Yet my sister, Chong, was still holding on to Mom’s dream that I would be the first from both sides of our family to graduate from college. Chong would step into Mom’s role to challenge me not to give up.
I was leaning toward leaving BJU after these conversations with Dr. Milton and Dr. Jones. I didn’t want to stay in the middle of this confusing mess where I felt unseen, an outsider. I didn’t want to live under the administration always calculating my every move, especially as it related to dating their white daughters. I didn’t want my social interactions scrutinized, classmates watching who I was with, reporting me to the administration. I wanted the freedom to date without any restrictions. I didn’t want to be seen as this rebellious dissenter. I wanted to leave and attend university somewhere else. But this community was all that I knew. It was my world and it seemed like everything.
That summer I went back to Telluride, and on the same rock I’d experienced my first real spiritual dialogue with God as a conflicted teenager, I pleaded to God to help me figure this out. I figured He’d directly intervened with me before when I was that young teenager. Why not again? So I made my way back to that very rock in the middle of the pines. If it didn’t happen, I was done. I spoke to God one more time, seeking direction.
“It’s me again, God. I need your help. I don’t know what to do. Should I leave the school or stay and endure the hardships because there’s something there for me to learn? And by the way, I was hoping to discover my wife there. Doesn’t look possible. What now?”
I opened my Bible and began to read Psalm 81, and one verse jumped out at me.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
I immediately pictured an old black-and-white photograph that Mom had once showed me of me as a baby eating. Mom explained that the mess on my face and body was spaghetti and red Bolognese sauce. As I smiled at this memory, it struck me that the God I was learning about is ever present during such painful moments. The darkness amplifies God’s voice. The times when it seems the odds are against you or what you are facing is impossible are when God always shows up. Could I trust God to advocate for me in ways I didn’t see or understand? And more deeply, was there a purpose in my being at Bob Jones and experiencing the prejudice I faced? Perhaps I was meant to understand what my Black and brown brothers and sisters had experienced for hundreds of years before me. What is it like to knowingly live under and experience systemic injustice and oppression, especially from religious people? I had been unwilling to consider the plight of others so deeply until now.
The sky didn’t open. No lightning bolts. But sitting on that boulder in Colorado, I felt a growing confidence that I would be provided for even in the midst of adversity and systemic, unjust institutional powers. I believed that somehow things would work out better than I could imagine. An optimism appeared inside me that I hadn’t experienced in a while.
I knew immediately I was supposed to step back into this context of injustice. Learn from it. Know how to deal with it. I was not going to run away. If anything, I needed to understand institutional racism better. Even if that meant subjecting myself to the pain and humiliation of this educational context for another two years. I needed to experience the suffering of what others domestically had faced for centuries. I needed to understand that Koreans and other Asians had also endured generational oppression, abuse, slavery, and injustice.
On that rock in Colorado, I didn’t know it, but my return to Bob Jones University would lead me to a surprising reunion. Out of the mystery would come a miracle.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 쌍꺼풀 Sangapul—“Double Eyelids”
When I lost my mother and was told that I could no longer date white, I caught glimpses of Rebecca around the campus. I had remained friends with her but both of us had moved on to other interests.
After Mom died, the biblical character Jacob and his predicament after his mom died connected with me. A woman named Rebecca helped to ease the loss of his mom. No one replaces a loving mom, but I knew I needed the comfort of friends who were willing to be a social haven for me. Since my father’s affair, the most important characteristic I cared about was someone who would be loyal. Experiencing an affair again would wreck me. I looked up the name “Rebecca” in the lexicon, and I found that her name meant “earnest devotion or loyalty.”
I kept myself busy the summer after Mom passed. I focused on serving as a volunteer and working odd jobs in Arizona to make some extra spending money.
I could never have imagined that around the same time I was on that rock in Colorado, contemplating whether to return to school, Rebecca was at her home in Maryland breaking up with her basketball player boyfriend. Rebecca later told me, “Immediately after we broke up, I was thinking about my next semester classes when suddenly Dave Gibbons popped into my mind. I knew from our previous conversations that you spent a lot of time working with kids in various capacities throughout the school year and most likely during the summer that’s what you’d be doing at home in Arizona.” Becca paused and then said, “So I wondered how you were doing. I found myself having romantic feelings for you that I hadn’t had before! I was determined to see if you were committed to someone. If not, I was going to pursue a relationship with you.”
Then she said to herself, with unusual resolve, “I’m going to date Dave Gibbons.”
If you know Becca, she usually doesn’t speak with this much urgency and initiative. It had to be a divine intervention for me to suddenly gain this type of favor in her eyes.
Our fortuitous paths crossed at the start of the fall semester at BJU. I was now in my third year, and she was in her last year. I had arrived ready to put my head down and graduate. I was resolved to focus on my academics and to crush it with my new leadership roles in my class since I wasn’t going to be able to date white women, who were the vast majority on the campus. There were a very few Asians on the campus. Not more than maybe ten out of six-thousand-plus students were Asian. So, technically I was able to date, but the point is, I wasn’t able to date who I wanted to because of my race. My close friends knew what had happened to me with the No Interracial Dating Policy at the school. Soon others in the student body learned of my predicanent. I received an outpouring of sympathy but there was no uprising to defend me. I quietly resolved that finding my wife would happen later in life. This was huge for me, since the main reason I was going to university was actually to find my partner. School was a means to an end. So suddenly, I’d have to study! With Mom gone, I needed to work a couple jobs on campus to pay for my education and living expenses. Off campus I worked as a clothing and shoe salesperson in a local clothing store. I usually skipped dinner or just microwaved potatoes or popcorn in my dormitory to save money.
During the start of the school year, I was assigned to help register the whole student body for classes in the coming year, since I had worked at the men’s checkout desk. It was a fun time to meet new students and also welcome back friends. One of my assigned duties was to register students whose surnames specifically began with the letter “L.” I was working only a couple hours that week. A line of students started to fill the registration room where we were checking them in. In the midst of the busyness, I looked up and there she was. I was pleasantly surprised to see Rebecca Locklear standing in my line.
Sweet. I had been looking forward to catching up with her. I’m sure she thought I might be dating someone. I’d even dated a couple of her roommates. “She must be engaged,” I told myself.
For her part, she told me later that she couldn’t believe she was going to be interacting with me on her very first day back on campus. She had been wondering how she was going to tell me she was no longer dating that other guy. I would later discover that the moment she broke up with her boyfriend, she felt that God had divinely posited me back into her mind.
As she stood there waiting in her khaki skirt and pink polo summer shirt, her sandy brown hair flowing down to her shoulders, I had to be careful not to stare at her. Wow, she is so beautiful. I couldn’t believe that the stars had aligned for this moment to happen. We had been assigned randomly at the same dinner table my freshmen year and now I was working at the table with the last names L–N for just a couple hours out of several days of registrations. I knew God loved me. This couldn’t be just a coincidence.
“Rebecca, so good to see you!” I said when it was finally her turn in line to come speak to me. “It’s been a long time.” I didn’t waste time or mince words. It just came out so naturally: “Are you engaged yet?”
Perhaps most guys wouldn’t have been so direct, but I guess I felt this was my possible shot, my one opportunity to see if anything had changed with her relational status. I was not going to miss it. It was the subconscious flowing.
“No, we’re not together anymore,” she replied.
“Aww, that’s too bad.” I paused. “We’ll have to get together and catch up sometime.”
“I’d like that,” Becca said with a big smile.
My heart leapt. Are you kidding? It’s before my third year even starts and this is happening despite the No Interracial Dating Policy. I feigned utter disappointment, but I’m sure my voice conveyed what I truly felt—that I was empathetic but not truly sad about her predicament.
Right after she walked away, I realized spring had come. I was elated.
Becca later told me, “I couldn’t believe what had just transpired.”
But there was a challenge. Rebecca didn’t know that my ability to date had changed on campus. When I had dated Rebecca before, I was permitted to do so. Now I was required to have someone come with us on a “date” so it didn’t publicly look like a date. My poor freshman brother, Doug, new to the campus, was chosen to be the third wheel on this first date that year. It was a risk even to see her, given my new restrictions. But as long as they said I was with a group, I assumed I was safe. My interpretation of the school’s rule for me was that I couldn’t solo date, that I could only group date.
Doug was able to date white because he looked more white than Asian. His eyes were larger than mine, and he had the natural double eyelids, the 쌍꺼풀 sangapul. Many Koreans, like me, have a mono-eyelid—a common characteristic of many Asians. At the time, even in Korea this mono-lid wasn’t popular. That’s why the double-eyelid surgery became common for many Koreans. The surgery is formally called blepharoplasty. It’s basically the Europeanization of the eyes.
Naturally Doug felt pity for me, and gladly came along when I was meeting Rebecca. I wrote to Rebecca to meet me at the snack shop. When she arrived and saw Doug sitting beside me, I could only imagine her questions. We hadn’t spoken about race before.
After a few moments of small talk, I explained to Rebecca what was going on.
“Things have changed here at the university. I was told that I can’t date white anymore.”
Becca gave me a friendly smile and looked at me to say more.
“The administration says I don’t meet their three-point criteria they have established to be able to date you or others that are white. I have to be culturally white, born of white or European descent, and physically look white—specifically have bigger eyes. So I can’t date white anymore by myself. I’m only permitted to do ‘group dates’ or ‘group meetups.’ That’s why Doug is here.”
Doug gave a nervous grin and simply waved at her.
“‘What do you think, Becca?”
“I’m sorry this happened to you. It’s not right.”
