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Asian-American Racists

It's easy to treat discrimination as an acceptable cost of American life, but progress demands more

by Frank H. Wu, Howard University

As I tour with my book and talk about race, one of the most galling arguments I came up against runs along the lines of, "Well, you might be offended by the word ‘jap’, being asked ‘where are you really from?’, or being told ‘my, you speak English so well’, but I have a friend who’s Oriental, and she doesn’t make a fuss about any of that at all." The implication is that I cannot have a legitimate grievance, if somebody else chose not to complain about a similar incident. Unless we suppose that everyone who looks alike thinks alike, this reasoning makes no sense.

To begin with, I don’t remember nominating a hypothetical stranger to be the spokesperson for all Asian Americans. I doubt anybody is qualified for such a position or would dare to take on the role.

True, a few Asian Americans view people in racial terms. They are like whites who do so, except they reverse their preferences. They may see Asians as superior to everyone else or at least believe that people should be categorized based on where their ancestors came from. If they have such attitudes, they are neither better nor worse than others with the same mindset.

Asian immigrants, having been shaped by their childhood overseas, may compare the United States to their former homelands. Opportunities here may be much greater than there. It is easier for them to treat discrimination as an acceptable cost given the other sacrifices they have already made in order to come to the New World. The fact that life is superior in America measured against a country at war, impoverished and governed by a totalitarian regime doesn’t mean that we have achieved our ideals, though.

However, many Asian Americans are raised by immigrant parents who instill Asian principles of harmony. The image of Asian Americans as polite has some truth to it, for we live down to our image of being seemingly submissive. We have been told that "the nail that sticks up will be pounded down" and counseled to conform as much as possible, rather than given the advice that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" and urged to protest if necessary. We know well the heckler’s jeer when we say anything controversial: "if you don’t like it here, go back to where you came from."

Most Asian Americans are like anybody else. There are perfectly good reasons why many Asian Americans fail to speak out even if they confront what may be clear-cut cases of bias by any objective measure. I sympathize with people who make the judgment call that it isn’t worth the aggravation to fight everything, especially if you are the only person in the room who looks different.

Nobody wants to look like a whiner. Even divulging that you have been an actual victim of hardcore prejudice can be difficult, because of the highly personal nature of the incidents and the awkwardness of the situation. With in-laws, friends of friends, or a supervisor at the workplace, it isn’t easy to raise volatile issues of race.

Despite our consensus that we should strive toward color-blindness, ironically individuals who point out that we still have violations of civil rights are attacked for failing to celebrate our progress. When they observe that at an exclusive country club where the law firm is having a party all the guests are virtually all white and the staff are almost all black, they are reprimanded because they’ve brought up race even though their mistake is noticing the obvious. The likely backlash directed at anyone who criticizes an off-color joke or the casual stereotype, whether it is being ostracized as a troublemaker or dismissed as "politically correct," creates perverse incentives to ignore such problems.

Indeed, the worse the racial predicament the harder it is to object if it remains possible to leave it be. After all, a person who already has shown they are disrespectful probably won’t take it well when I call attention to their racial presumptions no matter how nicely I try to do that.

So although now and then I work as an activist, I rarely ever call anybody a "racist," unless they have proclaimed themselves white supremacists. I’ve learned to walk away if I can.

Yet if we are to make genuine progress toward racial justice, as opposed to rhetorical changes that celebrate differences in a shallow sense and create an elaborate etiquette of false sensitivity, we must be willing to consider claims about discrimination one by one rather than with assumptions. Some allegations of intolerance turn out to be true, even if not all of them have a basis in fact.

I realize it isn’t easy to talk about race. It’s even harder to listen about race. But talking and listening, and taking turns doing both with respect, is crucial to our future as a diverse democracy.

Related Readings

• About Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White by AAV Staff