Racism, Cultural Insensitivity, and Implicit Bias Theme Analysis

The Leavers shines a light on the ways in which people sometimes fail to hold themselves accountable for their own racial and cultural insensitivities. Living in the predominantly white suburb of Ridgeborough as a Chinese-American teenager, Deming faces a number of microaggressions from his peers, educators, and even his adoptive parents. His classmates, for their part, don’t seem to care if they subject him to discrimination, seeing their racially charged comments as harmless jokes without considering the effect they have on Deming. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of the adults in his life are apparently ill equipped to navigate conversations about race and ethnicity. Treating his Chinese background as something that ought to be ironed out, Peter and Kay can’t fathom the idea that a person might be happy living a lifestyle that isn’t that of the stereotypical white American. As a result, their efforts to Americanize him reveal their sense of inherent superiority, which betrays their condescending view of Chinese culture. Unfortunately for Deming, it’s hard to address these biases because the people perpetuating them don’t stop to examine their own prejudices. By showing readers the implicit nature of these racial and cultural insensitivities, then, Ko illustrates how important it is for people to recognize and challenge their own perspectives.

Some of the insensitivity Deming experiences during his first few weeks in Ridgeborough is rather subtle. One girl asks him where he’s from, clearly not expecting him to say “The Bronx.” Although this might seem like a harmless interaction, this girl makes an assumption about Deming based on the color of his skin. This only emphasizes the extent to which he feels out of place in his new white-majority school. What he notes right away is that the kids around him have “never noticed the way they look to other people, because there [are] no other people present.” Having never interacted with a person of color, students like this girl jump to conclusions about Deming and don’t stop to think about what they say and how it might affect someone who already feels unwelcome or out of place.

In other cases, the racism Deming encounters is more obvious. For example, when a white bully named Cody calls Deming a “Chinese retard,” it’s quite evident that he has singled Deming out simply because he’s Chinese. This bothers Deming, but he later becomes friends with Cody. This doesn’t mean Cody is no longer racist, but that Deming learns to live with this kind of insensitivity, as if there’s nothing he can possibly do to avoid it. In turn, readers see just how seemingly inescapable racial and cultural prejudices are in Ridgeborough.

Part of what makes it hard for Deming to escape or address the widespread cultural biases in his community has to do with the fact that nobody wants to acknowledge them. Even Peter and Kay—who present themselves as champions of diversity—perpetuate the notion of American superiority. When Deming overhears them talking about whether or not he’ll be able to smoothly transition into a largely white school, Peter tells Kay that these kind of academic matters are “colorblind” “issues.” Although it might seem this way to Peter, this isn’t the case for Deming, who is in a very unique situation that has everything to do with race. Like the children at Deming’s school, though, Peter has never experienced what it’s like to be the only person of color in an entire community. As a result, he not only fails to empathize with Deming’s situation, but automatically assumes that he—as a white man—knows what’s best for his new adoptive son. “Whatever we do is going to be better than what he experienced before,” Peter says confidently to Kay in a discussion about whether or not they’ll effectively be able to raise Deming in such an undiverse context. When Deming overhears Peter say this, he comes to understand that his new guardians have little respect for his Chinese background, instinctually presuming that anything a white family does for a Chinese child will be “better” than what that child’s actual parents could offer. Simply put, Peter believes that he’s an objectively better caretaker than Deming’s Chinese guardians simply because he’s a white American.

When Deming moves away from Ridgeborough as a young man, he notes that Peter and Kay have always seen him as “someone who needed to be saved.” This patronizing view inadvertently suggests that Deming’s Chinese background is nothing but a disadvantage. “He recalled how [Kay] and Peter had insisted on English, his new name, the right education. How better and more hinged on their ideas of success, their plans,” Ko writes. “[Polly], Chinese, the Bronx, Deming: they had never been enough.” In this moment, readers see that, although Peter and Kay truly want to help Deming, they have actually communicated a very destructive message—namely, that people who don’t adhere to stereotypical notions of American success are subpar and thus need to be “saved” from themselves. And yet, Peter claims that such matters are “colorblind,” effectively shutting down any kind of productive conversation about race or inequality. Ko intimates that this unwillingness to address implicit biases is what keeps people of color in disenfranchised positions, as white-majority communities champion diversity without ever stopping to confront their unexamined prejudices.