Trying to get unstuck

I try to avoid seeing photos of myself running. Well, I try to avoid seeing all photos of myself, but especially running photos. When I was a kid, the adults that ran the day care I went to would have us form a circle and sing songs. One of the songs they taught us was about a kid taking a trip around the world. When the kid got to China, the adults would have us pull up the corners of our eyes because to them, that’s what Chinese people look like. I was about four or five years old, and I had no idea what racism was, but pulling up the corners of my eyes felt wrong. One of my first acts of defying authority figures was not pulling up the corners of my eyes when they got to that part of the song. Nobody noticed because they were too busy pulling up the corners of their eyes. Eventually, the kids did notice me, and that I was one of the only Chinese kids among them. Then they would pull up the corners of their eyes, say “ching chong wong”, and laugh at me. I started avoiding being in photos. When I couldn’t avoid it, I refused to smile in photos because it made my eyes look like slits. This habit of trying to avoid being in photos and looking at myself was one that I carried into well into adulthood. In 2005 Corky Lee photographed me wearing t-shirt I made that said, “I am NOT the Chinese food delivery boy.” That is one of a handful of pictures of myself from my early 20s that I like. After I donated one of my kidneys and took up running, I was surprised that strangers took photos of me. I wasn’t the only shirtless runner, and I was never the fittest one. My choice of attire, or lack thereof, wasn’t a call for attention, but a practical decision to 1) run in the cheapest shorts that I was comfortable in; and 2) minimize laundry. Even though I thought it was a little weird, and deep down I suspected that the people taking the photos were laughing at me, I liked the goofy photos of myself. For the first time in my life, I was okay with being photographed. That changed in 2020.

Afterward, I tried to moved past everything that went down. I would go out between midnight and 2am to try to run and connect to the new community my wife and I moved to. With each step forward, my mind would go backwards to the way I’d been treated by Laz and the ultrarunning community. Even though I tried not to think I about what happened, I couldn’t avoid my feelings about what happened. It hurt that instead standing up to an angry mob of racist runners, Laz acquiesced to their demands, and then claimed that he and his ultrarunning community were the victims. It hurt that it felt like other runners, including people who took photos of me, didn’t say anything or reach out privately.

One of the few runners who spoke out for me called out an elite ultrarunner who publicly spoke about looking forward to competing in Laz’s invitational race. I know this ultrarunner from the obstacle course racing community, where she’s considered royalty because of her success, and her willingness to be vulnerable and share about her struggle to overcome setbacks. I’ve run alongside her in the desert, I’ve rooted for her, and when she came to New York City to promote a new endeavor, I was there to support her. I considered her my friend. So, I defended my friend when she was called out. I felt that elite ultrarunners as a group should have said more, but it was unfair to single out individuals who might have been dealing with things nobody was aware of.

My friend reached out to me privately and shared that though she wasn’t happy with the way Laz handled the situation with me, she still planned to show up to his invitational race and compete. She proposed wearing custom made shirts emblazoned with the words “Say Their Names” and “Black Lives Matter”. She also discussed donating money to a BIPOC non-profit for each mile she completed. These were her ideas. I didn’t attempt to persuade her. I shared my thoughts and offered my support. The custom t-shirts she claimed she ordered didn’t make an appearance at the event (or ever). The fundraising effort never materialized. She did do a small gesture, which would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t pointed it out. After participating in Laz’s invitational, my friend stopped talking to me. That threw me for a loop. Did she think I was mad at her? Did she think I don’t understand the fear associated with saying or doing something in a space where people will turn against you? Did she think I don’t know what it’s like to risk losing a space, a community, friends you care about, because you choose to speak up? Looking back at what happened, it feels like my friend, a white woman, didn’t reach out me because she was looking to support me or be an ally or accomplice. She came to me because she was torn between the ugliness of what Laz and his community did, and her desire to remain a member of their community. Once she felt like she had squared those feelings with me; once she felt I’d absolved her of her guilt- she no longer needed me, so she dropped me.

That really hurt.

It hurt because I never asked her to choose between me and Laz. I never asked her to choose between me and ultrarunning. Perhaps Laz and other ultrarunners made her choose. Whatever the case, she chose them. It feels like a lot of runners who I thought of as friends chose them, chose to ignore what happened in order to preserve their relationship with running.

When I showed up to support a new coalition of running industry leaders who banded together to promote diversity, I found that a lot of white runners who’d participated in Laz’s virtual race, but said nothing in response to the angry mob, were also in this space. One person, an industry and community leader, admitted that they participated in Laz’s community, saw what unfolded and didn’t speak up because they didn’t want to alienate their customers. This industry gatekeeper and running community leader felt that they had to choose between their customers, their running community, and me. This person could seamlessly move between being a supporter of Laz and being in a DEI space. Were they coming to the DEI coalition looking to be absolved? Was the push by the running industry to market themselves as prioritizing DEI a way for them to absolve themselves so that they could continue using sweatshop labor, prevent their employees from unionizing, keep their racist names, and sell more gear and race registrations?

When I inelegantly attempted to share what I was wrestling with in a blog post, I was accused of doing harm because I asked questions that made running industry people uncomfortable. I was also accused of intimidating Black and Asian runners because I screenshotted things Laz posted before he deleted them, and the Black and Asian runners were afraid I’d do the same thing to them. If I didn’t have the screenshots, no journalist or podcaster or runner would have believed anything I said. On the other hand, Laz and other prominent white people are regularly quoted and amplified without being fact-checked or verified. I learned as a kid that if it was my word versus a white person’s word, I’d always be at a disadvantage. They don’t need proof because they were entitled to trust. I am not entitled to trust, so I need to have proof. The way I’ve always protected myself was cited by BIPOC running community leaders as a reason to distrust and avoid me. It felt like because I didn’t fit in; because I wasn’t a sympathetic victim; because I failed to be corporate friendly, and social media savvy; because I asked hard questions that I myself continue to wrestle with- I was a problem.

That hurt.

This pain, the feelings of being abandoned and isolated are familiar because they mirror what happened to me in college at Hobart and William Smith.

These are the things I think about and feel when I attempt to run. Running is my trigger. So, I stopped running.

Seeing pictures of my former runner self is triggering. I gained a lot of weight after not running for almost two years. About a month before Kweli was born, I purchased a mirrorless, APS-C camera and I’ve been teaching photography by photographing Kweli. Being the photographer is a good way to avoid being photographed.

I recently changed therapists because the one I had been working with was foreign-born and didn’t have a firm grasp of American racism. After I recounted what caused me to stop running and what happened to me in college, my therapist told me it was remarkable that I had been holding it altogether. He asked if I get angry and lash out at people. “No,” I told him. “I grew up around angry, bitter people who hurt other people, and I’ve tried not become like that. When I get angry, I isolate myself, allow myself to feel anger, I breathe, and I find perspective.”

I’ve never been angry at Laz. I’m not even angry at the racist mob of runners. I’m not angry at my friend who chose Laz and ultrarunning. I’m not angry at the white boy who urinated on my door in college. I’m not angry at white boy who defecated on my dorm door. I’m not angry at the Hobart and William Smith. I’m not mad at the running industry.

I disagree with decisions they made, but more than anything, I’m hurt. I chose to attend Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I chose to be a runner. I chose to participate in Laz’s virtual race, and to participate in the ultrarunning community. I felt that I belonged in those spaces until I was pushed out (except in the case of Hobart, where I left under protest).

I thought that 20 years later, that I was over the trauma I experienced in college. Then the thing with Laz and the angry racist mob happened, and all the familiar pain came flooding back.

I recently learned that people telling me that I’m resilient isn’t actually a compliment. I didn’t choose to be resilient- I was forced to. Telling me that I’m resilient obscures the pain of what I’ve experienced. I get it- people aren’t interested in hearing about my trauma. Me leaning into the idea that I’m resilient absolves people of the threat of having to empathize with me.

I don’t know what to do about Lululemon being Anti-Asian. As disgusting as their name is, I have to accept that runners, Lululemon’s supporters, and the majority of people will choose Lululemon. They will frame what I’m saying as coming from a place of anger and destruction. They will say they’re protecting something sacred. The fact that the name Lululemon is racist, and causes pain doesn’t matter to them. I don’t matter to them. I don’t matter to Laz. I don’t matter to the running industry. I don’t matter to the running community. I don’t matter to Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

My therapist told me that trauma doesn’t go away. You learn how to live with it and how to avoid getting stuck.

So that’s what I’m doing now- trying to get unstuck.