One Year Ago
The seeds were planted. Bad seeds. Anti-Asian seeds. On a high school lacrosse field, players from Palo Alto taunted Asian players from San Mateo with tags of “Wuhan,” “Corona,” and “virus boy.” Not loud enough for parents in the stands to hear, but loud enough for all the players to hear. Repeatedly. Long after the game, I heard about it from my son and his teammates. Did the referees hear it during the game? Maybe. Coaches ? Maybe. What about other Palo Alto players? Probably.
What about me — did I do anything? No, not really. I talked to a few players and a few parents. They all said what maybe I wanted to hear: don’t make a big deal about it; that was a few days ago; they’ll deny it; they were just being a-holes, trying to rattle us; there’s Asian kids on their team too; don’t we have bigger things to worry about with Covid-19?
One year later, I think a lot about that game. How the taunts were heard by so many. How easy it was to rationalize not doing anything. How the echos have reverberated and grown louder. How politicians have promoted and tried to normalize this. How Jeremy Lin has heard the same taunts on the basketball court. How violence against Asian-Americans is rising.
We need an honor code against racism. Universities from Miami to Michigan to CalTech have academic honor codes. Their essence is: you will not cheat, and it is your obligation to act when you see others cheat.
Racism is the ultimate in cheating, but we are often hesitant to act against it. In my college experience, there was positive power in giving cheating another, less radioactive name. A friend or even a teacher could warn someone off minor, bad impulses with the simple question, “Is that an honor code violation?” This usually provoked an approprioate response rather than a fight-or-flight reaction to an accusation of “cheating!” Did the honor code eliminate cheating completely? No, but it created a community standard than was positive and self-reinforcing.
If honor codes are anti-cheating, why can’t they be anti-racist?
One year later, we would all do well to apply such an honor code to our daily lives — on and off the lacrosse field.