POSTCARD FROM TOPEKA

When I went home to Topeka, Kansas, right after my finals, I was bored crazy. With nothing better to do, I opened up the local newspaper to see what was going on besides high school graduations. I landed on a "Best of Topeka" feature, sort of a version of "Best of Boston."

The winners were nothing extraordinary, just bland establishments with nice names. Having lived in this town for a good part of my life, I felt that everything still oozed with a conventional Midwestern taste. There was some effort to spice up the restaurant list with categories like "Best Mexican Food." I thought, whatever, as if that stuff is actually authentic in Topeka.

I don't know what possessed me, but I decided to kill some time and write a letter to the paper, just to see what the reaction would be in this bland, fairly undiverse town. My topic was a personal critique of the word "oriental" as applied to all things Asian.

I'm no activist and I usually make fun of politically correct statements. But the newspaper published the experimental letter, and the mess began.

For some reason, everyone I knew and their parents saw the letter. (You wouldn't believe how carefully people in my town follow local news and yet are so clueless about international events.) At work, people approached my father and praised my letter's form (ugh). Friends and acquaintances also made some comments about how amusing it was to see me write a letter to the paper.

But most of them disagreed with the content, which basically meant that they saw nothing wrong with calling certain people "orientals" even though one girl had written about how much it offended her and even though plenty of more sophisticated literature had been written criticizing that term.

The funny thing is that being called "oriental" never used to bother me until other people told me it was bad. I thought it was the name of a race, like "Caucasian" or "Polynesian," because it was commonly used by other kids and teachers. In grade school, kids called me Suzie Wong, stretched out their eyes and asked me to teach them judo. I had no idea who Suzie Wong was, thought the eye thing was funny and felt dumb that I didn't know judo like I was supposed to.

I guess that when you've been treated a certain way all your life and no one tells you it's bad, plus you still have nice friends and good grades, you wouldn't feel that anything's wrong, especially in a town where you're used to being stared at for looking different.

It was only when I started reading about hate crimes against Asian Americans, received pretty nasty crank calls and left for the East Coast that my view of my town changed. According to these outside reports, everything I considered "normal" was ignorant, discriminatory and oppressive.

Not that I like to belittle my hometown as narrow-minded, but, increasingly, the "you're an alien, stop complaining" attitudes are difficult to ignore. Topeka and Kansas as a whole often seem to fall some steps behind the pace of the rest of the nation.

The wide acceptance of the term "oriental" is but one example. The behavior of our own Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is another. I used to think Sam was okay for a politician. A few years back, he was running for the House (before Dole left his Senate seat). Brownback was the guest of honor at a small banquet hosted by members of the Taiwanese American community in his district. I was there as I heard him assure everyone that he supported democracy and Taiwan's progressive liberty. Cool, I thought. He was sympathetic.

Or he was trying to be. He made a few blunders in praising the Kuomintang Nationalist Party's Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in front of people who hated her guts. He was promptly admonished by an outraged older gentleman for not doing his homework. Brownback was completely taken aback by the scolding and apologized immediately. That seemed a fair warning to speak with caution and sensitivity in mind.

But maybe it's one thing to proclaim your love for democracy and self-determination in the form of support of a small Asian nation. And it's another thing actually to respect the people themselves. Brownback caused quite a stir not too long ago when he mocked their accents amid the whole Clinton donation scandal: "No raise money, no get bonus," he remarked at a Congressional hearing.

I think some Topekans cringed along with the rest of the nation. But not all.

I do appreciate people who "Honk for Tolerance." In fact, Topeka is sincerely trying to promote tolerance and harmony in its public schools through multicultural education and student panels.

Unfortunately, what sounds good in theory has been useless in practice. When I go home and visit the mall, I still get stares, hear people whispering about my origins and run into little kids speaking Sam Brownback-style to me. Names and stereotypes won't ruin my good moods, because I figure the people who use them don't know any better. I'm used to this, but, as my world opens up more and more, home in Topeka feels increasingly distant and unpleasant.

I still don't align myself with any group of people or any politically-correct cause. Like a lot of students of this generation, I care about the world but not as much as I should.

It disturbs me that home folk think I, in my notorious detachment from causes, am overreacting when I protest the use of the simple yet belittling word "oriental."

Well, you can see how reluctant I am to say home sweet home.

Susan Yeh '00 is a History of Science concentrator. She has left her beautiful home in Kansas to fight air pollution and hurdle over dog droppings in Taipei, Taiwan.