El poder del privilegio

Carolyn Su, the founder of the Diverse We Run platform, shares her family's history and her own reflections in this NYRR Contributors Circle blog post.

Diverse We Run began as a passion project in 2019. Yes, it was born out of the need for greater representation in the storytelling of BIPOC athletes; it was also an exploration of the power of privilege in the sport of running.

It’s been five years since the inception of #diversewerun, and only recently have I begun to pull on the thread of my own family history, discovering how their journeys of determination and perseverance have brought me to be the runner and writer I am today.

Beginnings

Sun Sze Tsung, my paternal grandfather, and Tsao Pei Shu, my paternal grandmother, with their five children. My dad, William Sun, the eldest child, is in the center.

Sun Sze Tsung, my paternal grandfather, grew up amongst many siblings in a rural village of the Anhui Province, near the bustling metropolitan city of Nanjing, China, in the 1920s. Attending a Christian-based high school meant he had the opportunity to learn English, a language that Sze Tsung knew to be the key to unlocking communication with the world.

Just as he graduated high school, war descended, as Japan invaded northern China. The war shut down many universities across the country, and my grandfather’s path was subsequently diverted to the navy academy.

In the meantime, 560 miles away, along the southeastern shore of China in the coastal province of Fujian, Lin Liang Tao, my maternal grandfather, was figuring out his own future. Born the youngest of four sons, Liang Tao was the son of a government official, which allowed them to afford access to higher education as well as a broader worldview. While farming was their village’s primary economy, Liang Tao and his brothers were dedicated students and eventually gained acceptance into higher education programs abroad.

Turmoil

The Lin Family: my mom (far left) and my maternal grandparents, Lee Chen Che (grandmother, seated on the left) and Lin Liang Tao (seated on the right).

Tragically, as the war continued to spread throughout the region, Liang Tao’s second-eldest brother was killed by the Japanese, along with one of his nephews the year he was set to leave for university. It was a tumultuous time, as China was fighting wars on two fronts: globally, against the ongoing atrocities of the Japanese army and what had now become World War II, and internally, against the newly formed and growing contingency of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by a young farmer-turned-military strategist, Mao Zedong.

Amidst the violent turmoil, Liang Tao graduated from the Wuson Merchant Marine College of Shanghai Maritime University. His strong work ethic and excellent interpersonal communication skills quickly elevated him to the position of Chief Officer for a British merchant ship. Since working with port authorities was his primary responsibility, Liang Tao taught himself English, believing that to be a necessary skill to navigate the times ahead.

This proved to be true, as Liang Tao joined the Maritime Department of the Ministry of Transportation in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where he moved to with his new wife, my maternal grandmother, Lee Chen Che. After WWII, the Japanese withdrew from the occupied Taiwan and Liang Tao was sent to assist the government to rebuild the Maritime Department in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. A few years later, he had the opportunity to visit Fuzhou city, which is next to his hometown in mainland China, where he met and married his wife, Lee Chen Che, my maternal grandmother, and brought her back to Taiwan to start his young family life.

Opportunities

My grandfather, Sun Sze Tsung (far right), chatting with fellow navy officers while in London for the World War II Victory Parade.

Meanwhile, Sze Tsung was moving up in the navy ranks. His work ethic paired with his English-speaking skills proved to be a winning combo for leadership, and he eventually found himself established as an Admiral. After the U.S. bombed Hiroshima in August 1945, effectively ending WWII, Japan retreated from China. The Allied forces celebrated the defeat of the Axis powers by organizing a parade in London, and Sze Tsung was selected to attend as the representative for the Chinese Navy. During this time of great rejoicing for the world, Sze Tsung met and married my paternal grandmother, Tsao Pei Shu, in 1948. 

Happiness, however, was short-lived. No sooner had Sze Tsung and Pei Shu settled into their home at the navy base Qingdao, than the civil war brewing in China came to a head. The CCP officially took over the government in October 1949, forcing a mass exodus of ~2 million Chinese citizens to the neighboring island of Taiwan, British-occupied Hong Kong, and other surrounding nations. Late in pregnancy, Pei Shu endured multiple nights of seasickness aboard a navy vessel en route to Kaohsiung, where my father, William, was born.

Separations

Sun Family: Children standing eldest to youngest, from left to right, with my grandparents in the middle. Growing up on a navy base in Taiwan exposed them to Western cultural influences.

In the meantime, Liang Tao and Chen Che—who, incidentally, were also pregnant with their first child—were seeking to go the opposite direction: back into China to Fujian, Liang Tao’s hometown, to have their son at home with their families. Unfortunately, once the CCP took over the country, they closed all national borders, barring entry or exit. Liang Tao and Chen Che were stuck in Kaohsiung. They would remain separated from their families for the next fifty years, with their only communication being in the form of letters.

My mother and father were both born in the same city in Taiwan, though they would not end up meeting until they were across the ocean, in the U.S., for grad school, two decades later.

The decade between 1966 and 1976—known as the Cultural Revolution—was one of the most disruptive and violent overhaulings of Chinese society, as the CCP burned textbooks, publicly killed professors and those considered purporting “Western” philosophies, closed universities and institutions for higher education, shortened curriculums for primary schools and instead sent children to rural lands for farming, separating families, often permanently. This resulted in mass displacement and illiteracy, impacting socio-economic repercussions to this day. 

At the same time, the U.S. was reckoning with its own civic revolution, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights activists called for change and equity for oppressed and marginalized peoples. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eventually led to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which loosened the almost century-old, race-based restriction that barred those from Asian countries from entering the country (Chinese Exclusion Act 1882). Finally, East Asian immigrants were permitted to come into the U.S. again, with the caveat of needing to be from "highly skilled" fields.

Enter William Sun and Jesse Lin, my parents, two bright-eyed graduate students studying architecture and civil engineering, and English history, respectively. They came of age at just the right time. Due to the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, both were able to come to the U.S. to pursue graduate degrees, and they crossed paths at a mixer for international students at Kansas State University. They got married their senior year of grad school.

Four years later, I was born.

My grandmother, Pei Shu, me (about age 3), my youngest aunt, and my grandfather.

Present

As our sport of running and the nation at large continue to have conversations about the impact that privilege has in our lives, I can’t help but think about how privilege was the thread that brought me to where I am today.

Privilege is what gave my grandparents access to both safety and a quality of life that many of their peers in their generation were unable to access. 

Privilege is what afforded my parents the choice to study abroad and gain more opportunities.

Privilege is what continues to provide me safety to freely pursue my passions and interests, whether in writing and storytelling or in running, and privilege is what supplies me the space to fail and start over, to change my mind, or to try new ideas, again and again.

Privilege provides access, favorable options to choose from, and, most importantly, safety, and this is why recognizing privilege is key in the work of making the sport of running more equitable.

To “lace up and run,” as the saying goes, is an act that seems simple on the surface, but, for a multitude of communities in America, is one that is only afforded through access to many different opportunities and resources, across generations of time.

While we cannot go back in time to change circumstances of the past, we can, with humility, look at where we are in the present, recognizing that we have what we have because of those before us, and take on the baton of responsibility to create access for the generations to come.

My cousins (left), my mom (holding sign), me and my daughter, Chloe, my dad, mother-in-law, and husband at the 2016 Austin Marathon, my first marathon after becoming a mom.

Read more content from Carolyn Su here.

Photos courtesy of Carolyn Su.

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