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It's International Blog Against Racism Week--how quickly that rolled around again! And how timely it is, too.
I have probably said enough about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., here. Everyone knows that President Obama said that that the police acted "stupidly," and he has retracted that adverb at least twice. This morning on Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep and Juan Williams discussed the issue (you can hear it here), and tomorrow's plan for Obama, Crowley, and Gates to get together over some beer. Williams refers to Obama having "slipped in such a way as to betray some kind of loyalty on racial terms" and says "slipped" more than once. (Inskeep is white, Williams black.) Meanwhile, a lot of people seem to be going much farther and calling Obama a racist.
Williams rightly points out that other issues are involved: town versus gown and class issues complicate matters: why did Gates even show a Harvard ID? (I'd have pulled out my driver's license first, but my University ID is right next to it in my wallet, and I might show both to establish who I am. My U ID is a photo ID. Horrid picture, but so is my driver's license. My university is less prestigious than Harvard, but I do think having a university faculty ID would only make me seem more safe and trustworthy, so I might get it out.)
Yet I do think in some ways this case is not as "fresh and new and different" as Williams says. We've got people on one side crying racism and on the other side crying "playing the race card!". What I'm thinking today is not so much which side is right, but: why is it wrong for the president to show some loyalty to a group to which he belongs? Actually, Obama shows less than most: has any president in living memory had so many appointees from the other party? Particularly after that party used really dirty methods at times to sully his name? Tell me that Bush didn't favor his cronies (and his father's) and Clinton didn't favor his own? That Bush didn't favor big business, and Clinton didn't favor labor?
Of course, people say "If you show pride in white people, that's called racism." Sometimes, that's true. That's partly because sometimes it's really hard to say it's not racism: see this clip of Pat Buchanan telling Rachel Maddow that it makes sense white people have completely dominated the Supreme Court because white people built this country! (Without any slaves, servants, or immigrant laborers, apparently. I don't actually have the stomach to watch the full clip; for some reason this clip really, deeply bothered me.)
I think that's also because white people often have the luxury of taking ethnic pride instead. No one calls a Greek Festival or a St. Patrick's Day celebration "racism" (or not that I've noticed). When Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor spoke of her background giving her understanding, journalists went running for the clip of Justice Alito talking about his Italian heritage and family experiences of discrimination enriching his own understanding. On the one side, some of us (me included!) see Sotomayor and Alito saying much the same thing; on the other side, people say he's talking about legitimate rise above discrimination and she's talking about some mystical understanding from her race. (I wish I could remember the name of the Republican who, pressed by an NPR journalist, said, "Maybe I shouldn't have voted for Alito" and said that Alito was wrong too, which is, at least, somewhat consistent, though he didn't say that at the time Alito was up for a vote.)
Whites have the luxury of ethnic pride because most of us know a fair amount about our roots--and, in many areas, we can expect that other people will too. My names have recognizable ethnicities. Many of us can recognize a variety of European ethnicities from names and sometimes appearances: Greek, Italian, German, Scandinavian, Irish....
African-Americans often don't have the luxury of identifying their own roots because so many were brought over as slaves from many different tribes. Rarely do non-African Americans associate particular names or features with specific parts of Africa, at least in my experience (I wouldn't have a clue how to make such distinctions myself, even when seeing someone on tv who is actually fully African). Ethnicity pretty much equals race; that may be partly due to white ignorance (or even my ignorance), but I think it's a reasonably true generalization.
I'm not as certain about Latinos and people from Asia. I can't tell someone of Puerto Rican descent from someone of Cuban from someone of Argentinian. I can tell Indians from East Asians, but I'm not very reliable at sorting out some Asian ethnicities. How much of this is just my ignorance, and how much is general ignorance shared among people in the US, or in majority-white, English-speaking countries? I don't know. It seems to me as an outsider that Latinos and Asians identify more strongly than African-Americans with specific countries of origin, but certainly some also identify with broader terms such as "Latino" or "Asian". (I am really, really open to correction and education on this and hope I'm not misleading anyone. I hope even more fervently I'm not stereotyping or insulting anyone.)
So what's the difference between showing some pride in being Irish or Italian and showing some pride in being African-American, or Latino, or Asian? Not much, it seems to me, except that no one calls me racist if I'm careful to say "Irish" or "Italian" rather than "white." Why is it a "slip" for Obama to show some "loyalty" to his own race? And yes, he's white, and he should be able to show some loyalty and pride in that side of his heritage as well. But let's face it: people looking at Obama as a boy or a young man didn't see a man who was half-white; they saw a man who was black, or half-black. As Juan Williams noted in that NPR piece, Obama worked on the issue of racial profiling as a state senator. Does anyone doubt he has experienced it? Should anyone be surprised that he identified with the college professor who may or may not have been profiled rather than the police officer who may or may not have profiled?
Maybe the president shouldn't have issued a judgmental word in this charged context of race and class. Yet he's doing something to open a dialogue. He's not pretending it didn't happen, and he's not even pretending that he didn't make a mistake in saying what he did.
Maybe we need more mistakes. I think we should also be more open about what's what: ethnic pride is racial pride sometimes, for some people. When it's "I'm proud to be from my family and background," I think that's a good thing, not racism. If we sometimes identify with our own ethnicity more, well, we should be conscious of it and able to think critically about it. I think Obama is now very conscious of it, if he wasn't before, and certainly able to think critically about his own speech.
One final anecdote: I lived in an apartment years ago and one day opened the door to two African-American women who had knocked. I didn't know them. I said, "I think you want the apartment upstairs." One of the women cut loose an epithet-laden diatribe at me for my racism in making assumptions about her based on her race.
Of course it looked like that to her. She saw a door open and a white woman telling her where to go.
That's not actually not what it was. I never met those upstairs neighbors. The apartment building was on a hill. The street-side door let one in on the first floor. The parking-lot side door let one in on the second, where I lived. I saw a steady stream of knockers at my door who came in on a different side than usual and ended up at my door; they didn't look at the number, they just knew how far to come in the hallway and knocked. Every one of them wanted the third floor; none wanted the first floor. That day, I had already heard several people let in on the floor above, and, sure enough, after the woman finished chewing me out and went away, I heard a knock and a greeting from above us.
My intentions didn't matter. What I realized, once I got over feeling wounded, was that I had inadvertently wounded the woman at my door. It may not have been my fault, or at least it wasn't the first time--but how many times had she been told where to go, or worse, based on her skin color? Once I recognized that, I could open the door and just tell people they seemed to be on the wrong floor. I didn't tell them which floor they wanted, and they never got hurt or angry, as far as I could tell. I didn't need to tell them which floor; once they realized, they could look at the number and figure it out themselves.
As a teacher, I remember this because my intentions don't matter. I have other anecdotes about times I've inadvertently hurt students with careless words, or even careful words whose effects I couldn't predict. I would disagree with Juan Williams on one last thing: even if Officer Crowley was not treating Dr. Gates that way because he was black, it's still a teachable moment. Officer Crowley can realize how his actions look to people of another race and learn from that, if he didn't realize it before. So can other officers--and teachers, and just human beings in general.
I have probably said enough about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., here. Everyone knows that President Obama said that that the police acted "stupidly," and he has retracted that adverb at least twice. This morning on Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep and Juan Williams discussed the issue (you can hear it here), and tomorrow's plan for Obama, Crowley, and Gates to get together over some beer. Williams refers to Obama having "slipped in such a way as to betray some kind of loyalty on racial terms" and says "slipped" more than once. (Inskeep is white, Williams black.) Meanwhile, a lot of people seem to be going much farther and calling Obama a racist.
Williams rightly points out that other issues are involved: town versus gown and class issues complicate matters: why did Gates even show a Harvard ID? (I'd have pulled out my driver's license first, but my University ID is right next to it in my wallet, and I might show both to establish who I am. My U ID is a photo ID. Horrid picture, but so is my driver's license. My university is less prestigious than Harvard, but I do think having a university faculty ID would only make me seem more safe and trustworthy, so I might get it out.)
Yet I do think in some ways this case is not as "fresh and new and different" as Williams says. We've got people on one side crying racism and on the other side crying "playing the race card!". What I'm thinking today is not so much which side is right, but: why is it wrong for the president to show some loyalty to a group to which he belongs? Actually, Obama shows less than most: has any president in living memory had so many appointees from the other party? Particularly after that party used really dirty methods at times to sully his name? Tell me that Bush didn't favor his cronies (and his father's) and Clinton didn't favor his own? That Bush didn't favor big business, and Clinton didn't favor labor?
Of course, people say "If you show pride in white people, that's called racism." Sometimes, that's true. That's partly because sometimes it's really hard to say it's not racism: see this clip of Pat Buchanan telling Rachel Maddow that it makes sense white people have completely dominated the Supreme Court because white people built this country! (Without any slaves, servants, or immigrant laborers, apparently. I don't actually have the stomach to watch the full clip; for some reason this clip really, deeply bothered me.)
I think that's also because white people often have the luxury of taking ethnic pride instead. No one calls a Greek Festival or a St. Patrick's Day celebration "racism" (or not that I've noticed). When Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor spoke of her background giving her understanding, journalists went running for the clip of Justice Alito talking about his Italian heritage and family experiences of discrimination enriching his own understanding. On the one side, some of us (me included!) see Sotomayor and Alito saying much the same thing; on the other side, people say he's talking about legitimate rise above discrimination and she's talking about some mystical understanding from her race. (I wish I could remember the name of the Republican who, pressed by an NPR journalist, said, "Maybe I shouldn't have voted for Alito" and said that Alito was wrong too, which is, at least, somewhat consistent, though he didn't say that at the time Alito was up for a vote.)
Whites have the luxury of ethnic pride because most of us know a fair amount about our roots--and, in many areas, we can expect that other people will too. My names have recognizable ethnicities. Many of us can recognize a variety of European ethnicities from names and sometimes appearances: Greek, Italian, German, Scandinavian, Irish....
African-Americans often don't have the luxury of identifying their own roots because so many were brought over as slaves from many different tribes. Rarely do non-African Americans associate particular names or features with specific parts of Africa, at least in my experience (I wouldn't have a clue how to make such distinctions myself, even when seeing someone on tv who is actually fully African). Ethnicity pretty much equals race; that may be partly due to white ignorance (or even my ignorance), but I think it's a reasonably true generalization.
I'm not as certain about Latinos and people from Asia. I can't tell someone of Puerto Rican descent from someone of Cuban from someone of Argentinian. I can tell Indians from East Asians, but I'm not very reliable at sorting out some Asian ethnicities. How much of this is just my ignorance, and how much is general ignorance shared among people in the US, or in majority-white, English-speaking countries? I don't know. It seems to me as an outsider that Latinos and Asians identify more strongly than African-Americans with specific countries of origin, but certainly some also identify with broader terms such as "Latino" or "Asian". (I am really, really open to correction and education on this and hope I'm not misleading anyone. I hope even more fervently I'm not stereotyping or insulting anyone.)
So what's the difference between showing some pride in being Irish or Italian and showing some pride in being African-American, or Latino, or Asian? Not much, it seems to me, except that no one calls me racist if I'm careful to say "Irish" or "Italian" rather than "white." Why is it a "slip" for Obama to show some "loyalty" to his own race? And yes, he's white, and he should be able to show some loyalty and pride in that side of his heritage as well. But let's face it: people looking at Obama as a boy or a young man didn't see a man who was half-white; they saw a man who was black, or half-black. As Juan Williams noted in that NPR piece, Obama worked on the issue of racial profiling as a state senator. Does anyone doubt he has experienced it? Should anyone be surprised that he identified with the college professor who may or may not have been profiled rather than the police officer who may or may not have profiled?
Maybe the president shouldn't have issued a judgmental word in this charged context of race and class. Yet he's doing something to open a dialogue. He's not pretending it didn't happen, and he's not even pretending that he didn't make a mistake in saying what he did.
Maybe we need more mistakes. I think we should also be more open about what's what: ethnic pride is racial pride sometimes, for some people. When it's "I'm proud to be from my family and background," I think that's a good thing, not racism. If we sometimes identify with our own ethnicity more, well, we should be conscious of it and able to think critically about it. I think Obama is now very conscious of it, if he wasn't before, and certainly able to think critically about his own speech.
One final anecdote: I lived in an apartment years ago and one day opened the door to two African-American women who had knocked. I didn't know them. I said, "I think you want the apartment upstairs." One of the women cut loose an epithet-laden diatribe at me for my racism in making assumptions about her based on her race.
Of course it looked like that to her. She saw a door open and a white woman telling her where to go.
That's not actually not what it was. I never met those upstairs neighbors. The apartment building was on a hill. The street-side door let one in on the first floor. The parking-lot side door let one in on the second, where I lived. I saw a steady stream of knockers at my door who came in on a different side than usual and ended up at my door; they didn't look at the number, they just knew how far to come in the hallway and knocked. Every one of them wanted the third floor; none wanted the first floor. That day, I had already heard several people let in on the floor above, and, sure enough, after the woman finished chewing me out and went away, I heard a knock and a greeting from above us.
My intentions didn't matter. What I realized, once I got over feeling wounded, was that I had inadvertently wounded the woman at my door. It may not have been my fault, or at least it wasn't the first time--but how many times had she been told where to go, or worse, based on her skin color? Once I recognized that, I could open the door and just tell people they seemed to be on the wrong floor. I didn't tell them which floor they wanted, and they never got hurt or angry, as far as I could tell. I didn't need to tell them which floor; once they realized, they could look at the number and figure it out themselves.
As a teacher, I remember this because my intentions don't matter. I have other anecdotes about times I've inadvertently hurt students with careless words, or even careful words whose effects I couldn't predict. I would disagree with Juan Williams on one last thing: even if Officer Crowley was not treating Dr. Gates that way because he was black, it's still a teachable moment. Officer Crowley can realize how his actions look to people of another race and learn from that, if he didn't realize it before. So can other officers--and teachers, and just human beings in general.
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