Happy birthday, Alex

My friend Alex recently celebrated his birthday. Upon learning that I was moving to Chicago, Alex had made a rather odd request of me: "You'll be in Illinois! You have to go to Pekin!"

Pekin is a small town about 3 hours downstate of Chicago. I'd never heard of it and couldn't imagine why Alex so desperately wanted me to visit it. He explained that Pekin's fame derives from the fact that, until 1980, it had an unusual high school mascot...horrifyingly, Pekin was the home of the Chinks. Moreover, a quick Google search revealed that the Chinks continue to have such a fierce loyalty among Pekin alumni that it is still possible to buy Chinks t-shirts in the back room of a Pekin apparel shop. Alex was determined to get his hands on some item of Chinks memorabilia and saw me as his only hope in procuring it.

My friend's fascination with Pekin may seem a little weird, especially given that he is Chinese-American. But he has a taste for irony, and the very revolting nature of such a mascot held an odd appeal. Perhaps he wants to reclaim the Chink label just as gays have reclaimed "queer". Or perhaps he just finds the idea hilarious that an item produced for midwestern racists could find its way into the hands of an Asian American in Los Angeles. Either way, he was determined to press me into his services. Given my midwestern upbringing, he thought I could easily pass as a racist and thus purchase the offending shirt: "I could never go to Pekin and get it myself," he argued, "but YOU can pretend your dad went to Pekin High!"

That is how I came to find myself driving into Pekin, IL a couple of weeks ago. I felt like some undercover agent trying to expose the seedy racist underbelly of a sleepy town. There wasn't much in Pekin: a few antique stores, a cafe, a senior home. I couldn't even find the high school that is now home to the Pekin Dragons. But I was determined not to leave until I had thoroughly inspected the place. I was losing hope of finding any trace of the Chinks when I drove by a t-shirt shop on the edge of downtown. They were about to close, so I pulled up and went in to check it out. I saw a lot of Pekin t-shirts, but nary a Chink.

"Can I help you?" asked the lady at the silk-screening counter.
"I'm, um, looking for a present for my godfather. He went to school in Pekin and I was passing by and thought I'd get him something that said 'Pekin' on it."
"You mean the Pekin CHINKS?"

I gulped, uncomfortable with the way she so nonchalantly pronounced the offending word.

"Uh, I guess it would've been the Chinks at that time..."

She motioned me to an unmarked door at the back of the shop.

"This is where we keep the Chinks stuff. I guess we oughta keep it locked, heh."

She opened the door, and I gaped. The inside of the room was lined with shelves of red and grey t-shirts, each printed with 'Pekin Chinks.'

"Wow," I said, "You still print these?"

"Oh, yeah, the alumni want the old Chinks stuff. Nobody wanted to change the name. We've got travel mugs, too!"

With her help, I selected a complete set of Chinks items: a t-shirt, coffee mug, "Once a Chink, always a Chink" travel mug, and a beer cozy reading "Official Chink Drink." I thanked her for her help ("My godfather will love these!") and left the store, feeling kind of dirty as I clutched my bag of Chinks crap. Before heading out, I stopped by the Fast Dragon Chinese restaurant, confirming that there were indeed actual Asian people living in Pekin. I didn't ask the restaurant employees what they thought about Pekin alums wandering through town in Chinks garb, but their presence in town reinforced the fact that using a racial slur for a high school mascot is just not okay.

Once home, I packed up Alex's birthday box and pondered what it all meant. Racism runs deep in the heartland. But how should I feel about buying this stuff? I decided that the birthday present was in some way a mockery of anyone who would view such items with nostalgia, a way of making ridiculous the fact that anyone would actually buy a Chinks shirt from the back room of a seedy little shop in a dead little town. Rather than simply denouncing racism, Alex makes it into something absurd, a farce. Ridicule is perhaps the more powerful tactic.