Mulan—Protests and moving out
05-31-20 For some context — this call comes in the context of countless protests currently happening, as a violent reaction to the murder of George Floyd. There is a prevailing sense that things have gone too far, and the only viable option is take things into our own hands, and protest/riot until there are concrete changes, like there were in 1968 with the Civil Rights Act (202006011455). What is interesting that just like how in 1968 202006011502, there was a sort of tipping point and the sense that the country was going to go in a novel, distinct direction, I’m getting sense that something like that is going to happen now as well.
Anyway, in the midst of all of this, Mulan had a conversation with her mom, on 202005301336 5-29-30. The conversation centered around Mulan explaining to her mother what exactly was going on with the protests, and she understood them in the context of police being racist towards everyone. The conversation then steered into experiences that they’d had themselves and heard relating to racism towards Asian-Americans. This was very heartening to Mulan, because although she was aware that when her mom is scared, she still says stuff like “black people are dangerous and have no culture”, the conversation that she just had meant that her mom understands the impact of racism, and how badly it can scare and affect a community.
Fast forward to yesterday. Mulan had been not in the best mood for the two days previously, but she’d managed to put it together, without really exploding. I guess she’d reached her tipping point, and sent a bunch of stuff to her mom (instagram posts, etc) that she also sent me: 202006011540.
In reaction, her mom just exploded. Said some disgusting, heinous shit, including
- “R u so proud of her for being like this? Why doesn’t she just go marry a black person and run off why doesn’t she care about her family’s safety instead of coddling black people”
- “Tell her to do stuff a 21 year old should do, not to follow black people bc everything in the world that’s bad is by them”
- she keeps calling my dad the spawn of black ppl and like
- “Why don’t u join them and let a black person shoot u to death if u love them so much”
- “how dare u bring talk about black people in our house our house is healthy no need for that shit”
- She also said that she got Mulan her internship, so what right does she have to talk
Even these thoughts are justifiable in a sense — you can say that she wouldn’t say these things normally, and the fact that she’s scared and overwhelmed because of COVID and the riots is the reason why she’s saying them. The thing is though, good people don’t have nearly as much leeway as bad people do when it comes to these kinds of things. At this point, with the things she’s said, the reasons don’t matter - she’s a corrupted, horrible person with whom it’s not worth associating or worrying about. And Mulan won’t be able to get her independence mentally until she isn’t physically dependent on her parents anymore.
We’ll see what happens. But if Mulan decides to separate ties, even a little bit at a time, I’m going to support her every step of the way.
uid: 202006011000 tags: #talks