In her “The Last Word” column at Newsweek this week Anna Quindlen gave us a new and useful concept to describe what many whites do—the “Caucasian card” (H/T Jose Cobas). When African Americans object to racist framing, antiblack commentary, or antiblack practices, whites accuse them of “playing the race card.” This is a white-framed, whitewashed phrase designed to deflect objections to everyday racism. It was doubtless invented by whites for that purpose. (Can anyone tell me its first use?) (photo: kevinthoule)

Quindlen cites the way that African Americans carry a heavy load of racial hostility and discrimination on their shoulders:

When one of the white guys blows an account, the office line is that he’s a loser. But when a black guy does it, it means that they—that’s the all-purpose “they,” sometimes used interchangeably with “those people”—don’t seem to be able to close the deal.

This burden of everyday racism makes a black person’s life quite different from that of a white person. Somehow most whites assume their lives are the same. They assert that blacks have equal opportunities compared to whites–in education, employment, housing or health care.

She later notes that Senator McCain justifiably likes to cite his long trials in a Viet Cong prison with it torture of a physical and psychological kind for five years. That, he and his supporters plausibly assert, “builds character.” But they forget or intentionally ignore the huge burden of contending with white hostility and discrimination that black men and women face (as well as other Americans of color). They face it for lifetimes, for far more than five years. This heavy burden often involves physical and psychological torture of its own kind. This should be fully recognized by the white media and voters, but is not.

Quindlen then comments on the McCain campaign’s reaction to Senator Obama’s recent and reasonable commentary on being viewed by many (whites) as not looking like other presidents on U.S. money and as being portrayed by McCain supporters and others as somehow foreign and “other.”

The man is black. His candidacy is indivisible from that fact, given the history and pathology of this country.… The suggestion of [his doing] something untoward was pandering to stereotypes and fear. Senator McCain was playing the Caucasian card.

She nails it this time. Whites invented the racist system of this country and have maintained that system, with great white privileges, since the 1600s. They have “played the white card” in every era. They played it in the abolitionist era of the 1850s-1860s, and they played it in the civil rights era of the 1950s-1960s. With no sense of irony, privileged whites (coming from what one blogger bobbosphere calls the “deal”) still play that white card today when they regularly accuse African Americans who critique the racist system and try to bring it down as “playing the race card” and being unfair to our “really democratic” system.

The post Playing the Caucasian Card appeared first on racismreview.com.

Below is an announcement from a reader asking for my help in publicizing research she is doing on Asian Americans and social anxiety. For your participation, you’ll be entered into a lottery to win a $60 gift card.

But even if you don’t win, as I’ve said before, surveys like this are great ways for us as Asian Americans to do our part to address the history of our community being systematically excluded from research like this. Take a few minutes of your time and help end the silence and help make our voices heard:

I am conducting research for my dissertation examining how culture and ethnicity may affect social anxiety, in particular with different Asian-American groups.

I am seeking Asian-American adults (18 years and older) to fill out a short series of questionnaires online (please go to www.ResearchStudy1.blogspot.com to be directed to the survey) . Asian-Americans without social anxiety, or those who are not sure, are also needed for this study for comparison purposes.

There has been little research done on how various factors affect Asian-American mental health. This study hopes to contribute to the field of understanding Asian-Americans, and lead to effective treatments in Asian-American mental health.

It should take less than 35 minutes and participants will be entered into a lottery for a $60 gift certificate from one of these store of your choice (Target, Amazon.com, Sephora, Best Buy).

All adults (18 years and older) are very welcome to participate! Please pass this on to anyone that would be interested. Strict confidentiality is maintained. If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact the principal investigator of this study at SocialAnxietyandEthnicity@gmail.com .

Direct link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2_2fS9j_2fPdPQmwAeLRwMYetA_3d_3d

Several Asian American bloggers (thanks to AngryAsianMan for first pointing it out) and now, major news organizations such as ABC News and the New York Times, have been covering this emerging controversy: Spain’s Olympic basketball team making a racist, anti-Asian gesture before the start of the games:

A pre-Olympics “slant-eye” pose by the Spanish men’s basketball team could leave the gold medal contenders with a black eye as they compete in Beijing. . . .It’s a racially pejorative pose not often associated with goodwill in the United States and many other countries, where a similar gesture is more likely to be seen on a school playground than coming from Olympic statesman.

“It’s something that I haven’t seen since I was a kid,” said Sarah Smith, a spokesman for the Organization of Chinese Americans in Washington, D.C. “I can’t speak for what is considered funny in Spain. I don’t know if it has the same impact that it would here. It’s clearly racist, and not even in a jovial way.” . . .

This is not Spain’s first racial controversy involving sport. In 2004, FIFA, the world ruling body in soccer, fined the Spanish Football Federation nearly $90,000 after Spanish fans showered black English players with racist chants during a “friendly” match in Madrid.

The governing body for Formula One auto racing announced in April an anti-racism campaign after British driver Lewis Hamilton, who is black, was racially taunted by racing fans in Madrid. A group, wearing dark makeup on their faces, wore shirts that read “Hamilton’s Family.”

As any Asian American will tell you, this “chink eye” gesture is deeply hurtful and offensive to us. Many of us have experienced the pain and humiliation associated with this racist gesture throughout our entire lives, whether it’s in the playground of our elementary school, or as we walk down the street even as adults. For Asian Americans, it is the visual equivalent of being called a “nigger.”

With that in mind, as the ABC News article mentions, this is not the first time that Spain has been in the news for making racially offensive gestures. While I cannot make a blanket generalization about the racial sentiment of the Spanish people in general, I can say that combined with the previous soccer and Formula One/Lewis Hamilton episodes, this “chink eye” incident does not reflect well on the country.

At the same time, for the sake of argument, I can accept that in this specific circumstance, Spain’s basketball team did not intend this “gesture” to be ridiculing or offensive to the Chinese or Asians in general. For now, I am willing to accept that they were not aware of the cultural meaning of this gesture for Asians and Asian Americans.

But unfortunately, this “lack of awareness” is at the heart of the problem and in fact, forms the basis for much of the racism that Asians and Asian Americans encounter on an everyday basis. In other words, most non-Asians (most of whom are admittedly White) don’t purposely intend to be racist when make jokes or casual comments about Asians.

But when they do so based on their ignorance of Asians and Asian Americans, they only reinforce and perpetuate their racial privileges as Whites. In other words, because Whites are the demographic and cultural majority in the U.S. (and in Europe), they have the privilege of not having to think about their racial superiority — it’s a given, based on their country’s history.

That privilege also gives them the “right” to not have to worry about saying or doing offensive things about other racial groups because basically, who cares about Asians? That is, their racial privilege gives them a larger “comfort zone” to say and do things that they think are funny or harmless but ultimately, minorities find very offensive.

Even if most Whites don’t have this consciously or even unconsciously in their minds when it comes to Asians, this climate of racial ignorance is a reality and functions to “protect” and “insulate” Whites — whether or not they’re even aware of it — at the expense of people of color.

Of course, many Whites will respond by basically saying that even if the Spanish basketball team meant it as a joke, Asians should just shrug it off, that it was harmless and that we Asians should just lighten up and not take things so seriously.

The problem with that argument is that it ignores the larger historical and cultural context. What we need to recognize is that there are fundamental institutional power differences inherent in situations in which Whites denigrate minorities.

Each time an incident like that happens, it reinforces the notion of White supremacy — that Whites can say and do whatever they want toward anybody at any time without facing any negative repercussions.

Ultimately, suggesting to us that we should just “get over it” only serves as another clear illustration of White privilege — of those with in an institutionally superior position telling those below them what to do and what they should think.

Within this larger sociological context, the Spanish basketball team’s gesture, unfortunately, is really nothing new.

In my last post, I noted that, as many others have also described, the opening ceremonies of the Olympics were so impressive in terms of style and grandeur that they looked like they were flawless. Now, as many news organizations are reporting, it seems that some parts of the program were artificially made to look flawless:

In recent days the Chinese Olympics organizers have admitted to faking the “footprint” fireworks that dazzled television audiences around the world.

And today they conceded that the perfect little girl who stole the show while singing “Ode to the Motherland” wasn’t singing at all. She was lip synching for another little girl who was deemed — for the good of the country — not cute enough for China’s national image. . . .

The [footprint fireworks] were computer generated and were only seen by those watching television. There were actual fireworks in Beijing but viewers didn’t see them. . . . [A] 55-second sequence of steps was digitally recreated because it was impossible to film by helicopter. . . .

[Regarding the girl singing, musical director Chen Qigang said,] “The performer was Lin Miaoke, but the sound was Yang Peiyi. The reason…is this: One was for the benefit of the country. The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression, and Lin Miaoke meets our requirements in those aspects.”

“However, from a sound perspective, our entire team unanimously agreed that Yang Peiyi fulfilled all of our requirements and more. She is the best.”

So the cat is out of the bag — these two specific segments were “visually enhanced.” The question now, what does this mean and how does it reflect on China as a whole?

China’s critics will, and already have, jump all over this and say that this is further proof that China systematically cheats at everything, and that they’re more concerned with outward appearances than authentic, substantive content, whether it relates to its consumer products, its human rights record, or its opening ceremonies.

On the other hand, China’s supporters will argue that lip syncing and using different singers happens all the time in “show business.” After all, the song was sung by a little girl (Yang Peiyi), not an adult professional singer. Further, the “footprint fireworks” did actually take place, but because it was technologically close to impossible to film it using a helicopter, the version that TV viewers saw had them digitally substituted in.

For what’s worth, here’s my take: I can understand digitally enhancing the fireworks for TV viewers because actual footprint fireworks did take place. It would have been a different matter if no real footprint fireworks ever existed and that the producers created them from nowhere. But that’s not the case here.

But regarding the little girl singer, I am less sympathetic to the Chinese here. Plain and simple, I think it was wrong and improper to substitute a “prettier” little girl for the actual one who sang. It was not as though Yang Peiyi looked disfigured or even remotely ugly. The producers should have kept her in there — period.

In the larger scheme of things however, these two “visually enhanced” segments do not negate or diminish the quality and authenticity of the other spectacular scenes and performances that took place. Everything else about the opening ceremonies remains awe-inspiring.

Just as we would not judge an entire community by the acts of one or a few individuals, so too should we remember that these two segments in question (each of which still had their own elements of authenticity, as I noted) were only a small part of a larger whole.

Much has been written and said about China hosting the Summer Olympics and much controversy has been associated with the games based on China’s record on many issues. But little has been said or written about how Chinese Americans see China and its hosting of the Olympics.

With that in mind, the New York Times reports that many Chinese Americans have mixed feelings about China and the communist government’s policies, but that almost universally, they are very proud of, and even overwhelmed, by the Chinese people, how they have put the games together, and what the Olympics mean in general for the country:

Joe Lam . . . who moved to New York 35 years ago from Hong Kong, said he watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics twice on Friday night, the second time with his daughters — ages 18 and 22 — who he said had little overt connection to Asia.

But watching the spectacle, with its blend of China’s ancient grandeur and dazzling modern technology, “was like a religious experience for them,” he said.

Mr. Lam said he was not a fan of the Communist Party, but, like many others, he noted the history that makes these Olympics resonate so deeply: 150 years of invasions and turmoil, from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion, civil war and the disastrous policies of Mao, which left China far behind the West.

“Our joy is not for Communists,” Mr. Lam said. “It’s for what hosting the Olympics means to the history of the Chinese people.” . . .

Several Chinese-American leaders also said they thought that the respect China gained from the Olympics would improve the status of Chinese here. Helen Zia, a human rights advocate, author and former executive editor of Ms. magazine, said she surprised herself and many friends when she agreed to carry the Olympic torch in what turned out to be a contentious leg in San Francisco.

She did so in part, she said, because she believes that engagement with the West is helping to liberalize China. But she added: “All those years of China’s humiliation carried over to America, where Chinese kids grew up being taunted and bullied on the playground. Now when we see the home country shown in a positive light, we hope Americans will understand better where Chinese-Americans come from.”

Regardless of where people stand in terms of supporting or criticizing China on various issues, I think there are very few people out there who can honestly dispute that, as one example, the opening ceremonies were one of the most lavish and spectacular displays of human art, choreography, and pageantry in recent history. The work of director Zhang Yimou and his team of 15,000 performers has to go down in the record books as simply, absolutely awesome.

But even more important, beyond the political issues that are inevitably present, China’s hosting of the Olympics does have some very real significance, although I do not see it as China’s “coming out party” as many have described it. Instead, we should remember that prior to the late 1800s, in many ways China was already a superpower and as the NBC commentators even noted during the opening ceremonies, for nine of the past ten centuries, China had the largest economy in the entire world.

It was only after Britain’s colonization in the late 1800s and Japan’s invasion in the 1930s did China acquire the unfortunate nickname of the “sick man” of Asia. But even after the turmoil associated with Mao’s policies, China has rebuilt itself and in a very short amount of time, has become the third-largest economy in the world and in many ways, the most important political, economic, and cultural player on the international stage in the 21st century.

With that in mind, as the NY Times article described, China’s (re)emergence is likely to have some effect on how Chinese Americans are perceived. I certainly hope that as Helen Zia noted, it will improve the image and acceptance of Chinese Americans into mainstream American society.

On the other hand, I can also see how it might hurt Chinese Americans if other Americans see China’s emergence as a threat (along with the effects of globalization in general) and become defensive and as a result, take their frustrations out on Chinese Americans (and by implication, all Asian Americans).

Nonetheless, regardless of what other Americans may think, Chinese Americans and all Asian Americans have a right to feel proud of what China has accomplished. Yes, there are still many issues on which China should be criticized. But everything has a time and a place.

Right now, China is showing the world just how glorious, spectacular, and powerful it can be when it focuses its efforts in a constructive way. I, for one, am very impressed.

As I’m sure many of you have heard already, there was a tragic bus accident in Texas on Friday in which 15 Vietnamese Americans were killed and several dozens more injured when their chartered bus apparently blew a tire, lost control, flipped off a bridge, and crashed.

Most of the passengers were from Vietnamese Catholic Martyr Church in southeast Houston and Our Lady of Lavang Church, northwest of Houston. Houston contains the third-largest population of Vietnamese Americans in the U.S., behind Orange County (CA) and San Jose (CA). They were on their way to a pilgrimage in Missouri to celebrate The Feast of Assumption.

What makes this tragedy even worse are that (1) it seems that the bus did not have a license to legally operate, (2) the owners of the bus company had been cited several times for previous safety violations while he ran another bus company, and (3) the most immediate cause of the crash was apparently a right front tire that had been recapped, again in violation of safety regulations.

To try to put this tragedy in a larger sociological context, it’s necessary to tie this accident to similar problems and accidents involving chartered buses that serve Chinatown residents in the northeast (sometimes called “Dragon buses”) and their checkered record when it comes to safety.

The observation I’m trying to make is that many Asian American immigrant populations, such as those in Chinatowns and the Vietnamese one in Houston, have little choice but to go with the least expensive charter bus service possible, since that is all that their financial resources allow. Unfortunately, it seems that this then puts them in greater danger of shady bus companies that cut corners on safety in order be able to charge lower prices.

To top it all off, in many cases, many of these unsafe bus companies are run by other Asian Americans, or in the case of the Houston tragedy, by other people of color. In other words, such operators are basically preying on their own community and putting their lives in danger in order to make a profit.

Like I said, a tragedy all around.

I received an email to ask for my help in promoting an effort to assist with earthquake relief for Chinese villagers:

Red Star Press works with some of Chinas most exciting graffiti and urban artists today. . . . “Unity is Strength” is a limited edition screen print by the Beijing graffiti artist “Soos” to benefit Chinese earthquake relief efforts.

These prints were produced in Seattle, Washington and shipped to China to be hand finished, numbered and signed by the artist.

100% of all proceeds from this sale will be donated to Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps is working together with its long-time local partner, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), in emergency response efforts to the most devastated areas.

The print is actually very artistic and well-done and certainly, the proceeds are going to a very worthy cause. You can visit the RedStarPress site if you’d like to purchase a print.

In one of my recent posts, entitled “Racial Tensions and Living in a Colorblind Society,” I commented on how the economic recession and larger social/economic forces associated with globalization have resulted in many Americans struggling and feeling besieged by current events:

As Americans, particularly White Americans, continue to economically struggle as we enter a recession and as they culturally struggle with maintaining their exclusive hold on the “American identity” while demographic shifts take place all around them, their fear, frustrations, and anger will inevitably boil over and verbal and physical attacks on convenient scapegoats such as Asian Americans will continue.

I also predicted that racial/ethnic tensions are likely to get worse before they get better. Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, the recent death of an illegal immigrant in Pennsylvania seems to represent how these rising tensions have led to physical violence and murder:

Mr. Ramirez, 25, who had been in the country illegally for six years, picking crops and working in factories, died July 14 from head injuries received two days earlier. Investigators said he had gotten into a fight with a group of teenage boys — most or all of them members of the town’s high school football team, the Blue Devils — who left him unconscious in a residential street, foaming at the mouth.

Exactly what happened during the fight is still hotly debated . . . with some saying it was just a street fight that went bad, and others claiming the teenagers singled out a Mexican immigrant for a beating and made anti-Mexican remarks. Since Mr. Ramirez’s death, this town of 5,600 has been bitterly divided over the case, illuminating ethnic tensions that surprised town leaders. . . .

“For many Latinos, this is a case of enough is enough,” said Gladys Limón, a staff lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “And it can help us get attention to the wider issue that this is happening all over the country, not just to illegal immigrants, but legal, and anyone who is perceived to be Latino.”

Of course, defendants of all races/ethnicities are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. However, the circumstances here seem to paint a clear picture of racial/ethnic tensions, probably combined with economic and cultural insecurity, providing the fuel to ignite a physical confrontation that ultimately led to Mr. Ramirez being beaten to death at the hands of three teenagers who apparently had been drinking and, by virtue of playing on a football team, are used to using physical violence to achieve personal gratification and community status.

What also strikes me is that the article states that town leaders have been surprised at how this murder has exposed ethnic tensions in their town. Why were they surprised when in fact, this town had drafted laws similar to that of their state neighbor Hazelton, that would have severely limited the rights and access of illegal immigrants to basic public resources, such as housing, jobs, and education.

As they say, denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ramirez’s murder is another example of economic competition and feeling culturally threatened leading to racial/ethnic hostility. As sociologist will tell you, throughout American history, we’ve seen this pattern over and over and over again. In its relatively “mild” state, it may take the form of a resurgent acceptance of the confederate flag, as I talked about in my last post.

But taken to its unfortunate extreme, as has happened so many times before, it leads to murder. On top of that, what makes it even worse is how those in power at the time and whose actions helped to lay the reinforce and perpetuate such tensions, continue to be in denial about the fundamental causes of this horrific event.

Like I said, although I want to be optimistic, it does look like things will get worse before they get better.

Occasionally, someone will suggest that that the best way to address the persistence of racism is to begin adopting a “race-blind” analysis that abandons the use of racial categories. As it turns out, this doesn’t help eliminate racism and racial inequality, it merely obscures the reality of it. Here’s a case in point.

The NYPD recently collected and released a quite extensive dataset on police shootings over the past 11 years (image from Flickr Creative Commons). The data included such details as the number of shots fired, the reason for each shooting, and how many bullets hit their target. Yet, after 1997 there was no data on the race of people shot by police. Today, the New York Times published a partial explanation for this curious omission of data, which emerged as a result of a lawsuit filed against the NYPD by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Here’s the relevant bit:

“Testimony by a former police chief now offers an explanation. The former chief, Louis R. Anemone, said that while the data on people killed by officers were being compiled in 1998, the police commissioner, Howard Safir, ordered the department not to include the race of those killed by officers.

The testimony by Mr. Anemone, a former chief of department, did not say why Mr. Safir made his decision, but the shift appeared to have occurred during a public furor over race and the police’s use of deadly force in the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, in February 1999. Mr. Diallo was killed in a barrage of 41 police bullets in the Bronx.”

Here, the former police commissioner intuitively understands what many social commentators on race fail to grasp. Namely, that if you bury knowledge about racism and racist practices (such as the NYPD’s abysmal record), then you effectively subvert efforts to combat racism.

The post This is Not Helping appeared first on racismreview.com.

As I’ve written about before, visual images can be very powerful forces in influencing our thoughts and actions. Most recently, we’ve seen this idea illustrated in regard to the controversy over The New Yorker’s cover cartoon depicting Michelle and Barack Obama. As another example, the Vietnamese American community continues to struggle with how to deal with images perceived to be associated with the communist government back in Viet Nam.

In this context and as the Christian Science Monitor reports, there seems to be a resurgence in displaying the confederate flag in various parts of the southern U.S. The flag’s supporters again claim that the flag is not about promoting White supremacy but about commemorating “southern valor” while its critics say it is inextricably tied into White supremacy:

Despite years of boycotts, schoolyard bans, and banishment from capitol domes, the Southern battle colors are flying, higher than ever.

Indeed, the Tampa Confederate Veterans Memorial and its 139-foot flagpole features one of at least four giant “soldier’s flags” flying over bumper-to-bumper interstates in Florida and Alabama. [M]ore [are] planned in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and possibly South Carolina. . . .

Unlike the flags that were taken down from the capitol domes in Columbia, S.C. and Tallahassee, Fla., these new auto dealer-sized flags – sewn in China – may be legally untouchable. Raised on private property, the Tampa flag was OK’d by county zoning officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.

“It’s not going to go away,” says Jim Farmer, a history professor at the University of South Carolina at Aiken. “There is a subculture within the white Southern population, of which the SCV is the most visible voice, that feels besieged by modern culture in general, and they identify the Old South and Confederacy as a way of life and a period of time before the siege began to really hit the South.”

To Confederate sympathizers, opposition to the flag is misguided. They say the “soldier’s flag” represents not slavery, but the valor of Southern men in their lost cause. As proof of the flag’s universality, SCV officials point to a tableau at the June 1 flag-raising ceremony in Tampa. As several older white men huffed trying to raise the 72-pound flag, two black men stepped in to finish the job.

“We have Indian, Hispanic, black, and white members of our camps, and if anyone espouses anything hateful or racewise, you’re gone [from the SCV],” says group historian Robert Gates.

Flag opponents say the real offense is that Southern governors raised the flags during the Civil Rights era as a provocative gesture against attempts to desegregate Southern schools.

There are a couple of sociological lessons here. As I wrote regarding the New Yorker/Obama and Vietnamese American art controversies referenced above, visual images have an almost irrational power over many Americans. Secondly, just as statistics do not speak for themselves and can be interpreted in many ways, such visual images can also be used to support two complete different and opposite viewpoints and world views.

Such is the case with the confederate flag. It is also a given that the battle over whether the confederate flag represents southern valor or White supremacy will continue to rage. I won’t go into the details of that particular debate because people will continue to have their own interpretations based on emotion and personal experiences.

For me, what’s more interesting is the confederate flag’s resurgence and emergence as a reaction to and backlash against globalization.

As the article above notes, the confederate flag seems to enjoying greater acceptance these days, not necessarily because of its association with White supremacy, but because it represents a kind of yearning and nostalgia for how not just the south, but how America in general used to be, before the uncertainties of globalization.

In other words, the resurgence of the confederate flag can be seen as the latest illustration of America’s struggle to find or redefine its position and supremacy in the 21st century international and globalized stage. As many scholars will tell you, globalization has not been kind to many Americans, particularly those in the working class — the same demographic usually associated with confederate flag sympathizers.

So for them, as they struggle to come to terms with the effects of globalization on their lives, it is understandable that they would embrace the confederate flag as a symbol of America’s past dominance and supremacy.

As I’ve written about before, there are other examples of this kind of “backlash” as well. Probably the most visible up to this point has been the emotional debate regarding illegal immigration, but others include heightened criticism against China (although did you notice the irony in the article that the modern “supersized” confederate flags are actually made in China?).

The bottom line is, with many Americans struggling to adapt to globalization, nostalgic symbols of America’s past supremacy are inevitably going to become more popular and that, in such culturally and economically uncertain times, even “moderate” Americans are willing to overlook a particular symbol’s unfortunate association with racism.