Dear White America (5 page)

What's more, those poverty rate differences between whites and Asians are nationwide aggregate figures; the real situation, in specific communities, is far worse. As it turns out, one of the principal reasons Asian American household income, on the whole, is higher than white household income, is that Asian Americans are concentrated in a handful of places with disproportionately high incomes relative to the rest of the country—but also much higher
costs of living
. So, for instance, 55 percent of all Asian Americans live in just six places: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
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For this reason their incomes will tend to be higher, and especially when compared to those of whites, who in the aggregate are not concentrated in such places. But when we compare only whites and Asian Americans living in the same communities, we find that Asian poverty rates are routinely double the rates for whites.
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In other words, despite their relatively high skills and oftentimes greater educational attainment relative to whites, Asian Americans are not doing nearly as well as comparable whites are.

Indeed, Asian Americans earn less than whites with the same educational attainment, whether we're comparing high school dropouts, those with diplomas or those with college degrees.
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As just one example, consider that Chinese Americans in professional occupations (who are a highly educated group) earn only 56 percent as much as their white counterparts.
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And the only reason that Asian household income tops that for whites, on average, is because Asian households tend to be larger and have more income earners per household than our households.
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Despite their much higher average educational attainment—thanks to the aforementioned selective immigration—per capita income remains lower for Asian Americans than for whites.
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So much for the model minority myth, and so much for the notion of equal opportunity.

But even when we know these things, and accept that racism and discrimination are real, some among us still try valiantly to avoid the conversation around such matters. In those instances, we insist that irrespective of the facts, it is best to downplay such problems because to speak of racial injustice and discrimination, especially in the present day, is to encourage a “victim mentality” among people of color. According to this argument, to discuss discrimination is to encourage black and brown folks to see themselves as perpetual targets of white racism.

Yet as commonly as this argument manifests within our community, if we examine it honestly, it stands out as extraordinarily presumptuous and even racist in many ways. The reason I suggest the argument is racist is that it seems to presume that persons of color are too stupid to already know what it is they're experiencing, or have experienced, historically. Those who bemoan the so-called victim mindset appear to believe that no one would think about racism were it not for the constant presence of liberals and leftists raising the issue. Second, the argument supposes that black and brown folks are so weak-willed that if they understood the obstacles in their way, they would crumble like cheap piecrust.

Yet, sadly, by an early age most folks of color are well aware of the negative stereotypes held about their racial groups. Indeed, recent evidence indicates an awareness of these stereotypes as early as the third grade, and rarely later than the fifth: around the age of, say, eleven.
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This awareness is not due to liberals bringing it up, but rather the result of black and brown folks
living
with the mistreatment that stems from the stereotypes and being exposed to them regularly. No, talking about racism isn't the problem: racism itself is. To blame the conversation for the problem is like blaming your speedometer for the speeding ticket you just received.

Naturally, none of us who worry about people of color adopting a debilitating mindset of victimhood ever fret about the same thing happening to others who have been victimized by injustice. We don't tell Jewish folks to get over the Holocaust, or not to talk about those unhappy matters, lest they cripple themselves under the weight of a victim syndrome. Keep in mind that there has been steady support for curricula that address the destruction of European Jewry under Hitler, and no one has suggested that teaching the
Diary of Anne Frank
might be debilitating to Jewish children. Likewise, we don't warn crime victims against the adoption of a victim mindset. No indeed, many of us even praise “victims' rights” groups, as if to suggest that, for these poor souls, victimhood is a status to be venerated and even utilized for the purpose of political influence. Thus we are regularly treated to representatives of “victims' rights” groups on news programs whenever crime policy is being discussed, as if the mere fact of having lost a loved one to violent crime somehow imbued one with special insights about the best public policies for making our communities safe. So why is it acceptable for these other groups' members to focus on their victimization, while it's somehow untoward or even self-destructive for people of color to do so?

To discuss racism and discrimination is to prepare for its possibility, even while one works hard to overcome its sting. There is no logic whatsoever to the belief that having been forewarned, one must by necessity shrivel up in fear, or slack off, convinced that one hasn't a chance to succeed. Indeed, the whole history of black America makes that case convincingly. After all, if you were to ask most any black Americans over the age of forty what their parents told them about race when they were younger, what you would hear in reply is as straightforward as it is virtually unanimous: that they would have to work twice as hard as white folks. And why was this so? Precisely
because
the system was so profoundly unjust and discrimination so deeply ingrained that, despite their best efforts and talent, they would too often be overlooked for the best jobs and opportunities solely because of the color of their skin.

But does anyone condemn the older African Americans who previously prepared generations of blacks for hard work and success by telling them in no uncertain terms that things were unequal and unfair? Do we believe that blacks in prior eras were crippling their children with the message that they would need to work harder than whites because of racism? Better still, is there any evidence whatsoever that being told such a thing did in fact injure black folks, or make them try less hard than they otherwise might have? If anything, the exact opposite is true. Knowing the odds, black and brown folk tried even
harder
, because to do otherwise would have all but guaranteed defeat. In short, the claim that discussing racism and discrimination turns people of color into passive victims flies in the face of every bit of empirical evidence on the subject. Knowing the truth inspires perseverance and passionate
resistance
to victimization, not resignation to one's status as a target.

With all this said, however, there is that one final default position to which we so quickly retreat when confronted with the evidence of this nation's racist past and present. It's the one about how the United States, however flawed, is really no different from any other country when it comes to such a history. The whole of human existence, after all, has involved a process of certain groups oppressing others. And haven't we in the United States done more to address and rectify that history than most? Aren't black and brown folks far better off here than they would be virtually anywhere else on Earth?

Putting aside whether or not any of those suggestions is true, every one of them is irrelevant. Injustice in one place cannot be dismissed or rendered unworthy of rectification just because there is another injustice of equal or even greater magnitude happening elsewhere. So, for example, one could not argue that Holocaust survivors have nothing to complain about, since after all, they could have been one of the many millions slaughtered by Stalin. To argue that one injustice cancels out the moral claim of victims of other injustices makes no sense, and does intellectual violence to the very notion of rational thought.

Extending this logic to its ultimate conclusion would lead to some especially appalling positions. Among them, one could say that even under Jim Crow segregation, African Americans probably had it better than, say, black folks in the Belgian Congo—where millions were being slaughtered and worked to death by King Leopold—and therefore, instead of trying to end apartheid here, black folks should have just sucked it up and thanked the Lord for their good fortune. Indeed, following the trajectory of this mindset, one could argue that the United States could even reinstate segregation, and so long as the system remained somewhat less vicious than conditions in some other society, there would be no great injustice in doing so, or at least none worth protesting.

In short, this is the logic of passing the buck, tantamount to what so many of us did as kids, when, having broken a window playing ball—and having been caught in the act by our mothers—we protested that Billy was also throwing the ball, so it wasn't only our fault. As I recall (and I doubt any of your experiences are that different), Mom didn't much care about Billy. If memory serves, she asked something about whether, if Billy decided to throw himself from a bridge, we would, in the manner of a damned fool, follow his example. In other words, we have to take responsibility for our piece of the problem, even though, to be sure, there are others in need of the same self-examination.

The bottom line is that regardless of whatever progress we have made on these matters—and of course we've made quite a bit in certain areas—and however much things may be objectively worse elsewhere, like must be compared with like. Americans of color are
Americans
, after all, and so their measure of opportunity must be viewed relative to other Americans, not in relation to those in Rwanda or Bosnia or North Korea or anywhere else on earth. To tell them to stop complaining about racism because things could be worse elsewhere is no more appropriate than it would have been to tell the Irish upon arrival in the United States to stop worrying about the discrimination they faced here, since, after all, they could still be starving back home. Along these same lines, I suspect that many of us who point to other nations when the issue of racism here is broached would not like it much were someone to suggest that we should stop complaining about taxes, since, if we lived in pretty much any other industrialized nation on earth, those taxes would be much higher. So ya' know, maybe we should shut up already and stop whining.

Look, I know that many of us thought that by now we'd be done with all this chatter about the problem of race in America. Right after the election of Barack Obama, I started getting tons of emails saying one or another version of that very point: the election of a man of color proved once and for all that racism was no longer a real issue in this country. How
could
it be, if such a man could win the presidency?

Well, far be it from me to ignore the election of a black man as president, or suggest that such a thing was meaningless. Of course it means something. Obviously, were this nation the same place it was fifty or even twenty years ago, that electoral outcome would have been unthinkable. But before we take even as significant a development as this to signal a sea change in white racial attitudes—the putting away of a racist past for the warm embrace of a multicultural future—we might do well to remember a few things, not the least of which is that most whites, even in many relatively “liberal” blue states, voted
against
Barack Obama in that election.
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Now, I'm not saying that voting against Obama makes one a racist, but if we're going to use his victory as proof that racism is dead, we at least have to remember that he only won because of the votes of people of color and
young
whites, while losing by landslide proportions in every other white demographic. Indeed, whites were generally so unenthused by his candidacy that overall white turnout at the polls in 2008 was down by over 700,000 voters.
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But even more instructive has been the upsurge in white anger aimed at this president, which has so often manifested in blatantly racist ways.

For instance, we've repeatedly witnessed white conservative activists coming to rallies with signs picturing the president as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, or sending around emails picturing the White House lawn covered with watermelons, or portraying the first family as chimpanzees or some such thing.
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Likewise, the Republican candidate for governor of New York in 2010—a favorite of the conservative right—sent an email to his friends, for which he refused to apologize, in which the president was portrayed in a pimp costume and a picture of traditional Zulu dancers was referred to as an “Obama inauguration rehearsal.”
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