The Paper Cut
Yesterday, I went to the corner bakery with my son to pick up some bread for our pasta dinner. We were having friends over and I was in a rush. Thankfully, the bakery, just about to close, had some French bread left for my Italian dinner. My 4 month old son who has yet to figure out how to roll over or how to fall asleep on his own and I were presented with the most interesting question at the bakery.
One of the guys that works there, whom we have gotten to know since the place opened, noticed how much my son has grown in the last couple of months. And as I am about to acknowledge that and ask how much for the bread one of his co-workers turns to me and asks, “so is he reading whole encyclopedias and doing math problems yet?” Huh?
What is that supposed to mean? Why did he ask us that question? Is it because we are Indian and stereotypically we are supposed to be “smart”? Maybe it was just a really innocent question. But sometimes you get these feelings in your gut that says something is amiss. Would he have asked this question to a White or Black parent? Maybe he would have asked an Asian parent?
Ultimately, this comment is not like a politician calling someone a macaca or a hate crime based on sexuality or religion. But the comment we received is what I would call a paper cut. These are small seemingly innocuous comments that people make based on misinformation, assumptions, and essentializations about other people that are not like them.
The consequence is small paper cut like tears to that person’s being. It is not an overt attack like being called some racist epithet, where one can grieve and rage in concrete ways. It is the kind of hurt that is un-diagnosable, too small for a band-aid and sometimes is not visible to the naked eye. But you know it is there. And over the course of the day, or one’s lifetime, you amass so many of those small paper cuts that eventually you do start to visibly bleed.
And then, there is no band-aid big enough to stop the hurt.
