“In fact, you’ll probably want to leave the school.”
There were rumors saying that the national news media and the ACLU and others were looking for people internally, like a student or faculty member, to share their feelings about the No Interracial Dating Policy. Dr. Milton was in a tight situation with me because I was a public student body leader. He knew I could cause an unusual stir if students knew of my situation. My situation was unique because I was technically considered biracial genetically. Later, my brother, Doug, who looks more white than I do, joined me at BJU and was able to date white, even though we both believed we were genetically the same, having the same parents. There are many children who have biracial parents who look more like one parent than the other.
When I left the office that day, I was shaken. My emotions fluctuated from disbelief to frustration. I knew this wasn’t about where God stood on interracial marriages. There’s no such prohibition. In fact, God is all about diversity of relationships, especially culturally.
There was a hidden history behind my personal situation and the public rebuke of Bob Jones University. In 1954, the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, unanimously ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed to end segregation in universities and colleges. These were critical cornerstone legislations in the civil rights movement that exposed the reality that education and other services were not truly equal for all. Bob Jones University, by contrast, wouldn’t allow Black students to enroll until 1971. When they did, they clarified there would be no interracial marriages or dating on campus, effectively continuing to enforce segregation.
To be consistent, the university had to include the Asian Americans.
I would eventually discover that decades before I came to Bob Jones, Billy Kim, a popular Korean leader who translated Billy Graham’s preaching in Seoul—at the biggest meetings Graham ever spoke at—had dated and married a white woman whom he met at Bob Jones before he graduated in 1958. He had been awarded the highest student honors and was allowed to date white. Which made me wonder whether this No Interracial Dating Policy was really about Asians.
The true issue wasn’t about being Asian at Bob Jones University. It was about being Black. While I had encountered racism and been bullied for my Asian-ness in Arizona, I had not experienced the deep level of racism that my Black brothers and sisters had in the South or in institutions like Bob Jones. It was bone-chilling. I was mostly oblivious to all of this history. I had been so engaged in my own teenage struggles and fighting for myself that I lacked any type of energy or consideration to investigate more deeply how others were being hurt, abused, taken advantage of, left out, and even murdered. I was so indoctrinated and focused on my rights and the fundamentalist church’s rhetoric that I missed out on the bigger challenges facing our country, such as the injustice that our Black brothers and sisters had been systemically facing for hundreds of years. When my church referred to leaders like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr., they were feared not respected. I didn’t know till later that historically the Church was one of the greatest perpetrators of racism, horror, and systemic oppression of the Black community, the Brown community, Asians, refugees, women, and the undocumented.
Regrettably, I didn’t pay attention to the challenges faced by people of color until I found myself a victim of the same policies as my Black friends. These policies were not only discriminatory, but also absurdly inconsistent with what I knew about God. Even as I was told “no interracial dating” meant I couldn’t date white women because I was Asian, if you were Hispanic/Latino, or even from the Middle East, you could date someone who looked white and was of European origins. You could be East Indian, also considered Asian, and date white. Somehow that was seen as acceptable, but physically looking Asian was not.
My situation grew worse after I made an appointment to talk to the president of Bob Jones University, Bob Jones III. The grandson of the founder possessed a winsome smile and always carried himself in a stately, well cultured manner. When I would meet him off campus, Bob Jones III remembered my name. I found him reasonable and pleasant.
I went to President Jones’s large ornate office, lined with books and pictures of notable family and influential leaders in beautiful frames. It felt erudite and sophisticated, mixed with touches of family and warmth. The tall and lanky university president asked me to sit down.
“Dave, what can I do for you?”
“Well, you know there’s this No Interracial Dating Policy that I got caught up in. I was wondering about your thoughts on this matter.”
He responded, “Dave, God separated the races at a scene known as the Tower of Babel, implying He didn’t want the races to mix. Furthermore, God told Israeli men not to marry foreign women.”
I knew this was more because of their foreign gods, not because of the race. But I also knew there was no point in debating this with him. I mean, they were willing to go to the Supreme Court to fight this, as well as pay a large amount of back taxes and receive public criticism. I looked at him one more time, incredulous but trying to show him respect at the same time.
“Dr. Bob, what do you do with a situation where you have a half-Caucasian and a half-Asian person? You know my dad is white and my mom is Korean. And my brother, when he comes here, is going to be able to date white basically because he has bigger eyes than I do.”
He paused, wanting to carefully craft his words.
“Dave, you have a tough situation.”
He smiled and said nothing else. It seemed like he was trying to tell me he knew it was a ridiculous rule but his hands were tied with the administration. Whatever he meant, that was all he said. Interestingly, about eighteen years later, Dr. Bob Jones would go on CNN and renounce the No Interracial Dating Policy publicly.
I thanked Dr. Bob for taking the time to speak to me, but with each step I took away from him, I could feel the distance not only between us but also between me and this entire subculture of Christians that had provided answers and safety for me during a chaotic time in my life.
As an Asian, I was invisible. I became an additional victim of institutional racism first directed toward the Black community.
On some level, up to this point in my life, I think I had already accepted racism as the way things were. The political psychologist John Jost coined the term “system justification” for the findings of his studies that show that, paradoxically, people most affected by an unjust system are the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Instead, they’re motivated to rationalize the status quo, not because they’re happy, but because that resignation acts as an emotional painkiller. Such resignation is often taken by the majority as proof that things aren’t so bad after all, that nothing needs to change. It’s a vicious cycle. What I had learned growing up Asian in largely white communities was to assimilate. Don’t cause trouble. In other words, hide. Just work hard. Show others you belong here by your achievement, your successes. It’s what my coaches had ingrained in me in baseball and football: “Let your game do the talking.” They told me to deal with dissonant truth by simply submitting to the higher authority’s opinions, whether they were right or not. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Stay quiet and do your work.
Many of my friends found out about my meeting with the dean and with Dr. Bob Jones III. Word of mouth spreads fast. Many came alongside me and couldn’t believe what was happening. It was so incredulous to many of us. This was the 1980s, eighteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, establishing that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional even if segregated schools are of equal quality.
My dad somehow heard about the predicament I was in. We rarely talked, but this had piqued his anger enough to get him to call me on the phone. Dad worked in the justice system as a stenographer and was around the culture of lawyers and judges frequently. He could smell injustice. When Dad chose to get committed to something, he was all in. Whether it was becoming a martial artist in Shotokan karate, getting healthy, voraciously reading books, or learning how to play piano in his middle age—whenever, he was determined.
“Dave, what is this about that you can’t date white? What happened?”
“Well, basically, they told me I can’t date because I look Korean.”
There was a long pause.
“Dave, this is ridiculous.”
I could picture Dad clenching his teeth just through his tone. He did this whenever he got perturbed.
“That’s unbelievable,” he said again. “We need to sue them.”
This felt odd coming from my father. I hadn’t seen him advocate for me in this way since high school. This was the man who didn’t even attend my mom’s funeral.
“Dad, I can’t sue them. I don’t want to embarrass them or shame them publicly.”
My response was based on a passage of Scripture where it says not to take your spiritual brothers and sisters to court. At the time, I didn’t have the conviction to publicly address systemic injustice. It was part of my indoctrination that you just let God take care of it and respect authority even if you disagree with them. I would dramatically change my perspective about this later.
When he hung up the phone that day, it felt good that Dad wanted to fight for me.
He was actually feeling my pain and anger.
This was the dad I remembered from before the Chevy incident.
The conversation with the Dean of Men, Dr. Milton, echoed in my heart as I headed back home for the summer. The words he spoke seemed so incongruent to who I understood God to be. To discover what people actually believed—people whom I looked up to and respected—was shattering. It was a rude awakening for me. A hard but important moment to see like I never saw before. To know what people really think of you beyond the smiles and the I love you rhetoric was disheartening, utterly disappointing.
After those conversations, at the beginning of the summer before my junior year, I went back to Telluride, Colorado, to decide whether I was going to return to Bob Jones the following fall. There were good reasons why I should stay, but there were also plenty of reasons to leave. My mom had been tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident. I could move home to help my sister and brother adjust.
