Badass
Yoga Nun hit the dance floor Saturday night. Every once in a
while I need a good 2-4 hours of sweating on a dance floor to speed up my
metabolic and metaphysical processes. In the wake of the Michael Brown trial in
my solitary rage, I had been needing a physical outlet to vent—some pounding
music and enough energy around me to support and inspire. I had not had an
opportunity to dance in Korea, given the class and age segregation inherent in
Confucianist Korea. Where is a 51 year-old yoga nun supposed to get her dance
on? I’m told a lot of clubs not only have dress codes but also age caps—no one
over 30!
Whatever….I
decided to chance it at a queer-friendly party at a club in the foreigner
district, Itaewon. Queer communities are more welcoming and less conservative
as a rule, so I thought this might be the best setting to step out. On the
other hand, I hadn’t been around White people in months and I immediately felt
triggered. The armor I had been unconsciously shedding came back on, like the
smoke that filled the basement bar.
Once
inside, I had work to do. I stormed the dance floor like a banshee, unwilling to wait for the crowd to get drunk enough to dance. I was out there alone seemingly forever, old and unashamed, but eventually a few folks stepped up and sort of bounced mildly with drinks
and cigarettes in hand.
Things
got exciting when a spontaneous cipher began with a few gay Brown men voguing
and a sister who joined them. Spectators whipped out their cameras and filmed
the scene. I love ciphers for their unpredictability and the spirit of
participatory democracy, but this one disturbed me after a while, because
no one else was joining. It turned out to be a performance rather than a
community dance-in. a racially charged exhibitionist/voyeur event.
In
the wake of Michael Brown’s trial, a friend posted on Facebook, “If only white
people loved Black people as much as they love Black culture.” To be Black in
Korea is tough. In addition to a tradition of colorism and homogeneity among
Koreans, there is an idolatry of White culture borne of an unhealthy
relationship with the USA after more than a half century of occupation, and to
Koreans, to be American means to be White. It seems Koreans have internalized
some of the worst parts of White culture, based on mainstream media and a
conservative military. And that equals both a fascination and a fear of Blackness.
Yet
Black culture is highly sought out. African American hip-hop fills the airwaves
here like it does all over the world, and I’ve connected with the African
drumming and dance communities, as well as the Capoeira Angola community in
Seoul. I’ve met artists from Burkina Faso, able to make a living here,
performing and teaching, and hanging out with their Korean girlfriends. It all
feels a little Josephine Baker-ish, and the long tradition of Black artists
from Nina Simone to James Baldwin who left their homes to live where they could
financially support themselves and live in a less overtly hostile environment.
On
one hand, I love the universality of art and how it brings people together. On
the other hand, I abhor exotification and cultural appropriation. This tension manifested on the dance floor, as the White and Asian crowd surrounded the Black
dancers. Itaewon is also filled with Korean women in their microskirts hanging
out with their White boyfriends. The interracial mingling goes beyond this trope, but this particular dynamic concerns me the most, because of the dominance
of global whiteness and the fraught history of the USA in Korea. The walls of
the Itaewon club flickered with videos of Black bodies—the less clothing the
better, the air throbbed with Black voices, and now a cipher surrounding Black dancers.
Meanwhile,
Michael Brown. And so many others whose names we may or may not learn, Brown
and Black folks, victimized by systemic White supremacy.
What
does it mean to love Black people, especially Black youth, especially Black
male youth, and treasure them the way White culture treasures White youth? For
those who claim to love Black people (“my best friend/boy or girl friend is
___”), how can you tell when you lapse into objectification, appropriation, and
exotification of Black folks?
In
America, we are Black or we are White. The extreme violence that surrounds us
forces us to choose: we cannot be in-between. Society chooses for us, actually,
and because Asians have been slaughtered in hate crimes just as
African Americans have been, we are also Black. Think of Vincent Chin, Chai Vang, and just this month, Sao Lue Vang,
And
yet, in Itaewon, are Koreans more White than Black? How does this manifest in
how Koreans treat Blacks? How does this show up in how Koreans treat other
Asians—the recent immigrants from Southeast Asia, their browner neighbors from
sunnier countries?
May
we Yellow and Brown folks embrace Blackness as a political, social, and cultural
stance of solidarity. May we not idolize, idealize, exoticize, objectify, or
exploit other people of color. May we love all our children and protect them
from harm. May we link arms and stand together with fierce compassion. May we
dance together on the sticky concrete dance floor in a basement bar in Seoul.
May we shift the gaze from voyeur to participant. May we all take on the
vulnerability and power of Michael Brown together.
No comments:
Post a Comment