One thing that is guaranteed to make me flinch is someone saying that we are all the same inside/underneath our skin.It’s the same as when I was a kid, the mentality around diversity was that America was a melting pot. That was supposed to mean that we took something from everyone’s culture and mixed it together in a perfect blend. That was the idea, anyway.
What really happneed was that immigrants were forced heavily compelled to give up what made them special and become something amorphously known as ‘American’. My parents were immigrants. They are Taiwanese. Asian cultures are known for assimilating to the culture around them and not sticking out at all. At least, it was like that back when my parents immigrated to America to go to grad school.
That meant that on the outside at least, when we were in public, we had to out-American American people. It was complicated in my family, though. My parents stuck to the Taiwanese church to meet their social needs, which meant that within the church and when we did church/Tawinese community-related activities, but outside of that, they tried to be as American as apple pie.
That only exacerbated my sense of alienation, quite frankly. I was being bullied for being a fat Asian girl in the seventies and eighties, and it only added to how much I hated myself from the emotional dysfunction at home. I have mentioned that by age seven, I was severely depressed and did not want to be alive.
Saying we’re all the same under it all is–let me put it this way. People used to think that, “I’m colorblind” was the best thing to be when it came to race. Because we’re all a part of the human race! Ugh. You know what that said to me even if I could not articulate it at the time? “I’m so uncomfortable with the topic of race, I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist.” It’s the same with people using man as the default. “Man means anyone.” No, it literally does not.
Look. I know words change and evolve, but they still mean something.
I strongly object to “we’re all the same underneath our skin/inside” not because it’s not true but because it’s a cop-out, just as “I don’t see color” was. In an ideal world, yes, people would not be judged negatively based solely on their race, but we don’t live in that world. We’re not even close to living in that world. In fact, we’re going backwards at an alarming rate when it comes to celebrating diversity.
So, pardon me if I laugh sardonically at the idea that all we need to do is state that we’re the same under our skin, and everything will be groovy! It’s toxic positivity, gaslighting, and quite frankly, offensive to hear that.