IN MEMORY OF MILDRED LOVING

another love that once dared not speak its name
I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Mildred Loving. In the late 1950s, Mildred - an African American - and her White husband - Richard - plead guilty to violating Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws and, as a condition of their plea bargain, agreed not to return to Virginia for 25 years. However, by 1963, Mildred decided to contest that ruling and the ACLU was able to take it up to the Supreme Court, where in 1967, Loving vs. Virginia struck down all laws prohibiting interracial marriage, thus removing one of the last major legacies of legalized segregation in America.

It's always been striking to me that within the lifetime of my parents (and really, only five years before I was born), states could actually outlaw interracial couplings. Today, such legislation seems so obviously pernicious, so a remnant of Jim Crow and America's legacy of racial hatred, that it's remarkable it took so long for it to be struck down (and not simply voted out by state legislatures).

Of course, the irony is that while some things have changed - viva Tony Parker and Eva Longoria - some things have not. The difference now isn't that gay marriage bans are less pernicious, less a remnant of hate and fear. No, the difference is that these aren't anachronistic laws left over from bygone eras but rather, the product of contemporary political mobilization. It's all the more shameful. It's also notable that Loving, we stopped giving interviews in recent years, did make a public statement last year, in support of the right of gays and lesbians to marry.

--O.W.

HOORAY! THE LAPD DOES NOT RACIALLY PROFILE!

He was doing 55 in a 54.

OMG, great news!

The Los Angeles Police Department just announced that of the 320 racial profiling complaints filed against officers last year, none of them had any merit!

That means the LAPD is now 100% racial-profiling-free!

We did it! We reached the mountaintop!

The LAPD is color blind! Hallelujah!

*

In related good news, Nike just proclaimed itself sweatshop-free, the White House just declared that it has never violated the law, and I am happy to announce that I am the sexiest man alive.

--Junichi

HAROLD AND KUMAR: UP IN SMOKE AGAIN

When Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle debuted in 2004, it was a milestone of sorts - a mainstream, gross-out, stoner comedy with two Asian American men cast as leads. Sure, the humor was juvenile and unapologetically male, there was everything from naked breasts to literal bathroom humor, and a dream sequence featuring an anthropomorphalized bag of weed. Do The Right Thing this was not.

But it did represent an achivement of sorts, symbolically to be sure, but also commercially. The movie had enough of a cult following to warrant a sequel (not to mention revitalize Neal Patrick Harris' career, a remarkable feat on its own), thus suggesting that - hey, Asian American leads won't kill your film. I hope the producers of 21 are pondering this.

The film's sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is an achievement of a kind too, proof that Asian Americans have made it far enough into the Hollywood machine that they can make perfectly mediocre mainstream fare as much as the next folks. Woo hoo, the promised land!

In all seriousness, it's not like anyone was expecting something approaching genius. I was hoping for "adequately funny," something on the level, at best, of a 40 Year Old Virgin or even Superbad (and yeah, there's a huge difference in the quality of funny between those two flicks).

The laugh-o-meter here was somewhere closer to, oh, Walk Hard, which is to say: not that funny. John Cho and Kal Penn are fun enough to watch at times but there's little new creative soil for either to plow. The funniest single scene was probably when Cho shows up in the library stacks, goth-ed out. It lasted all of a few seconds and he didn't even speak but just the sight of him in masscara was good enough. Penn had fewer moments here than in the previous film - the giant bag of weed returned (anatomically correct no less) but that joke really only works once. And while we're keeping score on this kind of thing: too much Rob Cordury, just a touch too much Neil Patrick Harris, and not enough Chris Meloni. And oh yeah, either too much or not enough pubic shots, depending on your taste.

So, in the end, it was "meh" but the thing is...I didn't feel like, "oh crap, we blew our chance!" And maybe that says something more than the film, on its own, can say...that the fact that an Asian American-lead comedy can be mediocre seems ordinary and harmless rather than a hand-wringing disaster. Of course, it helps that the film also is already in the black after the first weekend, earning a very respectable $14M (the original only made $18M total in theaters). Even if the flick has earned middling reviews, the monetary gains won't hurt Kal Penn or John Cho's future chances and may help open that golden door for other Asian American actors and filmmakers to walk through.

Let me end by throwing this question out: the sexual politics in this film are not particularly glowing - not to anyone's surprise of course - but I wonder how many of the men, so huffy puffy at Falling From Grace are going to raise any issues with this flick? (Yeah, I just went there).

Let me also add: why does it mean when a writing and directing team of all White men can make a more commercially successful franchise lead by Asian American men than most Asian American filmmakers? I'm not asking this rhetorically - I'm seriously curious how this happens.

--O.W.

THE WAR ON LATINOS GOES TO THE STREETS...LITERALLY

enjoy 'em while they last
Forget Arizona. Right here in Los Angeles, legislators are going after...taco trucks.

$1000 fine or six months in jail for...selling tacos out of a truck? Are you serious? This is what the L.A. City Council considers valuable legislation? Isn't there, for example, low income housing they could focus on? De-congesting traffic? FIXING LAUSD?

Cotdamnit, leave my al pastor alone!

And while you're at it - leave the bacon-wrapped hot dogs be, too.

---

It's not all bad news...NPR's Morning Edition highlighted the extraordinary story of Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano from East L.A. who learned Japanese from his Issei and Nisei friends growing up and used that skill to convince 1,000 Japanese to surrender during WWII. A new documentary is coming out to tell a story that has gone under the radar for 60 years.

--O.W.

ARIZONA BLUES

hey, where's his American flag pin?
I know Arizona is like the new Mississippi when it comes to retrograde racial politics...it's hard to fathom how a state would take pride in voting down MLK Day but AZ manages somehow. Still, this new legislation passing through their state house is astonishing:

"Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.

SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group."

This passed out of committee 9-6 and is now headed towards a full legislative vote. Maybe I'm naive but even for AZ, I can't see the whole house going for this, especially in an election year. Somewhere, McCain is slapping his forehead, counting all the Latino votes he's losing behind this.

By the way, given that "Hispanic" isn't technically a racial category under the U.S. Census, I'm not sure how this bill would be able to go after a group like MEChA (though I suppose, African and Asian American groups might have problems). And let's not even mention the obvious First Amendment issues.

--O.W.

THE TEST: ARE YOU RACIST?

Are you paranoid, sleeping with your finger on the trigger?

In 1999, four NYPD officers fatally shot Amadou Diallo, a black immigrant from Guinea, when they mistook his wallet for a gun. In the officers' criminal trials, they asserted that anybody could have made this mistake and that race had nothing to do with their decision.

If you had been one of the NYPD officers involved in the shooting, could you honestly say that race played no role in the fact that you pulled the trigger?

Now you can find out.

The University of Chicago has created a simple and effective online psychological test. In just a few minutes, you will be presented with a series of photos of 100 white or black men who will be holding either guns or what appear to be wallets or phones. Using your keyboard, your goal is to shoot the armed men as quickly as possible and holster your gun for the others.

Click here to take that test.

See if you, like Nicholas Kristof, are forced to declare yourself a racist.

Enter scores and reaction times in the comments.

(Credit: Mama Shih)

--Junichi

WHAT WAS VOGUE THINKING?

smoking gun?

Harry Allen - the OG Media Assassin - has been on top of this LeBron/Vogue controversy for a minute now and recently posted up what he claims is the original inspiration for that Vogue cover.

There might be some teensy wiggle room that this could be "just a coincidence" but that's a hard argument to tow and what Allen points out is especially damning is the silence coming from the magazine and photographer themselves.

Question: this is a real suspect look for Vogue and Leibovitz but when's the last time the fashion industry really made a good look when it came to race? Or gender? Or class? The idea that Vogue would do something racially inane is about as surprising as, say, gender inequality in mainstream Hollywood film. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't be outraged and pissed off and vocal but what's the realistic end game here? I get the feeling that Vogue and the Leibovitz will just ride the storm out unless this somehow gets elevated to Imusian levels (paging Oprah! Paging LeBron's political consciousness, if it even exists!).

By the way, do listen to that NPR piece by Peter Sagal, bashing Horton Hears a Hoo for being yet another example of Hollywood's rampant and oft-ignored sexism. Daughters of the world, unite!

--O.W.

DUK DUK GOOSE

beyond redemption?

NPR's All Things Considered picked Long Duk Dong to be part of their "Character Studies" series. (Listen here).

For those of you unaware (read: those of you not born in the 1980s), LDD is pretty much the gold standard in modern f---ed up portrayals of Asian men in Hollywood (Mickey Rooney in yellowface being the older gen's favorite). Everything from the gong that announces his presence, to his accent, to that hair, to, well, everything has traditionally offended Asian Americans to no small degree.

I was just a tad too young to really get into the John Hughes films of the '80s (or maybe I just held little interest in the school/love lives of suburban teens when I was already living it) so I never saw 16 Candles until much later and I have to say...even though I "got" why LDD puts such a black eye on the game, I couldn't help but think he gets a little overvillified.

Don't get me wrong - John Hughes should be thoroughly embarrassed at himself and god knows Gedde Watanabe hasn't had an easy time living down the role but all said, I guess part of me - the Asian geek with insecurity issues - kind of liked how at ease LDD was with himself, how unabashed (read: oblivious) he was in his sense of self. He was a hedonist who didn't really care about what people around him - let alone older White folks - thought of him. He was just trying to do him.

And lest we forget, for all the bemoaning about Asian male asexuality and what not...the Donger got the girl (a white girl at that).

Just putting it out there.

Ok, let's hear it now.

--O.W.

NOT QUITE A WATERSHED MOMENT: OBAMA'S SPEECH ON RACE

Overall, I thought Sen. Obama's speech on race this morning was effective. (Full transcript available here.)

It's not often you see multiple news channels broadcasting lengthy speeches by major presidential candidates on white privilege and systematic racism. And by "not often," I really mean "never."

The speech further contributes to the fascinating study of how Obama deals -- and doesn't deal -- with issues of race. As a political maneuver, Obama brilliantly crafted a text that simultaneously connects and disconnects himself with the civil rights movement and black leaders today. He carefully criticized the black community in exchange for being able to criticize the white community, all the while maintaining a positive and hopeful stance.

Of note:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

I do admit I was disappointed by the end of the speech, however. I wish Obama had more to say than to merely call for a unified America. "Not this time" makes for a great refrain, but it doesn't exactly amount to any specifics about what he would do differently as president.

Also, I do have one very specific complaint. One way in which Obama clearly does not represent change is the way in which he, like virtually all other American politicians, goes out of his way to demonstrate his undying allegiance to Israel.

In his speech today, he said the following of Rev. Wright's remarks:

They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

I have no beef with his criticism of Rev. Wright's remarks. But he is clearly doing more than distancing himself from Rev. Wright -- he is, again, using the opportunity to demonstrate his (and the Democratic Party's and the Republican Party's) unwavering allegiance to Israel.

I hate to open a can of worms here, but it seems obvious to me that the United States will never help to achieve peace in the Middle East until it is willing to acknowledge the moral and legal wrongs of both Palestinians and Israelis, the wrongs of the U.S., other western occupiers, and cultural imperialists, as well as the fundamentalist, violent nutjobs who undeniably perpetuate the endless cycle of violence.

In my book, any politician who focuses on the 1,033 Israelis who have been unconscionably killed since September 29, 2000 -- while ignoring the 4,494 Palestinians who were unconscionably killed by Israeli security forces -- is not bringing the change needed to our foreign policy. (Source for stats: Israeli Information Center for Human Rights.)

Obama's opposition to the war on Iraq only goes so far in extending a hand to the other countries and people we should be reaching out to in the hopes of becoming stalwart allies.

Given that Obama is constantly forced to deal with ignorant whispers that he is secretly Muslim, I understand his need to firmly renounce the "hateful ideologies of radical Islam" and to reach out to the Jewish community. Anti-Semitism is a real, ugly, and major problem here and abroad. But so is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry, and I wish Obama were willing to take those on, as well.

A major speech that ties together our history of racism with our current foreign policy?

That would have made for a true watershed moment.

---

Oliver adds:
I heard some jackass on CNN compared Obama to "a Black Panther," which is rather ridiculous insofar as this speech is seeking reconciliation far more than, you know, armed insurrection.

I prefer NPR's Renne Montagne's opinion: "one of the most important speeches on race a politician has ever given." Of course, considering the paucity of speeches on race these days, perhaps that's not saying much but check out what Obama has to say, nonetheless.

--Junichi

SHORT CUTS

Horton's a pro-lifer? (NPR's Morning Edition)

Cal Poly Obispo's deal to build engineering campus in Saudi Arabia allows women to be excluded? (NPR's All Things Considered)

If most of the MIT students from the real story behind 21 were Asian, how come the main leads are now White? (Reappropriate.com)

WTF? I'm speechless. (Feministing.com)

Just because I like the name of the blog. (Disgrasian)

--O.W.

THE R-WORD

the last good racist?
Former Village Voice/Time Magazine writer Ta-Nehisi Coates recently voiced something that has been bothering me for a while now. Writing in Slate about Geraldine Ferraro's claim that Obama's success is largely due to race, Coates notes how despite a plethora of unambiguously racist comments - from Don Imus to James Watson to Michael Richards - this seems insufficient to actually sustain a charge that speakers of such invectives are, in fact, racist.

In other words, one can spew racist comments with aplomb but god forbid anyone should actually be described as a racist in the process. Coates writes:

"The bar for racism has been raised so high that one need be a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party to qualify. Had John McCain said that Hillary Clinton was only competitive in the presidential race because she was a woman, there'd be no dispute over whether the comment was sexist. And yet when the equivalent is said about a black person, it's not only not racist, but any criticism of the statement is interpreted as an act of character assassination. "If anybody is going to apologize," Ferraro told MSNBC, "they should apologize to me for calling me a racist."

Coates goes on to suggest that, ironically, this has come about partially through the success of the Civil Rights Movement:

"In some measure, the narrowing of racism is an unfortunate relic of the civil rights movement, when activists got mileage out of dehumanizing racists and portraying them as ultra-violent Southern troglodytes. Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they'd ever met would do such a thing."

As Coates concludes, with some sarcasm: "All of this leaves me wondering, Who does a guy have to lynch around here to get called a racist?"

This raises a question of language and whether or not nomenclature is getting in the way of more substantive progress? On the one hand, I wholly understand where Coates is coming from. The racist apologists are a curious, thriving breed amongst talking heads - people who will insist that someone couldn't possibly be a racist because [insert boiilerplate defense of your choice] and in the process, they can actual detour the focus on hand from the content and implication of a particular racist act and instead, push all the focus onto some arbitrary litmus test for "are they a racist?"

I believe this is partially what Stanford's Richard Thompson Ford was referring to in his recent interview on KPCC's Airtalk: "How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse." The gist of the argument is that "the race card" is a distraction and that people get so caught up with slapping on or slapping away the R-label, that the actual issues around racism and its deleterious effects are going ignored.

Ford promotes this idea of "racism without racists" and I admit: there is something alluring here. As I discuss in my classes on social problems when we talk about racial inequality, one of the things that makes systemic, institutional racism so insidious - not to mention resilient - is that it doesn't require the active, conscious participation of people committed to racist action. Rather, by simply maintaining the status quo, inequalities built into our institutions and social structures are allowed to survive and perpetuate. Hence, racist outcomes can occur despite the best intentions and interracial cordiality of the people behind them. That's the essence of racism without racists.

Without intending to, I think Coates actually echoes this point when he writes: "most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There's nothing sensationalistic about redlining or job discrimination."

Indeed, the kind of racism highlights is some of the most damaging because it goes beyond individualized exchanges of racism and gets at actions which affects huge portions of the public, often times hiding their racist intent from plain view but whose impact can be measured quite easily, whether it's the disproportionate amount of people of color in poverty - especially women of color - or the over-reprsentation of young men of color in the prison system. Surely there were some outright - perhaps even self-affirmed - racists responsible but more likely, it's entire systems of social organization that create those outcomes, many of which operate quite efficiently to maintain and perpetuate racial inequality without ever needing a Grand Wizard of Oz pulling chains behind the curtain.

The thing with "racism without racists" that bothers me a little however is that though it directs attention back to systemic forms of discrimination, it also feels like some semantic hair splitting. The loan officer who regularly denies business loans to applicants from poor neighborhoods of color - maybe he's not racist in the Bull Connor sense of the term but if the action and outcome are clearly racialized, what is the rhetorical gap between saying, "your actions are racist" vs "you personally are racist"? In other words, is it so important to people that we distinguish between the racism of their actions vs. the racism of their "being"?

---

This all said...I have another rhetorical hair-split question to ask: I don't believe that race alone explains Obama's appeal; it's not as if Democratic and independent voters were waiting for the first Black man to run for office so they could throw their lot behind him.

However, isn't it rather reasonable to claim that Obama's Blackness is at least partially behind his appeal to many? Especially many people of color? Let's be absolutely clear: I'm not suggesting that the mere fact of his Blackness is the sole, deciding factor. I am suggesting that race is hardly irrelevant to his appeal however.

This isn't an attempt to address Ferraro's particular comments one way or another. Rather, I'm trying to decipher the ways in which race does or does not factor into Obama's ability to make this run for President. I think it's a definite liability with some voters but just as notably, I think it's also an asset too with other constituencies.

This said then - where exactly is that thin line between over-crediting race or not crediting it enough?

Going back to Slate, I might have to agree with what Mickey Kaus says on the topic.

--O.W.

ARE ASIAN AND LATINO VOTERS RESISTANT TO THE IDEA OF A BLACK PRESIDENT?

Is Obama's Kryptonite in Chinatown?

For the past few months, I resisted the notion that Chicano/Latino and Asian American Democrats are more likely to vote for Clinton than Obama.

At a recent Poplicks staff meeting, Dr. Wang was trying to convince me of this.

But last night's exit polls have forced me to accept that reality.

In California, Obama won both the black vote and the white vote. Exit polls indicated that 49% of white voters chose Obama, while only 43% chose Clinton. 73% of black voters chose Obama over 25% for Clinton.

And yet, according to CNN, Clinton still prevailed in the Golden State because Chicano/Latinos, who constitute about 30% of the state's registered Democrats, chose Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin: 66% for Clinton, 33% for Obama.

Also, Cali's Asian Americans voted for Clinton by a 3-to-1 margin: 75% for Clinton, 25% for Obama.

These numbers line up with national exit poll data, which similarly reveal that Clinton handily beat Obama among Asian American and Chicano/Latino voters throughout the country.

While I would like to believe these numbers merely reflect the fact that different groups have different concerns, I'd be naive to think that the candidates' race played no part.

I am exhausted by the MSM's inane and pointless discussion of whether America is ready for a black president.

Nonetheless, there seems to be an under-explored side of that story: why Asian and Chicano/Latino voters are not as infected as others by Obamania.

I hate to hyper-generalize and conclude that this reflects that other people of color feel threatened when one specific minority group succeeds. After all, race or gender played no calculation in how I voted.

Yet, with most Democrats evenly split between two candidates with few policy differences between them, a 2-to-1 (Latino) and 3-to-1 (Asian American) disparity is statistically significant. I can't think of any obvious way to explain this disparity that isn't related to race.

Is it possible that non-black people of color are the most resistant to a black president?


Oliver Adds: Speaking of which...where the hell is ANY coverage that discusses the Asian American vote in CA? Last time I checked, the API vote is roughly equal to the African American vote and as Junichi notes above, API voters played a major role in giving Clinton the win, especially in countering both the White and Black voters who leaned Obama.

Yet you scour the news and it's barely mentioned despite the fact that the 75% margin is the most disproportional swing amongst any of the major demographic categories.

I'm still a little in shock of it myself. Had it been more like the Latino vote - 60/40, I could have understood that. But 75/25?

Should we blame S.B. Woo?

--Junichi

LOUISIANA IS BRINGING BACK THE NOOSE

Disgusting

As if the Jena 6 travesty of justice wasn't enough to singlehandedly prove that Jim Crow has returned to -- or, perhaps, remained in -- Louisiana, two white teenagers affiliated with the Klan were arrested last night for driving a truck past civil rights marchers with nooses hanging out the back.

The two men were driving in a red pickup near a crowd of people that traveled to Louisiana to protest the Jena 6 incident, which, as you may recall, involved nooses hanging from trees.

The police report says officers searching the truck found Coors Light, a .22 caliber rifle, brass knuckles, and yellow extension cord made into a hangman's noose. According to the report, "While sitting in the lounge the juvenile said that he had KKK tattooed on his chest and that his parents and kin folk were involved with the KKK."

As if black people in Louisiana didn't already have FEMA, unconscionable insurance companies, redlining, horrendous environmental conditions, inadequate health care, and high crime rates to reckon with, now they can add -- no, reinstate -- the Klan and nooses on their lists of reasons why progress has yet to visit them in Louisiana.

This brings me to my main point: despite tens of thousands of good people participating in a huge civil rights march to protest the unequal treatment of the Jena 6, how is it that an event that took place in 2006 (!!!) still has yet to get on the forefront of most Americans' minds?

News coverage has picked up, but still hasn't reached the covers of any weekly magazines and rarely makes it above the fold in any major newspapers. After labeling local black citizens -- struggling to survive Hurricane Katrina -- as looters, you would think reporters in the Gulf might spotlight the Jena 6 story as a form of penitence.

It's not as if any of the injustices suffered by the Jena 6 have been rectified. 17-year-old Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, who is awaiting a new trial, is still behind bars because he was denied bail!

A less important question about the two red truck-driving rednecks dragging nooses through town: why do all racists drive trucks? Did I miss a national transportation draft where bigots got to pick trucks, while pedophiles and kidnappers chose vans?

*

Contribute to the Jena 6 legal defense fund by clicking here.

--Junichi

CAN'T BLAME HIP-HOP ON THIS ONE (OR CAN YOU?)

From the NY Times
April 24, 2007
CBS Radio Show Hosts Suspended After Prank Call
By JACQUES STEINBERG

CBS Radio suspended two hosts from an FM station in New York City today after an Asian-American advocacy organization complained about the broadcast of a six-minute prank phone call to a Chinese restaurant that was peppered with ethnic and sexual slurs.

The call was first played on “The Dog House With JV and Elvis,” a midmorning show on WFNY, on April 5, the day after Don Imus made his comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team on WFAN, another CBS-owned station. The call was then replayed on “The Dog House” on Thursday, a week after Mr. Imus was fired by CBS Radio.

In the skit, a series of apparently unsuspecting employees of a Chinese restaurant are berated by a caller who tells one woman he would like to “come to your restaurant” to see her naked, especially a part of her body he refers to as “hot, Asian, spicy.” The caller also attempts to order “flied lice,” brags of his prowess in kung fu and repeatedly curses at several employees.

In a statement on Sunday, the four New York-area chapters of the Organization of Chinese Americans, an advocacy group, demanded an apology from the show’s two hosts and from CBS Radio, and called for the firing of the hosts and their producer.

In an interview today before the suspensions were announced, Vicki Shu Smolin, president of the organization’s New York City chapter, said she was mystified that CBS would allow the call to be broadcast in the first place and then would permit it to be replayed in the aftermath of the Imus incident. (“The Dog House” has been waging a broad campaign in support of Mr. Imus both on the show and on its Web site.)

“I just see plain ignorance in the CBS management — of the community, of who we are, of what we’re all about,” Ms. Shu Smolin said. “If they don’t fire the D.J.’s, it will be a double standard.”

She promised to rip a page from the playbook of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who led the charge for Mr. Imus’s dismissal, by staging protests of CBS Radio and boycotting advertisers on WFNY.

“They don’t think they’re going to get any backlash from the Asian-American community,” she said. “They’re definitely wrong.”

In an e-mail message sent this afternoon, a spokeswoman for CBS Radio, Karen Mateo, said that the two hosts, Jeff Vandergrift (JV) and Dan Lay (Elvis), had been suspended “without pay until further notice.” Mr. Vandergrift, Ms. Mateo said, had apologized on today’s show. The show, which began on WFNY (92.3 FM) in January 2006, can be heard outside the New York City market only via the Internet.

Ms. Shu Smolin said she first learned of the “Dog House” broadcast on Saturday, in an article published by Ming Pao, a Chinese-language daily newspaper in New York. She said her organization had since sent e-mail messages to the general manager and program director of WFNY voicing its concerns, but had to resort to regular mail to reach Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of CBS.

“I can’t get any contact info on him,” she said.

It was, she acknowledged, an indication that her organization was not yet as media savvy as Mr. Sharpton’s.

--O.W.

BARACK - BE REAL BLACK FOR ME?

One of the more interesting angles of criticism that Barack Obama is enduring at this early point in his (soon to be) Presidential bid is perhaps one that most wouldn't expect: he's not Black enough for some critics.

For background, here's NPR's Mary Curtis summing up some of the key issues. You can also view this NYT article. There's also Debra Dickinson's Salon.com piece, "Colorblind" that flat out says, "Obama isn't Black."

And why isn't the junior senator from Illinois earning his certificate in Official Blackness™? Two primarily reasons: the lesser is that he has a white mother though this probably takes second chair to the bigger reason that's being cited: his father is from Kenya. Ergo, Obama does not trace - in any obvious ways - his roots back through American slavery. By that virtue, Obama is presumed NOT to have an understanding of Blackness in the same way the majority of African Americans do on account of their generational connection to the wages of race, running back 400 years.

This isn't a new issue. As I think I've written about here, tensions between African Americans and West Indian immigrants has risen considerably in many cities, especially in the East, as these two communities have eyed one another warily. To distill the basics of that tension, African Americans see the West Indians are people who didn't have to pay the price for gaining the kind of civil rights and social benefits that are accorded to Black people. West Indians wonder why their American-brethren aren't as well-educated or upwardly mobile as they are. This is glossing over a lot more complexity but it still comes back to the same core points: that for some, Blackness is earned. Merely looking Black isn't enough.

What's ironic about part of this debate though is that, on one hand, the point being made is that Blackness isn't monolithic...except that, in the way that Dickerson frames it, Blackness actually IS kind of monolithic. She writes,

"At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term."

I hear what she's saying here but does that mean that a third-generation Harlemite shares the same perspectives as every other African American (of slave-descent) in every other part of the country? Does the Blackness experienced or internalized by said Harlemite equal that of a Black person from Baldwin Hills? Or Chicago's Southside? Or Hunter's Point? The point here is that you can't have it both ways: either Blackness is a fixed identity (a philosophy that plays all too well into racist hnads) or it's broad enough to include a range of Blackness beyond just the authenticating force of slavery's legacy.

Personally, I think what this points out is that Blackness - as well as anti-Black racism - has at least two distinct dimensions: one is historical and one is experiential. The experiential basically would include anyone "who looks Black," at least, Black enough to suffer from the kinds of anti-Black racism that live within the immediate world of human, social interaction: catching a beatdown from cops, being unable to catch a cab, having people cross the street when they see you strolling, etc. For Black immigrants or children of immigrants, these experiences of racism help shape a shared sense of Blackness with others, regardless of genealogy.

However, there is also the historical element of race that arises from the legacy of slavery, of Jim Crow, of myriad laws and practices that have structured not just day-to-day discrimination, but also become embedded in any number of social institutions as well as within the collective psyche of America itself. This is, I think justifiably, a qualitatively different experience of race. After all, a racialized identity is more than the product of your skin color and hair texture. It's also the product of unique strands of history that cannot and should not be forgotten/glossed over even to forge bonds of solidarity with others who may resemble you on one level, but whose lives and experiences trace through very different times and spaces. To deny this difference is to do violence to the historical memory of America's unique brands of racism.

This all said however, I think it's incredibly shortsighted and parochial - not to mention politically moribund - to force that these distinctions be honored to the point of exclusion. I would think the point here is to use people like Obama to reflect the sprawling diversity of Blackness, as a way of suggesting and showing that there is no monolithic Black experience, that this community is built of myriad histories and peoples and that, to discuss "Black issues" means understanding that complexity rather than simply presuming that there's a single "Black agenda" or "Black point of view."

However, it's one thing to say, "Obama's Blackness is different from my Blackness." It's something else entirely to say, "he's not really Black," especially since, in the eyes of most non-Black Americans, these distinctions are completely meaningless. Call me crazy but my perception is that for the majority of non-Blacks, whether Obama's father was born in Kenya or Kansas makes very little difference.

Dickerson argues that one reason she's upset at Obama's popularity is because she thinks Obama's non-slave-roots gives Whites (liberal and otherwise) a pass on White Guilt since they view Obama as a "different" kind of Black person, one not encumbered with constantly reminding them about what their ancestors did to his ancestors[1].

That's an intriguing idea except that it, in my mind, gives "the average American" far too much credit into actually taking into account national origin when it comes to race. She only need to ask any Asian American or Latino American - whether first or fourth generation - if our experiences with other Americans is any different based on how long our families have been here. (Hint: the answer would, "hell, no.")

Some non-Blacks might see Obama differently from other African Americans but I have a hard time believing this is any more than a relative handful. If Obama were to make any kind of Presidential ticket, I doubt the majority of Blue or Red state voters would see him as the son-of-a-Kenyan-national-and-white-mother rather than, "that Black guy running for Prez/VP." It is, of course, unfortunate that Obama's Blackness will inevitably be an inescapable part of his campaign (just ask Harold Ford...or heck, Tony Dungy or Lovie Smith) but insofar as that's true, it seems highly doubtful that he'll be seen as anything BUT Black to the majority of voters deciding to cast for him or not.

In any case, I wanted to also take time to include the perspective of Joan Morgan, writing on Mark Anthony Neal's blog. Joan is Jamaican-born, South Bronx-raised and she has this to say, especially in regards to Dickerson's article:

"...it should be painfully obvious (and I'm mean painful as in post-verbal-ass-whooping painful) that when it comes to Blackness that African-Americans do not hold the monopoly. Nor do they hold the monopoly on the equally painful legacy of colonialism, slavery and imperialism that descendants of West African slaves have experienced around the globe. Same shit, different boat."

"...when are folks like me, we "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" considered Black? Because according to Dickerson and brother man in the barbershop it certainly isn't doesn't happen when I look in the mirror every morning and damn sure see a black face. I don't get that honorary pass every April 15th when I pay my taxes or on the daily as I raise my American born black son."

"When black people immigrate to America we are not at all exempt from the experience of being Black American and not only because we will inevitably be subjected to American racism. We learn your history. We absorb your culture. Some of us even acquire your accents. We do this as a matter of both acclimation and survival because we recognize the potential power we unleash by finding the distinct commonalities between our histories and our culture."

"Because really, the difference between rice and peas and black eye peas is hardly as great she, the barber or anyone else questioning Obama's blackness might think. It's the distance between stops on slave ship."

---

UPDATE: Just to hone in on part of what I'm skeptical about...one of the reasons that's been given for Obama's popularity - specifically amongst White folk - is that his immigrant heritage allows White, whether consciously or unconsciously, a free pass out of White Guilt over slavery. Just to be upfront, I'm already skeptical over whether White Guilt actually exists to begin with; I don't see a host of examples, especially in contemporary times, where a mass of White voters have done much in the name of resolving America's slavery past. In fact, the only people I usually see trotting out the White Guilt thesis is White Supremacists (or at least political conservatives) who argue that the only reason why policies such as Affirmative Action or the Fair Housing Act exist is because White liberals allow White Guilt to influence their actions. There's a grain of logic in there somewhere but to me, that would be called "White Responsibility" or better yet "social justice." But let me not digress.

So, if I understand the argument correctly, here's the thinking of the average Obama supporter (White): "man...that Obama sure is great! He's so articulate, so fresh, so clean. And best of all, because he's a 2nd generation immigrant, when I think of him, I'm not reminded of all the terrible things my ancestors may have done to Kunte Kinte and his people 200 years ago!"

Not being White, I can't speak from personal experience, but does that last thought actually enter into the minds of White people when they think about Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or hell, Michael Jordon or Denzel Washington? Just so we're clear, I'm more than willing to believe that any number of racists thoughts may enter one's subconscious when Black and White meet but 1) White Guilt over slavery isn't high up that list and 2) I'm not at all convinced that someone like Obama wouldn't trigger White Guilt (if it exists)



[1] Given Kenya's colonial past with European powers however, who's to say?

--O.W.

RUNNING WHILE BROWN

Richardson is Running ... for the Border

Yup, that's an actual screen capture above.

When Oliver decides to run for office, I can't wait until the New York Post prints the headline:

WANG THROWS CHINAMAN'S HAT INTO THE RING

*

Just as Obama and Clinton are forced to field idiotic questions and analysis of their race and gender, respectively, Governor Richardson will inevitably weather acerebral comments about his Mexican heritage and the fact that he grew up in Mexico City.

I feel bad for Richardson ... until I remind myself that he is the one directly responsible for the racial profiling and incarceration of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.


Source: Wonkette

--Junichi

FOLLOW-UP: ROLLING STONE SHOW, DIVERSITY IN THE UC SYSTEM

1. Following up on "The Write Stuff?": A former Rolling Stone intern breaks down what the actual reality of life there was like:

"...the contenders on this new reality show are given the kind of opportunities normally reserved for seasoned writers: traveling the world, interviewing rock stars and working on hard-hitting exposés, all while struggling to meet deadlines.

The enhanced job description makes sense, given that it was the only way for producers to make the show at all exciting. (Bonus: It gave them an excuse to incorporate loads of celebrity cameos.)"

"I'm From Rolling Stone loses credibility as soon as it introduces the cast. Given the final prize, one would expect the producers would pick some of the most talented young writers in the country. Having received more than 2,000 applications for the six spots, they certainly had the chance.

Instead, the reality-show casting formula -- abrasive personalities and model good looks -- won out."

"As RS Executive Editor Joe Levy (the show's de facto host) tells five of the six contestants that their work is just plain bad, he looks almost embarrassed to be treating them as serious contenders for a coveted gig at his magazine."

None of this should be much of a surprise but it just accentuates the point that A) the show is terrible and B) RS's falling reputation has streamlined even faster.

2. Following up on "Race Reality Check, Berkeley Daze": The LA Times had a story today profiling UC Riverside. If UC Berkeley is supposed to be "Little Asia On The Hill" (I still laugh when typing that), UCR is more like, um, Little California In the Valley insofar as it is the most diverse of all the UCs, at least in its percentage of Black and Latino students.

Interestingly, the number of Asian students is still roughly as high as Berkeley's: 43%, but Latinos constitute a quarter of the school and the percentage of Black students (7.1%), is double that of UC Berkeley and the UC system, as a whole. Riverside also boasts the lowest % of White students in the entire system: 18.7% (the highest remains UC Santa Barbara which has 43%[1].

The high diversity at UCR, at least in this article, is seen through two different lenses. On the one hand, it's good at least one UC campus has a Black student population that comes remotely close to reflecting the actual reality of California's state-wide demographics. As one professor quoted for the story points out, "Maybe [other UCs] should be looking at what UCR is doing right in attracting minorities" and elsewhere, the story notes that even students accepted at other, more arguably prestigious UCs, are likely to choose Riverside because they feel more comfortable with the larger numbers of Black and Latino students there.

However, the other side of these demographics is put forward by a sociology professor at UCLA: "It's separate, but certainly not equal," said Darnell Hunt...director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. "It's the resegregation of the UC system." In other words, Hunt seems to argue that Black students (and presumably Latino to a lesser extent) are pushed towards Riverside thus allowing campuses like UCLA or UC Berkeley to enroll fewer "underrepresented minorities"[2].

One wonders what UCR staff and faculty feel about such an accusation. While I understand the point Dr. Hunt is making here, it also has the effect, intended or not, of besmirching UCR's reputation as an institution of higher learning. I doubt many at UCR see their school as the university equivalent of colored bathrooms back in the Jim Crow era.

It's also important to note, as the story does that: "One advantage Riverside has in attracting underrepresented minorities is that it draws many of its applicants from the Riverside area, which has a large black and Latino population." Of course, one can also break down the economic and social forces that have factored into why the Riverside area has a higher percentage of Black and Latino residents vs, say, the areas around Berkeley or Westwood (or Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz). To that degree, the disparities/inequalities associated with UCR are likely a reflection of similar inequalities in many of California's social institutions and historical trends. That's not saying that other UCs can't do a far better job of recruitment of Black and Latino students to their campuses - as the story also notes, this has been one area where UCR has made a vigorous push, a lesson that could be well learned by some of Riverside's sister campuses.

---

[1] At no UC campus does any single ethnic group hold a majority though Asians hold a plurality at every campus save for UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz.

[2] Given that ALL students in the UC system are technically "minorities" given that there is no majority group, I wish we could find a few language to express that reality.

--O.W.

RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 2: NOT ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD

more real than the hill

(UPDATE: One of our commenters pointed out that Hernandez's article is a partial distillation of a longer working paper that breaks down some of the ideas more thoroughly than a newspaper column would really allow.)

In my previous post, I discussed Timothy Egan's NY Times article on Asians, UC Berkeley and affirmative action. In Tanya Hernandez's "Roots of Latino/black anger" (published in the LA Times) she also takes a worthwhile topic: anti-Black racism within the Latino community, but forces a sensationalist hook on it that both misrepresents reality as well as threatens to detract attention away from her core point. While Egan was mostly overstating the Asian influence on UC Berkeley, Hernandez is treading into even more dangerous territory by practically declaring that L.A. is the new Darfur.

CONTINUE READING...


To be more specific, Hernandez writes, "murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods."

This is one of those deliberate choices of words that have the effect of jack-knifing a tractor-trailer in the middle of a freeway. After all, for most people I surmise, "ethnic cleansing" is synonymous with "genocide" (the main difference being one of scale but not of concept). In other words, Hernandez is implying that there is a concerted effort by Latinos in Los Angeles (she doesn't actually cite which Latinos but we'll get back to this later) to carry out a deliberate campaign that ultimately leads to, "the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group or groups from a society, as by genocide or forced emigration."

What's curious here is that throughout the rest of the article, Hernandez relies on research data to support her argument yet here - with the most explosive argument of all - there is strangely no attempt to cite empirical sources even though such data exists. I cannot, of course, presume why this omission exists but I can say that if you look at the existing data, it complicates any easy depiction of racial violence as one-sided (let alone on the level of "ethnic cleansing").

The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission keeps track of hate crime statistics annually (by aggregating a variety of federal, state but mostly local criminal justice sources). In their most recent report, analyzing 2005 data, what they found was the that, in L.A., 68% of Black hate crime victims were targeted by Latino perpetrators (pg. 20). That is, unquestionably, a stark and sobering statistic. Moreover, "African Americans were again targeted by far the most frequently in 230 crimes (55%). This is a rate more than five times their presence in the general population" (pg. 18). It is also a nearly 50% rise from the year before.

However, if you look at the rest of the data, "in anti-Latino crimes, 76% of the suspects were black" (pg. 20). In other words, amongst all hate crime victims, Latino victims were a little over 10% more likely to be targeted by Black suspects vs. Black victims and Latino suspects. That difference is somewhat misleading however when you factor in the disproportionate amount of Black victims overall (over half of all hate crime victims were African American in 2005). When taking that into consideration, there were roughly 156 Latino-on-Black hate crimes vs. 93 Black-on-Latino hate crimes, a sizable difference of nearly 40%, especially when noting that Blacks only constitute 10% of the L.A. County population in comparison to the whopping 46.5% of Angelinos who identify as "Hispanic."[1]

Either way, the overall pattern in Los Angeles has been that the majority of anti-Black hate crime suspects have been Latino and the majority of anti-Latino hate crime suspects have been Black. However, compared to 2004, rates of interracial hate crimes between Blacks and Latinos were down even though the overall number of hate crimes, across the board, were up, especially for Latinos who saw a nearly 100% jump in hate crime incidents compared to 2004. Moreover, Latino victims were more likely to be subject to violence compared to African American victims (67% vs. 61%). Meanwhile, the number of suspected Latino perpetrators of hate crimes decreased by 12% while the number of African American suspects increased by 10% but Latino suspects still dominate: they are 44% of all hate crime suspects, followed by Black at 30% and Whites at 24%. (Just to note: these year to year differences should always be taken with a grain of salt but I don't have sufficient access to more longitudinal studies that deal specifically with the Los Angeles area).

Where the numbers dramatically begin to skew is when you look at gang-related incidents of hate crime.

"...the overwhelming majority of these were cases in which Latino gang members targeted African-American victims. The data show that 54 (78%) of racial crimes committed by gang members were anti-black, and only 8 (12%) targeted Latinos. Very few reports indicated that these racial crimes were committed by gang members against rival gang members; most were against victims who were not identified as gang members."

In other words (and this is what Hernandez is also saying): there is a clear and discernible trend of Latino gang members targeting non-gang affiliated African Americans for hate crimes.

Further dissection of the data reveals some other notable figures - though with harder-to-draw conclusions. On one hand, gang-related hate crimes, overall, constitute 11% of all hate crimes - a big number but hardly the majority of hate crimes. However, in 5 out of 6 cases of racial bias-based attempted murder, the perps were Latino gang members and the victims African Americans. The reverse does NOT seem to be true: there are far fewer documented cases of Black gangs targeting non-gang affiliated Latinos.

So what does all this mean? For starters, I absolutely agree that incidents of anti-Black racism by Latino suspects - specifically in the form of violent hate crimes - is a serious issue that has gone woefully underreported or opined about. In that respect, I think Hernandez's article is important for bringing attention to the issue.

Moreover, some of her main points are correct: there is a higher overall number of incidences where Latinos have targeted African Americans (vs. the inverse) for hate crimes, especially through violence. Unfortunately, it's too early for parse down the 2006 data so it's hard to know what direction these trends may go but it's very important to note: in both 2004 and 2005, there no recorded bias-related murders (there was one in 2003 where two Latino gang members killed an African American man) but the story that sparked Hernandez's article was the December 15th slaying of a 14 year old Black girl in Harbor Gateway (again, by Latino gang members).

However, none of this data supports a claim that there is a widespread Latino-coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing of African Americans in Los Angeles. What you could say is that there is a very troubling number of incidents (even though they had been on the decline) of Latino gangs (presumably Mexican though perhaps Salvadoran, though no one specifies) targeting non-gang affiliated African Americans for violent hate crimes in specific neighborhoods (but certainly not just any/all "multiracial" ones).[2] That alone should give everyone pause and inspire a serious call to action for L.A. city and community leaders to deal with.

However, how Hernandez conflates "Latino gangs" (and really, I think we're most likely talking about Mexican gangs) into "Latinos" writ large is troubling. I cannot imagine that Hernandez would ever claim that the Mexican Mafia stands as a proxy for the entire Latino community any more than Piru Bloods represent the African American community writ large but in her article, she essentially uses the two interchangeably. For example, at the end, she writes, "the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens." This is technically true but it is nowhere near the whole story.

For example, curiously missing from this discussion is acknowledging that one of the prime locations for Latino/Black violence isn't in the streets but rather, California's penal system where racially-aligned and segregated prison gangs create an incredible amount of violence (that can spill outside once members are released back into the general population).

Though the cultural roots of White Supremacy in Central/Latin America may very well play a role in prison conflicts too, one cannot deny that the prison system itself is a uniquely different social institution that has its own kinds of cultural logic. Others have argued that the very policy of the CA prison system to segregate based on race only contributes to flaring tensions and violence. In any case, no law enforcement official or criminal justice scholar in California would ever discuss Black/Latino violence - especially gang-related - without nodding back to the prisons.[3] Yet, in this article, what happens in Pelican Bay, stays in Pelican Bay it seems.

On a different angle, one of the main arguments also being put forward by Hernandez is that these racial conflicts cannot be explained by economic forces. This certainly flies against the common understanding amongst most sociologists and other social researchers that socioeconomic factors play a key role in brewing racial tensions between historically disenfranchised communities.

If someone wants to challenge that common logic, that's fine - the social scientific method relies on challenges to prevailing beliefs. However, in one of the cases where Hernandez does rely on research (rather than anecdote), she cites the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey even though that data is 15 years old (and the survey is conducted annually, mind you). Moreover, 1992 was the year of the L.A. Rebellion/Riots, arguably the most important race-related event in a generation in the Southland (sorry O.J.) and would likely skew responses on account of that. In any case, the demographics of Los Angeles have changed dramatically in that decade and a half and a more recent analysis would be apropos given that.

None of this means that her argument is necessarily false but it hardly proves the case either. To dismiss socioeconomics as a factor in how interracial violence manifests in a city as spatially dense and economically competitive as Los Angeles in the way Hernandez does defies easy understanding. A single, 15 year old survey study isn't enough to make the case that socioeconomics are some kind of red herring, especially given the mountains of other social research that would suggest that at some level, economic competition feeds into racial tension. That does not presume that racist prejudice is not also at play. It merely includes a variety of factors, something that the Hernandez article fails to consider.

All this said, I think the core of Hernandez's article is actually extremely important in exploring the deeper, cultural roots of anti-Black racism within the Latino community. As she - and many others would concur - this is NOT a topic that is part of the mainstream conversation around race. Within the Left, there is a naive idealism that somehow, all people of color are in solidarity with one another (regardless if the historical record actually disproves this countless times) and especially given how Latinos will become the majority-minority soon (as has already happened in California), it is more important than ever to discuss how anti-Black sentiments within that community factor into the relationships between those communities.

Some key points in her article:

"racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean."

"The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility."

"African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so."

"Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups."

These may be difficult ideas to accept but even when debatable, they're still crucial to any kind of truthful confrontation with issues of racism between racialized groups rather than the conventional - and all but moribund - binary of White/non-White relations. To that extent, I applaud Hernandez's effort to bring these issues to light even as I question some of the decisions she makes in framing it.

What is missing, however, is a greater discussion, or even acknowledgment, of how these attitudes play off structural forces that either reflect or feed into the perpetuation of prejudice. This can be one of those chicken/egg debates but as noted earlier in regards to the role that the segregated CA prison system plays in exacerbating racial violence, it seems myopic to suggest that prejudicial attitudes would be sufficient to explain, in Hernandez's words, "the extremity of the ethnic violence." There's many groups that hate one another. Not all those groups make it a point to murder one another in public. Take away the gang angle (which is dependent on the prison angle) and the equation changes dramatically.

(She might also have mentioned the incidents of racial conflict in L.A. public schools, which, besides prison, is a "ground zero" for brewing racial conflicts.[5])

What is unfortunate is how Hernandez's article has gotten great play in the worst of places: Right-wing, anti-immigration sites who are perverting her arguments into another justification for attacking Latino immigration under the disingenuous mantle of protecting African Americans (and other Americans by extension) from the scourge of Latino racist violence. I think it goes without saying that most fervent, anti-immigrant groups are no friends to Black liberation or social justice - indeed, their racially-coded ways of talking about how immigration is changing the fabric of American identity (read: White identity/prvilege) are a close cousin to similar arguments around the "bankrupt culture" of impoverished African Americans.

While Hernandez likely did not intend for her article to have this effect, by sensationalizing the violence angle of her argument - especially when the data doesn't support that read - her article plays very nicely into the hands of those who would pervert its aim to spur up paranoia around violent Latino gangs putting American lives at risk (see Pat Buchanan's hysteria-laden screed about the Salvadoran American gang, MS13 for example).

---

One last thing regarding both Hernandez and Egan's articles: both point out the challenges in trying to discuss race and ethnicity in contemporary America, not the least of which are the ways in which umbrella terms for diverse ethnic groups tend to flatten difference when really, specificity is what's needed. (This is not a new point but still bears repeating).

For example, when Egan is trying to contrast the successes of Asian immigrant families with the historically underrepresented and disenfranchised Black and Latino populations (in the context of higher education), he's really talking about post-1965 Immigration Act East Asian ethnic groups: Chinese and Koreans (and to a lesser extent Japanese though their numbers have dwindled). These are the Asian communities most likely to 1) have a powerful class privilege working in their favor, at least when it comes to prioritizing resources for their children's education and 2) have avoided the direct historical legacies of anti-Asian oppression in America history by immigration in the post-Civil Rights Era.

However, as is oft-noted, for many Southeast Asian and Filipino immigrants, the advantages are not so widely shared, especially by Southeast Asian refugees whose key immigration date is not 1965 but 1975 (fall of Saigon). Those communities are far more likely to live near or under the poverty line and their arrival in the U.S. is a direct outcome of American foreign policy (one could make a similar argument for Filipinos as well given the U.S. occupation of the Philippines from the 1890s through 1930s) and thus, their disenfranchisement has roots in historical structures of imperialism and war (not to mention contemporary issues around environmental racism, public housing, gang involvement, etc.). Though Egan talks about how "Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at [the UC's] nine undergraduate campuses," he treats that group as monolithic (despite later paragraphs which make note of "differences" between Asian ethnic groups but fail to specific what those differences are, especially within a social structure of power/privilege.

While there might be a fair social justice argument made to limit, say, Chinese American, access to affirmative action policies in higher education, it becomes far harder to make the same claim for Hmong or Cambodian youth. But even that becomes complicated: the first generation of post-75 Vietnamese immigrants to arrive in America were more likely to be part of the educated and political elite vs. later waves of more low-skilled, agrarian-class refugees. Does it make sense to offer social policy advantages to Vietnamese Americans across the board? Or just those who've been most socioeconomically challenged? You can see the complexity here.

Likewise, with Hernandez, apart from conflating Latino gangs with the Latino community as a whole, she rarely specifies if findings regarding one Latino group (say Mexicans or Mexican Americans) can be applied to others. In Los Angeles, Mexicans are the dominant Latino community, by far, but there are still important pockets of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalans and her ideas on Black/Latino conflict in Los Angeles may have little application in, for example, New York, where Puerto Ricans are the dominant Latino group and whose community can span the range from light-skinned "Hispanic Whites" to dark-skinned morenas. That's not to say that anti-Black racism doesn't exist there but the social dynamics (and demographics) are significantly distinct.

Cursory moral of this very long story? Talking about race and racism is tremendously complicated yet even more completely necessary and to the degree that both articles (despite their flaws) push this conversation into the public sphere, I think that's great, especially if it encourages more people to push deeper into having these very difficult dialogues.

---

[1] The data on these figures track ALL hate crimes, not just violent assaults, attempted murders or murders (there were no racial bias-related murders in 2005 according to the report).

[2] It really needs to be said here that nationally, over 90% of Black murder victims were killed by Black suspects. One would imagine that the figure, specifically for Los Angeles, would not be dramatically lower. I doubt anyone would describe that figure as a "self cleansing."

[3] In CA prisons, the term "ethnic cleansing" might actually be more apropos but I suspect Hernandez avoids dwelling on this since it would undermine her discussion of how "peaceful African Americans" are coming under attack by violent Latinos.

[4] In public schools, most of the Black/Latino violence tends to involve Black victims and Latino suspects except, it seems, in May. Presumably, the timing of Cinco De Mayo tends to incite more Black suspects to attack Latino victims.

--O.W.

RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 1: BERKELEY DAZE

beginning of the end

By coincidence, the NY Times and LA Times both ran stories on Sunday dealing with contemporary American race relations but not of the conventional Black/White variety. In the LAT was Professor Tanya Hernandez's op-ed, "Roots of Latino/black anger," which looks at both the current rates of Latino-on-Black violence in Los Angeles communities and argues that deep-seated racial prejudice helps explain the acrimony (rather than the more traditional theory that economic pressures are at root). In the NYT, it was Timothy Egan's "Little Asia on the Hill" which is a profile of both Junichi and my alma mater, UC Berkeley and how the long-term growth of Asian American students there complicates the racial demographics of an institution that has seen the recent percentage of African American students drop from small to near-absent.

It's not as if White racism completely disappears in these two stories but the main focus is looking at how power and privilege is as much an issue between non-White communities as it is between the more commonly discussed "people of color vs. White" binary. Especially in California, which both articles focus on, as a non-majority state, race relations here offer a model for what the rest of America may experience in the generations to come as we head towards a non-majority, pluralistic nation as well.


CONTINUE READING...



I'll begin with Egan's article in this post and I'll tackle Hernandez's separately. I've re-read Egan's essay a few times and the more I do, I realize that I gave it too much credit the first time through, thinking that it had something insightful to say about contemporary race relations (specifically concerning Asian Americans). In reality, it's actually a rather tired retread of hundreds of model minority tales seen in decades past (even though it tries, not very successfully, to be self-conscious of the model minority myth) paired with an equally tired recycling of questions around Asian Americans and affirmative action as if the topic hasn't already been discussed to death for well over 15 years. That doesn't mean it's not important but in many ways, the "quiet revolution" Egan writes about has already been noted over the last two decades - it's hardly been that quiet.

Moreover, the article itself is problematic on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, his basic intent is to profile an Asian-dominant campus (though it's still no-majority) but rather than simply put it across "there's a lot of Asians here!", he plays up their numbers/influence with all sorts of questionable rhetorical flourishes that feels, at times, like a subtle retrenchment of "yellow peril" hysteria, albeit with a gentler tone.

For example, he describes Berkeley as "overwhelmingly Asian" - a curious argument given that Asian American students don't constitute a majority (no single ethnic/racial group does) and in general, I don't think of a numerical plurality as being particularly "overwhelming." For example, would one describe a campus with a 40% White or Black student population as "overwhelmingly White/Black"? Unlikely.

Of course, perhaps Egan wasn't talking pure statistics but rather, a general impression but even then, it's an overstatement. It's absolutely true: there's a lot of Asians at Berkeley. Walk on campus and it's impossible NOT to notice this. However, the public face of Berkeley is a different story. Asians do not constitute a plurality of: faculty, staff, executives, or Division I athletes (they are nowhere close in any of those categories). Moreover, in the materials that the campus makes available to the public, they severely underplay the actual numbers of Asian students. Watch this online video of Cal freshmen to see what I mean.

Nevertheless, Egan makes Berkeley seem like, well, "Little Asia."[1] He paints a portrait where Mandarin floats down every hall way (uh, no), where Asian-themed residence halls are common (nope [2]), where - and I have hard time retyping this without convulsing in laughter - "more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity."

Ok, please, just stop for a moment. Berkeley's Office of Student Research doesn't parse down its data to note the differences between foreign vs. American-born/raised Asian American students but based on my experience, both as an undergrad and more importantly, grad student who taught at least 500 Asian American undergrads at Berkeley, it's clear that most Asian American students at Berkeley are, at the very least, American-raised if not American-born. Their identity doesn't turn any further west than the Richmond and Sunset Districts in San Francisco. It's just one of the ways in which Egan recycles that old chestnut of Asians as perpetual foreigners, turning to the inscrutable Orient for inspiration.[3]

Another problem with the article is simply that Egan is trying to make his point through a meandering series of observations even though the core of it is right here: "In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics."

I could quibble over whether UC admission policy is actually a "strict meritocracy" but I'll let that go for sake of expediency.[4] Regardless, I wouldn't disagree with Egan's supposition that increases in Asian American enrollment at a school such as Berkeley means declining numbers elsewhere, especially amongst Black and Latino students.

However, Egan tries to play this debate in fumbled way - he wants to set-up a conflict that pits Asian American students on one side and Black/Latino students on the other but he rarely just tackles this question head-on. Personally, I would have preferred had he gone out and probed that precise question rather than doing it elliptically.

I did try to pull a few things noted in the piece which I thought were good food for thought:

"[UC Berkeley], [Chancellor] Dr. Birgeneau says, loses talented black applicants to private universities like Stanford, where African-American enrollment was 10 percent last year — nearly three times that at Berkeley.

'I just don’t believe that in a state with three million African-Americans there is not a single engineering student for the state’s premier public university,' he says."
(All cogent points).

"It is not the university’s job to fix the problems that California’s public schools produce." [from Professor David Hollinger]
(On one level, Hollinger is noting that the roots of admission inequalities lie much further in the general preparation of CA students through the K-12 system and the differences in access/privilege that students have. While I understand his point that perhaps it's unfair to burden the university with solving a problem that, in essence, it didn't create, it also seems like a bit of a cop-out to not also think that Berkeley also - especially as the "flagship" camps in the UC system - to take a role in addressing these things).

"If Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley: relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented?"
(Isn't this where things have already headed, more or less?)

"[Stanford professor Hazel Markus'] studies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. 'You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,' she says. 'Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.'"
(I'd say these all seem like vast generalizations and stereotypes though...having taught hundreds of these students, I can't say it's wholly untrue either).

Rather than dissect Egan's entire article, I want to use some of his more elliptical points to address a few issues that I think are really (in my opinion) at the heart of what the article should have been focused on.

Would a strengthening of affirmative action policies impact the number of Asian American students at universities such as UC Berkeley?

Yes and no. It would likely lead to lower numbers of, say, middle class Chinese and Korean American students but assuming these policies were not strictly ethnicity-based but rather, took into account a larger diversity of considerations, it might help bolster numbers of underrepresented Asian ethnic groups such as Cambodians, Vietnamese and Filipinos.

Do most Asian Americans favor affirmative action?

According to the survey data, yes but a word of caution. The 2001 Pilot Study of the National Asian American Political Survey found that in reply to this question: "Affirmative action refers to any measure, policy or law used to increase diversity or rectify discrimination so that qualified individuals have equal access to employment, education, business, and contracting opportunities. Generally speaking, do you think affirmative action is a good thing or a bad thing for Asian Americans, or doesn't it affect Asian Americans much?", 63% responded "A Good Thing" while only 6% said, "A Bad Thing."[5]

My issue with this survey question is around how it's worded. The core issue in Egan's article - and really, when we're talking about Asian Americans and affirmative action it centers on this too - is preferential policies in college admission. If you were to phrase a question that asked instead, "Would you favor affirmative action policies designed to increase diversity or rectify discrimination but Asian Americans would not benefit from these programs, would you think this is a 'good thing' or 'bad thing'," I imagine that the results would be very different.

This may sound self-obvious but Asian Americans are more likely to support affirmative action when it benefits them, especially in areas around hiring and job contracts. But when it comes to college admissions and in general, educational opportunities afforded people and their children, the historical record is clear: do not come between (certain) Asian ethnic groups and their pursuit of higher education. It doesn't matter if greater diversity for all is the benefit being touted - if Asian Americans think they're "losing" in this equation, then at least a vocal minority will make their anger heard. (Added afterthought: that minority might be quite small but given the overall challenges in making Asian American political opinions audible, a vocal minority can come off as seeming to represent the whole, alas).

This is truly an unfortunate legacy of Asian America's record on race relations. Educational policy has, throughout the decades, been one way in which Asian Americans have been more than willing to part ways or abandon larger solidarities with other communities of color. Whether Asian Americans, as a whole, aspire towards White privilege or not is a larger debate but when it comes to educational privilege, in places like San Francisco, Mississippi and New Jersey, certain Asian Americans (whether individually, in small groups, or in specific communities) are quick to abandon any pretense to supporting diversity if they perceive their admissions are on the line. (To be fair, we're mostly talking about Chinese Americans rather than all Asian Americans, across the board. I'm not proud of this).

(Added afterthought: This is one of those "more research is needed" areas. As noted earlier, I don't think the existing polling and survey data is sufficient to really reflect Asian American opinions on affirmative action admission policies. Without sounding like I'm trying to recycle broad generalizations, I do think that for many Asian American families, education (esp. at the collegiate level) is a higher priority than it is for others (and I think if you were to parse family resource allocations, there'd be data to back this up) and as a result, talking about preferential hiring is one thing, talking about preferential admissions? Whole 'nother ball of wax.)

Should Asian Americans be concerned about the rising numbers of Asian Americans students - and declining numbers of African American and Latino students - at schools such as UC Berkeley? Likewise, should they be in favor of affirmative action policies even if they aren't a direct benefit to their own access?

Absolutely yes. I think this is the difficult stance to accept amongst some (if not many) Asian American families, especially those inclined to oppose affirmative action policies that would negatively impact Asian American (i.e. their kids) enrollment. For starters, it's very difficult to see how a majority Asian campus is really "beneficial" - as an intellectual space, as a social space - to Asian students. While it may play into their comfort zone (not for nothing), it does little to prepare them for the greater diversity of ideas - and just plain people - that exists outside of campus.

Mind you, I'm not speaking now as a sociologist or academic per se. I'm speaking as someone who went to UC Berkeley for basically, one-third of my lifetime, as someone who grew up in a town that was basically a 60/40 White/Asian split (with practically no African Americans and barely any Latinos), who has an intraethnic Asian American daughter whose future childhood environs and education I'll need to help plan.

Being Asian at Berkeley certainly felt more comfortable than, I suppose, being Asian at SMU but I'm not sure what benefits, besides comfort, an Asian-dominant campus afforded. Like I said, comfort is not for nothing, but it's hardly the raison d'etre for going somewhere. What's been striking is that teaching at CSU-Long Beach is the first time when I've had big classes that were NOT majority Asian American and that's been a very illuminating and important process for me - as a teacher, as a scholar, as a member of society - because on a very simple, basic level, it makes me confront my own unspoken biases and ideas about people.

As my daughter gets older, I wouldn't want her to grow up in the kind of racially sterile (not to mention quasi-elitist) environments of my own upbringing (which isn't a knock on my parents' choices. They had the best intentions at heart). She currently attends a daycare that includes Black, White and Asian toddlers and without overidealizing that experience, I think it's important that she's come into social awareness in an environment that more closely mirrors society at large rather than presuming that everyone else only looks like her (or White children). My hope - and this might be, again, overidealized - is that those kind of formative experiences will encourage her to grow into someone who is more empathetic, more aware of society at large and more invested in the ideals of social justice rather the more parochial, self-interest attitudes that accompany certain members of my community.

An Asian-dominant environment, especially a university, does little to foster those ideals, especially if the mentality is that encouraging diversity is somehow "a loss" suffered by Asian Americans. Considering that post-1965 immigrant Asian Americans (who comprise the vast bulk of the community) essentially benefitted from Civil Rights struggles that they themselves didn't actually contribute to/participate in, it seems like the height of arrogance to claim that affirmative action policies are a denial of egalitarian ideals of fairness and equality.

So affirmative action is a good policy, right?

Well...

The problem with the affirmative action debate has been how it's become this touchstone issue that somehow is seen as being the sole remedy available to challenging the legacy of White supremacy and institutional racism. I'm not sure if that's a product of laziness on the Left or machinations on the Right but either way, it's a dangerously shortsighted perspective.

Affirmative Action is not great public policy for an "all eggs in one basket" approach insofar as 1) a focus on hiring, promotional or educational access are essentially middle class concerns but do little to address historical inequalities in class and race that affect the millions for whom basic needs around health care, housing and employment are far more important than who gets to attend UC Berkeley or Stanford, 2) it's only going to become more politically untenable over time and thus becomes a sponge for progressive energy that might be better applied elsewhere (I'm a firm believer in the realpolitik/choose your battles approach), 3) it diverts attention from the entrenchment of structural discrimination in many other areas, not the least of which are housing, health care and the criminal justice system. This list could go on.

Yet, it seems as if affirmative action is the only policy that is ever floated out there to address 400+ years of racial inequality, as if college enrollments or hiring preferences are an adequate redress or unengineering of a national economy built on Black slavery and indentured servitude of other groups of color.

That's why I tire of the Asian American/affirmative action debate. It's not that it's a wholly spurious topic but it's seems so relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of social justice. It's certainly a myopic cause for certain, so-called Asian American civil rights groups to take up (and by this, I mean those fighting to oppose aff. action policies) and as noted, I don't consider it the most productive front for progressive Leftists to champion either.

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