I’m frustrated. I’ve been a minority all my life in several ways, the most obvious one being race. I’m Asian. I live in a state that is predominately white. It’s gotten more diverse over time, but it’s still pretty damn white. So me being Asian is a very defining feature. I’m fine with that now, but it fucked with my head when I was in my twenties.
Before that, I didn’t fully realize that I was different. I mean, I only knew my life so it was, as the kids say, what it was. I didn’t understand that my parents were very exclusionary in that they only wanted to be with Taiwanese people, eat Taiwanese food, and do Taiwanese things. Rather, that’s my father and my mother went along. She was more flexible in that she did not hate America and Americans the way my father did.
I just wanted to be American. I didn’t want to be the weirdo who ate stinky food and dressed funny. I didn’t want to be the kid who knew nothing about pop culture. I rarely went to other kids’ houses and I never invited them to mine. In other words, I was very isolated as a child. We went to a Taiwanese church, and that was where most of our socialization happened.
We celebrated Taiwanese holidays such as Mid-autumn Festival and lunar New Year by eating a ton of food and watching a bunch of skits/singing performances (by us, the attendees). Nothing ever started on time because that was part of our DNA. If it was supposed to start at six, we did not arrive until six-thirty at the very earliest. And then it would start around seven-fifteen.
I would bring a book with me and read in a corner until the festivities began. Then, my mother or father scolded me for that because I was, what, ignoring the people who weren’t even interested in me?
Anyway. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized I was Asian, which was very different than the other people around me. That’s when I got really angry about racism, and it nearly consumed me. I was so angry that no one had told me about racism when I was a kid or a teen. That was back in the days of the fucking ‘melting pot’ theory, though, that really meant that people of color had to ‘melt’ into the dominant culture. It was never the other way around. That didn’t come until later. At least lip service to DEI, if not actual practice.
When I had a job as an admin assistant for the director of the Diversity Division in the Department of Community Corrections, man, that was a terrible job for so many reasons. A big one was job creep. I was very good at being an admin assistant in many ways, but it was clear that I could do more. My boss was not good at her job–or she was just burnt out. I did not blame her because the county didn’t give a shit about diversity–it was just a box they were ticking off.
Everyone in the department (roughly 500 people) were required have diversity training every so often. I don’t remmeber how often, but my boss was always struggling to get someone to do the training with her. So, she started roping me in to do it. Remmeber, I was the admin assist. And I only worked half-time. And there was no fucking way I should have been doing the training. I hated doing it. Was I good at it? Yeah, but that’s not the point.
Anyway, it was a shitty training. My boss was clearly phoning it in. Or more likely, she hadn’t been proprely trained to do her job, either, and had scrambled to find something, anything that would work. This training was basically, racism (and other icsms) are bad! This is why they ‘re bad! Don’t do it. Which, I mean. Come on. It wasn’t even DEI 101–that is too lofty to describe what was being offered.
I have long since thought that the only way to truly get across what it’s like to be a minority is to do something extremely unethical. It’s to put the people in the majority in the same situation that minorities have to face. Even just a taste of it would be better than nothing. I had a roommate when I was a junior in college. I also belonged to several diversity groups at the same time. One was a group for Asian people. We put on a ‘appreciate Asian food’ event–way before Chinese food became trendy. (The first Asian food to become acceptable by the mainsteram.) I invited my roommate, and afterwards, she told me that she had felt uncomfortable being one of the few white people in the room. Now, this was the case where maybe just over half the people in the room weren’t white, but it was enough for her to feel like a true minority.
For a DEI event, I envision building a town/city where it’s mostly people of color, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. Then straight white able-bodied cis het people* have to live in it for a week. Just one week! And they have to be treated like minorities are treated. (No actual violence, of course.)
Wow. It took me a long time to get to the actual point of this post–I wish I could invent a game that makes it easier for able-bodied FromSoft fans to understand why the games are so hard for someone like me. I was joking with Ian that I would like a soulslike that penalizes you for parrying. He said that was every game if you missed! I said, no, I wanted the game to penalize people for MAKING the parry, not for missing!
I think, though, that I would rather it be that the game showed what it’s like when someone like me plays it. So. When they parry, it doesn’t register–even if they get it. Or it registers several seconds later. So they have to go at least a second earlier on the parry than they’re physically able. In other words, they can never get the parry. And the jump is abnormally short so even if they eyeball the distance correctly, they’ll still fall.
I have more to say, but I’m done for today.
*Yes, I know it’s not nearly as clear-cut as that. This is all imaginary, anyway.