The Japan Diaries 2020: An Expat’s Perspective on the Black Lives Matter Movement
This month, July 24th, will mark my family’s 4th year in Japan. I haven’t written very much about our life here, but I have talked about it - endlessly, it sometimes seems. To say the learning curve has been steep would be vastly understating things, but what I’ve learned the most about during my time abroad, much to the chagrin of those around me in earshot, has been from my own country.
A lot has changed since we left. We’ve changed. I’ve changed. Our country has changed, or at least I used to think so. What I’ve come to realize, however, is that, given the position of an outside observer, all the things I thought I understood about America - about Americans, for that matter - were wrong.
We came to Japan in July of 2016, in the dead heat of an election year I was surprisingly optimistic about. Donald Trump, one of the worst human beings I’ve ever encountered personally, was running against former Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, one of the most qualified persons to ever run for president, regardless of gender. Every day, it seemed there was an embarrassing career-ending Tweet or some sexual assault scandal popping up from the Trump campaign and I thought, surely, the Christian Right - so vital to the lifeblood of his campaign - wouldn’t stand for this. Of course they would abandon him. They had, for years, attacked the opposition for much less abhorrent behavior. Surely, a candidate who brags he can grab a woman by the pussy or “move on her like a bitch” would be unelectable.
I’ll say this right here because I know it’ll come. There will be those who support Trump who will be offended by my use of his direct quotes. My question to those people is, why is it okay for the “Leader of the Free World” to spew such bile? You need to hear it. You need to read it. You need to absorb it because that’s who he is. If you cast a ballot for this man, it’s your mess on the carpet and just like puppies, you need to be forced to look at it.
Getting back to 2016, though, what I discovered was that none of that mattered. Not a single solitary tweet. Not video/audio hard evidence, not on-the-record admissions, nothing. It didn’t matter to the Christian Right as long as they were ingesting their morsels of Trump via Fox News. Many would flat out refuse to follow him on Twitter, not understanding that, in the world we live in today, social media is the media, in large part, at least with Trump. With every single tweet, he was telling us who he is. Over and over and over again. Dozens, sometimes a hundred times a day, he was showing his ass, live and unfiltered, to the world. Yet hop on over to Fox News and all the pundits would drag out the Snapchat filters for Trump’s image, glossing over the fine lines of racist remarks, the blemishes of outright misogyny, and trimming away the fat of his multitude of sexual assault allegations. Everyone looks good on Snapchat and even Trump looks like a leader on Fox News, but it’s not reality. The sad part is that the reality was there for everyone to see, but his supporters either didn’t care to look or just otherwise didn’t care at all.
All of this is not easy to say. There are people I love deeply, unconditionally, who still support him. I still hold out hope that the veil will be lifted, but it weighs heavy on me. It’s not easy and it’s not fun to tell people I love that I believe them to be wrong. To be fair, I’m a kinder gentler Kendra. Years, life experience, motherhood, and a great deal of personal pain have softened my previously prickly exterior. I don’t like to do it, but I simply can’t ignore it if I see it. It’s too important. I was caught up in the move to Japan in 2016 and then settling in and learning how to navigate life here and before I knew it, it was Election Day. I’d mailed in my absentee ballot and waited to celebrate the first female president of the United States.
As lunchtime rolled around in Japan on Wednesday afternoon, the final vote tallies were coming in. It was Tuesday night in the US and Clinton had won the general election, but lost the electoral college. Donald “I could shoot a guy in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose any votes” Trump had just been elected president.
I don’t know if I can ever fully express the crushing sadness and disbelief I had in that first moment. The disbelief faded soon enough, but the sadness stuck around. That first year in Japan, the expats in our area mourned together. We all knew it would be bad, were terrified for the implications of America’s decision and were quite frankly bracing ourselves. When I talk about implications, I’m not talking about Trump. I’m talking about a voting majority who puts a man like that into any kind of public office. The sadness remained because it showed me what had been simmering beneath our nation’s surface all along. People were repressing all the ignorance, fear, and outright hatred until we elected a political mouthpiece to validate all of those feelings and make them feel like the oppressed minority.
Racism is nothing new and it’s not something which went away after the Civil Rights Movement and the end of the Jim Crow era. Now, however, racists have found a greater store of boldness, thanks in large part to Trump’s rhetoric, and have reached a wider audience, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of cell phone cameras. This stuff has always happened - it’s just now being caught on third party cameras, not being glossed over in the office of internal affairs. It’s hitting the internet, at times live, and providing white America with an eyewitness account of a reality foreign to them.
We live in an age where most of conservative White America strives for an ideal of “color-blindness.” I’m just like you. You’re just like me. We have the same struggles and the same hopes and the same fears and so we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
But we’re not the same. Our hearts are the same, to be sure. Our minds are equal, given equal opportunities, but our histories place us on very different starting blocks in this race we’re all perpetually running. You may think you’re just living your life, minding your own, but like it or not, someone is keeping score. Every injustice, every time history has said you are less than a person, you are someone’s property, you are not enough on your own without your White masters - that is a stone in the pocket of a Black man or woman. And guess what? That’s a lot of stones. That’s the Blue Ridge Mountains of stones.
In the horse racing world, we call that handicapping. The problem, though, is that handicapping, in that sense, is designed to keep all the horses running together. The faster horses get heavier handicaps so gambling is a higher risk-to-payout ratio and the crowds get a more dramatic “down to the wire” finish. There comes a time, however, when an exceptional horse gets completely broken down by the track handicapper. Desperate to make the race “fair,” the handicapper places an outlandish amount of weight on the animal and it either breaks them down physically or breaks their spirit.
Horses don’t chase a rabbit the way greyhounds do. Horses run because it is in their nature. Much like horses, we strive to achieve, to grow, to love, to provide, because it is in our nature, no matter the color of our skin. Those whose skin is not white, however, are born with lead in their pockets. There are people who praise those Black men and women who - despite the handicapping history has dealt them - achieve greatness, over and above their White counterparts. What they almost universally fail to acknowledge, however, is just how much harder those individuals have had to work to break through the barriers placed in front of them by a system run, by and large, by rich White men.
Back to the thoroughbred racing analogy, for every Secretariat Triple Crown victory, every Seabiscuit triumph from adversity, you have a Man O’War. Man O’ War was, arguably, the greatest racehorse who ever lived. He was dismissed at auction as a yearling because of his huge ungainly frame and early in his training developed a reputation as a slow jump out of the gate. What Man O’ War had, however, was a fierce desire to run, an intuitive trainer, and absolutely unparalleled speed and stamina over long distances. He was built to win. And he did. 20 out of 21 races. The one he lost? To a horse named “Upset.” He went on to sire winner after winner, including War Admiral, the horse demonized by the film Seabiscuit. Look further down his family tree and he is a great grand “uncle” to Secretariat. Why have you probably never heard of Man O’ War, unless you’re a massive horse nerd like I am? Because he never ran in the Kentucky Derby, taking him out of the running for the Triple Crown and because he was retired early after handicappers - desperate to drive up gamblers on long-shots - placed so much weight on him that his owner and management decided to retire him before he was physically broken.
Why am I harping on horses, besides my aforementioned horse-nerd status? Because we are in a race and many incredible People of Color, who should be running easily out in front, are being broken by handicappers or are simply heading back to the stables because they understand the game is rigged and some asshole, somewhere, is placing bets. The rest of us? We’re running with no added weight in our saddle blankets, ridden by jockeys who haven’t eaten a piece of bread since they hit puberty. Maybe we throw a shoe somewhere down the backstretch, that’s not our fault, but we’re managing it without handicaps at the gate. If you’re shouting about being a filly in a colt’s world and so you think you understand, then you still don’t. You’re a White filly, and the Black fillies have the heaviest handicaps of all.
In the end, the horses we remember either spectacularly beat a rigged system or were taken down by that same system. Ruffian (broke her leg halfway down the homestretch and was later put down), Phar Lap, (killed by a massive dose of arsenic) and, most recently, Barbaro, the 2006 Derby winner who shattered his leg during the Preakness and was, again, ultimately put down.
It’s not that different with People of Color. We either praise the ones who broke free of the system designed by White men to keep them in their place, or we vilify the ones the system breaks. There really is no representation of those in between. The rest who occupy the middle ground are held to the impossible standard of the few, despite the fact that they’re running on the track of the oppressors.
And so, understandably, the Black community is once again crying out. The anger which has been simmering just beneath the surface has been there for centuries, cooking us all down to our strongest basest flavors. Don’t think for a moment that you’re not a part of the stew. Men and women of Color, White soccer moms, those of us just trying to get by and those driving golf carts with their MAGA signs, pumping fists in the air, shouting “White Power.”
The Black Lives Matter movement is the cry of the oppressed. It is the cry of the disenfranchised and, thankfully, those who choose to use their privilege to speak out against the injustice they see around them. Martin Luther King, Jr., in one of his many quotes conveniently forgotten by the mostly White people who use his stance as a peaceful protestor to attempt to delegitimize the Black Lives Matter movement, said that “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Usually, before there is rioting, long before typically, there are peaceful protests which get ignored or derided.
You’ll notice I’m choosing to write mostly in analogies and metaphorical language. Not only is that my normal style of discourse, but more than ever, it makes sense because everything I’m saying in regard to these issues has been said before. Usually by much stronger voices with more harrowing personal experiences to go along with them. Because my goal, then, is to try to gain the understanding of those who I love and anyone else who may read this, I feel it best to relate it to things they might have a deeper knowledge of. I’m not deluded enough to believe that my audience has a deep knowledge and personal connection to Thoroughbred racing, but as I thought about the idea of White privilege, I couldn’t get the thoughts of track handicappers out of my head. So, when I think about the progression of peaceful protests escalating to violence and rioting in the streets, another comparison surfaces in my mind, something I’ve struggled for a deeper understanding with for the better part of four years now.
For those who don’t know, and I’m assuming that’s most of you, my oldest son, Anton, is on the Autism spectrum. We aren’t sure what his exact diagnosis is - for that we’d have to get him evaluated in English, which isn’t a readily available option in this area of Japan - but we do know his experience of life is not that of a neurotypical person. He is blessed with amazing gifts that counter some of the things that cause him to struggle. He has perfect pitch, a beautiful singing voice (when he chooses to let himself be heard), is incredibly smart (reading, speaking and writing well above his age range in both English and Japanese at the age of six), is quickly developing his skills as an artist, and has the kindest most sensitive spirit. However, because his brain works differently than others, he has to work extremely hard to focus and to make social connections. He was born without the ability to properly understand certain social cues as well as a sensitivity to external stimuli and a heavier than normal reliance on routine.
When we first came to Japan, I had begun to notice certain changes in Anton’s behavior. He went from making easy eye contact with us to avoiding looking us in the eye, not responding to his name being called, and repeating memorized dialogue from stories and videos he’d seen. There were many other signs which crept in as well, but regardless of those areas where he was cognitively different, he was and is warm and engaging, funny, creative, and deeply empathetic.
The issues came, though, when he was attempting to communicate something to us, a fear or an overwhelming sensation, which we simply couldn’t understand. As neurotypical thinkers, we had a hard time, initially, thinking outside the box and looking at the environment through Anton’s unique field of vision. Pretty early on, the meltdowns began. I’d expected tantrums, and had dealt with them during his second year, however, the life-halting explosions I began to experience with him were far outside everything I’d come to expect. A tantrum can be calmed with reason and compromise. Anton’s tantrums are something else entirely. One thing out of place can trigger a cascading onslaught of panic which can last not minutes, but hours.
The only way to stop an autistic meltdown with Anton, I’ve found, is to listen to him and fix the issue immediately, because here’s the thing . . . if he’s coming apart at the seams, it’s not from a superficial want or whim, it’s because something is fundamentally wrong in his environment. It could be that I’ve messed with the order of his routine or misplaced his favorite comfort item, but to him, his whole world has been disrupted and in order to understand and deal with that, I have to acknowledge what he’s feeling and fix it, to the best of my ability, immediately, without delegitimizing it.
In the same way, People of Color have been signaling, first quietly and peacefully, and eventually in an all-out roar, that something is fundamentally wrong and needs to be fixed. Now. Our reaction should not be anger, defensiveness, and returned screams and certainly not a complete dismissal of their lived experience. Instead, we need to act immediately. Figure out the root of the issue and how to fix it and, if it’s something without an immediate solution, which most real-world problems tend to be, we need to find a temporary solution to bridge the gap. We’ve gotten pretty adept at the temporary solutions in the intervening decades since the Civil Rights Movement. Our problem is, that is generally where it ends. We stick a patch on the thing and move on. But like my son, society has a long memory. If we promise him something to calm him down and then hope he’ll forget, we’re in for a rude awakening. He never forgets, and neither do people who have suffered hundreds of years of oppression. If racism is systemic - and it is - then it is the whole system that needs to change. It was created by White men, for White men, and over the years, women and minorities have been able to shoehorn their way into it, but only to a certain extent and any progress that has been made has required protesting and, yes, rioting, in the streets.
So in saying Black Lives Matter, we are not closing the door on White people. How can we? For the most part, White people who consider themselves to be “non-racist” are nowhere near the door to even be shut out. We’re nestled somewhere cozy in the family room, sipping a warm mug of our own privilege. Unfortunately, White people who are openly racist are actively holding the door shut against People of Color trying to gain access to the inner sanctum.
And that’s where we are as a nation right now. The folks on the outside cannot get through the door without breaking it down because it is being held shut against them. Our job now, instead of nursing our privilege, is to get our asses up off the couch, and whenever we see someone we know pressing themselves up against the door, pry them away from it using whatever tactics we can. Clear the path to the door so it has a chance of opening. That’s what being an ally is. That’s being anti-racist. It’s active. It’s constant. It’s exhausting. It’s heartbreaking. It’s what’s right. And it needs to happen now.
If you’ve been fighting, keep fighting. If you’ve been speaking out, keep speaking out. Eventually, things will change. They have to.
I love you all. I miss you all. We will survive this year. We will survive Donald Trump. I will see you all again soon.
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