|
No. 2002-0810-CSL
Chung Soo Lee Summer 2002 ICAS Symposium August 10, 2002 11:00 - 6:00 PM Calvary Vision Community Center, 550 Township Line Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422 Institute for Corean-American Studies, Inc. 965 Clover Court, Blue Bell, PA 19422 Tel : (610) 277-9989; (610) 277-0149 Fax: (610) 277-3289 Email: icas@icasinc.org http://www.icasinc.org Biographic Sketch & Links: Chung Soo Lee |
|
Chung Soo Lee Director Public Affairs, Council for America My Country In the summer of 1974, the Korean Airline flew my family and me, the youngest in the family, to Honolulu on our way to LA, our temporary destination, before eventually settling into Chicago. Upon getting off the plane we were issued the green cards and were led to a waiting area in the terminal for the next connecting flight. The coolness of the air-conditioned room drastically contrasted the hot, humid air of Hawaii outside on the tarmac we had just passed through. While waiting in the red-carpeted lounge, in the midst of other weary travelers (mostly Korean immigrants like us), suddenly I heard from one corner what I thought to be a heavenly chorus. It was, as I now recall, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, all dressed in white shirts and blouses, singing in their polished harmony, "America the Beautiful." They had been on the same airplane with us; and, as I now surmise, must have completed a tour in Korea. At the first moment of landing on the US soil, they decided to sing the song that represented America more than anything else. For a weary and tired immigrant boy, who had undergone a grueling (over some 20 hours) flight across the Pacific, not knowing how he would fare in the land of English, the music could not have been more comforting. It was as though the choir was welcoming me and my family into their home land with the song so freely offered and so beautifully sung. My second impression of America I want to share with you is of a person, my college roommate, Stan. Stan came from an upper middle-class family of three children in New Mexico, a blue eyed, blond haired fellow. He was handsome in appearance, and kind and generous at heart. He allowed me and two other suitemates to use his small pick up truck from time to time, a little Datsun he used to clean homes and offices to fund his college education. It was through Stan I first heard Bob Dylan. Stan's Kenwood stereo mounted in wooden beer boxes, blasting Bob Dylan of the 80's, is still vivid in my mind and represents the practical and roughed Americans I now recognize and appreciate. Independent, down to earth, unassuming, and yet socially conscious, Stan embodied the 'kinder and gentler' Americans I have come to know and admire. My third and last impression of America I want to share with you is of yet another person, a colleague of mine at work, George.2 George is an African-American with a brilliant mind and a caring heart, a lover of languages and an accomplished saxophone player (who plays a weekly gig with his jazz band in one of the established night clubs in downtown Philadelphia). It is always a pleasure to share our common interests in music and to talk about cultures of the world (he is an avid traveler) and to discuss our work in the office. There is a meeting of minds at times when we talk, for which I am grateful. In the course of several years we've worked together, however, I detected—in the few subtle and personal moments in our conversations—a sub current of resentment toward America he harbors in his heart, the sub current that underlies his usual optimism and kind heart he normally conveys. Even though he is successful in his job and is financially secure, he personally feels betrayed by racism in America, his home, his country. After graduating from an ivy-league university, he had to work as a security guard at one time and had to seek welfare at another time: a clear victim of job discrimination, a fact he has never forgotten. Racism for him is real and personal and is present everywhere even now. He once remarked—jokingly or sincerely I could not tell—that racism is costly and is what makes the world go around. (We were talking about the flight of the white people from the urban neighborhoods.) Music, he says, is therapeutic for his lower back-pain; but, I think, it is therapeutic for his deep-seated resentment as well. As a Korean-immigrant, I do not feel the same victimization of racism George feels but I cannot disagree with him or ignore his experience. Sometimes I wonder how he, and many others like him, has the courage to get up everyday and face the world. George, the kind hearted and fun loving friend of mine, represents for me the dark side of America, the other America that we, Korean-Americans, unfortunately, would rather like to forget. My impressions of America I have presented here provide a montage of conflicting images. While generous and kind, and offering a beacon of hope and prosperity for many immigrants like me, America is also plagued by its own past demons. Unless we face up to its past demons America's bright promises for the future could not be realized. I do not mean to address the problem of racism here, a problem so vast and so deep that it would be presumptuous of me to talk about. Rather, what I want to focus on is somewhat philosophical, the question of projecting an image (a dominant image) of America. What I have shared with you this morning is a collection of impressions, not an image, of America. I want to make a careful distinction between the two. Image unites, puts things into a single perspective, consolidates diversity into unity. Applied politically through the medium of art and mass media, image can effectively mobilize people for a social agenda or a political cause.3 On the contrary, impressions are scattered, not unified,4 and do not fit with others to make up, as it were, a giant puzzle. There is in the end no final picture of reality, be it of America or of any other society. If modern writes write about the chaos in nature,5 certainly there is and can be no grand design for human societies and cultures. Unfortunately, however, we are too familiar with (too) many dictators who had grand designs for their people and society; and we know all too well the horrible consequences the people suffered when such designs were implemented with modern efficiency. But my point is: To devise a design is to project an image.6 It is not a coincidence, then, that my impressions of America, of its people and places, offer a montage rather than a unified picture. To present a unified image of America would be to consolidate its diverse peoples and cultures, the brighter and darker sides of its past, its promises and disappointments—all the complexities of human reality into a unifying whole. A dominant image of America would betray the multi-threaded fabric of America, of its peoples, and of its cultures.7 As we know, diversity is America's strength and is what makes America unique in the world. It makes America dynamic and vibrant. America, the nation of immigrants, then, resists a homogenous image. What, then, is my identify and my role in this multi-threaded fabric of America? What does it mean to be an American in the midst of multitudes of peoples in the vast land?8 What image do we usually conjure up when we say "an American"? What I am about to say may be a bit too bold to some of you; and it took me a while to be able to say this. I want to say: "I am an American," "Here, I am," "Look at me." America is my home. I am an American affected by my Korean parents, by my brothers and relatives, by my friends and neighbors, by my wife and daughter, and by all of their experiences and cultures. I am a typical immigrant having the emotional and social ties to two countries, the country I left and the country I adopted. But despite this duality—some might say, despite this shortcoming—I say: "I am an American." I am an American, affecting and being affected by America's diverse cultures and by its diverse peoples, as well as by the currents of the global economy and technology, by the events at home and abroad. In saying "I am an American," I am affirming that I am as diverse as America itself. When I say "I am an American," I don't want to emulate myself after an image. There is and should be no image that represents an ideal American, no matter how hard Hollywood tries to project. America is neither white nor black, nor will it be Hispanic or Asian in the future. America is in the making. Its peoples must face the future horizon which, like its vast landscape, is open and ever expanding. Let us not make ourselves into an image. Let us not unite behind one slogan, one agenda, and one social/political/religious goal. (There must be a reason why God forbade us from creating an image of Him. Could it be that He wants to be a God of all peoples?) I like looking at the night sky because it defies an image. Its various stars pull me into different directions and let me wonder aimlessly. I want to compare my American identity, if I must have one, to a distant star engulfed in its own galaxy. It is ever mutating and transforming its environment at the same time, leaving a little mark in the vast sky of multiple patters and forms. America is vast; and in it I can dream different possibilities, more than I ever could in anywhere else in the world. In affirming that I am an American, I am asserting that I am more than what my Korean culture projects me to be, what other people label me as, or what roles I am expected to play in the current social and political settings. My identity as a person is not reducible to the signs or designations I bear in my relationship to other persons in certain cultural and social settings in which I happen to find myself. I am more than what the Confucius society defines me as at this time in this particular circumstance. As long as I have time remaining in my life, I like to remain open-ended. My chapter is still to be written, a work to be completed, for better or for worse. I have here applied this broad philosophic concept of human person to the social and political concept of 'being an American.' In claiming to be an American, I want to remain free and open-ended, like the American landscape itself. I am an American. Who am I? Someone who is yet to become. For me America will always remain a new country, ever changing and ever expanding. It will always remain a country where people want to depart from the past and to move forward toward the future, both possible and imagined. In other words, America will always be a country of immigrants in the making; and I am grateful to be a part of its multi-threaded fabric. Despite all of its shortcomings and tragedies, I still believe in the America to come.
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
ICAS Home Page |
ICAS Fellow Roster |
Contact ICAS |
ICAS Speakers & Discussants |
Summer 2002 Symposium |