots of people have done it, whether it’s to escape bullying, relieve stress, or ignore family problems.
Moving on to how Brandon feels today, he tells me that it’s a lot better in college. People don’t really say anything mean at all but he still has the pressure from his parents to succeed. This could easily relate to age and maturity. In middle school, kids don’t fully understand the impacts of their actions, and even in high school, most 16-year-old students can still act immature and constantly reinforce stereotypes with the types of “jokes” they tell.
When I asked Brandon how others in his situation could deal with it, he told me that they should talk to a teacher or counselor. But when I asked him if he himself told anyone about what was going on, he told me no. He said, “I felt too scared to talk to them because the situation could have gotten worse because if you told a teacher something, you could be labeled as a snitch and the bullies would target you more.” (04:10). So when I asked him later “If you could change any one thing about society, what would it be?”, he said “…to improve the help people should be receiving when they do talk to a teacher or counselor because today there really isn’t much help, they listen a bit to your story and there is almost no punishment or any change, so the people continue being bullies…” (04:27).
And I completely agree with his stance. During our times in middle school and high school, the principals constantly told students that they shouldn’t be afraid to speak up if they are getting harassed. But there was always that fear of being labeled a snitch and getting targeted more. And the main reason for that was because nothing was ever done about the situation. Today we constantly hear on the news about how someone at school was either beaten up or constantly harassed to point where the student didn’t even want to show up at school anymore. While reading into the story, we can see that most of the time the student or parent actually did notify a teacher or principal, but nothing was ever done until it was too late and the situation escalated to the point where actual authorities had to be called. Teachers rely more on anti-bullying policies than actually helping the student themselves. This goes back to why students are too afraid to ask for help: the teacher will most likely not take the bullying seriously or lack the skills to emotionally help the student, which causes students to be embarrassed, or afraid of getting teased even more after asking for help.
If left untreated, bullying and racism can slowly build into something dangerous. Recently there was a story published on CNN by Eliott C. McLaughlin talking about how one fifth grade girl attacked Raniya, another fifth-grade student, who later died from her injuries. One of the most relevant points in the story is how the victim’s mother told school administrators that there was a student harassing her daughter even going back to the previous school year. A few weeks before the fight, Raniya was asking her mom if she could stay at home to avoid coming to school completely. And yet even with the parents’ concern, nothing had been done to perpetrator. No talking to, no punishments, no separation from the victim. The victim’s mother told the teacher that she was “leaving it in her hands to do something about it,” but when Raniya came back home, she told her mother that the teacher hadn’t raised the issue. School administrators need to take more actions against bullying instead of just saying “We’ll look into it”.
Another thing we can take away from this story is how no one else stepped in to help the victim. The victim’s classmates did acknowledge that they saw the bully harass the victim into the fight throughout the day, but they didn’t step in to help, not even once considering how the bullying has been going on for the past year. But that can be blamed on the weak administration when Brandon mentioned earlier that he was too afraid to speak up because he could be targeted more, the same could be said for all of the witnesses in almost all bullying scenarios. If only one person steps in to help, that person would most likely be afraid of also becoming a target.
In the book “The Drowned and the Saved” by Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor, he mentions the term “Useless Violence”. The term can be simply defined as the desire to inflict pain and suffering without any reasoning. He used it to describe how concentration camps were designed to provoke terror, suffering, and pain instead of killing the prisoners fast and efficiently. We can describe Brandon’s case, Raniya’s case, or any case of bullying as “Useless Violence”. The bullies have no reason to act the way they do, they are only causing the victims to suffer for no good reason.
As a society, we all need to do our part in creating a more open, friendly, and trustworthy community. People need to understand how their actions affect others. Bullies especially need to understand the dangers of reinforcing extremely negative stereotypes or causing harm towards people who are different from them for no reason. We all have the ability to treat others the way we want to be treated.