Just over a year ago, I was driving on a residential street, maneuvering my way in between cars parked on both sides when I saw a motorcyclist coming in the opposite direction. I wasn’t in a hurry, and my daughter was at the back singing a little tune from her piano lesson. As I slowed down to pull the car over, I noticed the motorcyclist was forging ahead at a much slower pace than I had anticipated. I wondered perhaps he was doing it as a nice gesture (maybe he wanted to wave or even say thanks?) but when he slowed down enough to make eye contact with me, what proceeded was not something I had predicted: he spat at my face.

Over the years, I have experienced many shades of rejection. As a child of an immigrant family, I accepted this as an inevitable byproduct of my fate, and tried earnestly to assimilate. But after living in North America for almost 30 years, I still get asked where I am “really from,” which leaves me perplexed and feeling adrift. Am I a traitor to my birth country if I still long to be accepted in North America? And what about my daughter who was born here? Will she be accepted or will her looks betray her?

Reading about what happened in Atlanta makes me wonder again what exactly spurs hate because at this point I’ve heard it all: race, gender, politics, religion, accents, and the list goes on. I didn’t have a good answer a year ago when my 3-year-old asked me, and a whole year after I still have no answers. What I do know though is that a lot of these stories remain untold, shoved under the carpet as did mine. 

The prevalent anger and hatred I experienced wasn’t limited to my time in the US but also around the world when I toured as a classical musician - questions about why so many Asians drain the resources of foreign countries by studying and working abroad, why we play music nonnative to our heritage, etc. Reading about the shooting today stirred up long-suppressed emotions, and most surprisingly, it gave me courage to share this story. Perhaps I will never have any answers but this is where we start.

By Min-Jeong Koh