Hey the horse deserved it.

Well I've had the ability to go online at my leisure now. One consequence of this, I get into obscure news. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. Don't ask me how I did it but I ran across an author by the name of Kenneth Eng. He use to write for the AsianWeek (online at Asianweek.com). Kenneth is a self proclaimed Asian supremacist (no I am not Kenneth Eng). He has written such articles like: "why white people will always hate Asians", "why I hate Asians", and "why I hate Blacks". The Asian Week got a lot of heat for printing "why I hate Blacks". They deserved all the heat and them some. Just by the titles of the articles you can sort of tell that they are just going to be rubbish. You all know me, I just couldn't help read them. My premonitions about the articles where right, they were rubbish. What got me was that none of the responses to the articles seemed to be adequate. There also seemed to be a lack of understanding about some key issues that go way beyond anything limited to Asian American issues. It sort of pissed me off that no one could tear apart such a poorly written body of work. Then I started thinking could it be that so many people don't understand such basic things that would make the writing of Kenneth Eng clearly crap instead of accused crap. I concluded that people were just to lazy to write a full response to something not really worth any body's time. Because my skills are not good enough to tackle things worth peoples time I decided to address the things not worth people's time. So I would like to write about some of the issues Kenneth brings to the table.

The first question/statement I would like to point to is that the notion of Asian is sort of an antiquated notion. What does one mean by Asian? Does missing a tuck on the eye lid suffice to make one Asian. Do you have to have black hair? Do you have to be from an Asian country? If so is India a part of Asia? How about Russia? It seems that Kenneth and many Asians have fallen into the problem of making a generalization without any clear lines. In fact being Asian is a preoccupation of people in America not Asia. If you go over to anywhere in Asia and ask someone if they are Asian you will probably get the response, "I'm Korean" or "I'm Chinese" or "I'm Tia" etc.

This leads to the second point, you can't be an Asian supremacist. The fact is there are very few unifying social/cultural traits of the group "Asian" in America. Almost all of the similarities are artificial at best and make a poor basis for making a social evaluation. Lets face it a Korean would much rather hate a Japanese person than a white person. Just like in Japan you would be hard pressed to find a Japanese person that would marry a Korean over a white person. Unfortunately a lot of these notions have traveled across the ocean. In the end there are hardly any "Asians" that would consider the whole of "Asians" better than whites. You could be a Korean supremacist but not an Asian. This is just the tip of the iceberg of intra-Asian relations.

Third Kenneth makes a point of Asians sucking up to whites. One example he points to are Asians that speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. See the thing is everyone, whites included, speak with a British accent to sound more sophisticated. The problem here is that Kenneth seems to think that it is a bad thing for one culture to accept and ingrate a better aspect of another culture. What you say a culture can be better than another in certain respects? I figured Kenneth being a supremacist and all could have figured that one on his own. For instance if it is my culture to rob people, or burn the wives of a husband on a funeral pyre, or to do honor rapes, I think my culture could be vastly improved by adopting another culture's view on such topics. I believe it imperative that one evaluate the aspect itself to conclude if it is a positive trait to adopt. Does that mean the original culture is changed/diluted/lost? Yes but culture for culture's sake is of little value. Diversity for diversity's sake is of little value (not valueless). We have to ask does it provide benefits to society. This brings me to a topic that was lightly covered in a previous series of post involving racism, but the horse doesn't deserve that much.

Fourth Kenneth points to Asians lacking honor. He point to Asians being rather complacent about protecting one's self and standing up for "our community". The oddest thing is he points to the Japanese samurai as an example of honor. You got to be kidding me the samurai, really? I think Kenneth has been watching to many movies made by the white man about the samurai. The reality is that the samurai during the Tokugawa period were nothing but bureaucrats. These bureaucrats made it a practice to live off the broken backs of the peasant. Yes the samurai could have a peasant executed no reason at all. Most samurai were cowards. You know who did most of the war fighting in feudal Japan? The answer is, not the samurai. These are the same group of people that would have a peasant held so he could test his sword out on him. Yep a lot of honor there. Yeah and when the samurai did fight they weren't the most honorable of people. You know who most of the ninjas were? If you guessed samurai you may be on to something. This relates to another of Kenneth's points: black people are weak willed because they were enslaved for over 300 years. Sorry to say the vast majority of "Asians" were enslaved till after WWII. Now does that mean the samurai are of no value? No it just means that there are good things and bad things about every culture and sub group.

Lastly Kenneth's points seem to boil down to everybody hates Asians so Asians should hate back. No Kenneth everybody hates white people. Check that rich white people. Kenneth points to personal experiences of hatred. I got news for you Kenneth, everyone, including white people have suffered hatred of the sort you describe. A question you might want to ask is when was the last time being "Asian" negatively effected you during a job interview? How about getting into college? I have long contended that everyone is racist so we should just admit it and deal with it. Everyone one makes snap decisions about other people, the question is are we allowed to change or reinforce those decisions based upon our merits. If you look at our "Asian" average income and college attendance rates I think you can see where I'm going.

Unfortunately I am probably suffering from what every other person who bothered to respond to Kenneth Eng suffered from. Because while I could write another 5000 words about how poorly written Kenneth Eng's articles are (including style points) I just ran out of motivation. One last note as an Asian people we seriously need to get over our addiction to pop music. Come on enough is enough. I'm begging you please on my knees.

God be Willing

Will’s position was the most difficult to write a response to. One of the things that made it difficult was I kept thinking Will isn’t really right, but he’s not really wrong either. I’ve decided to split Will’s position into three parts: the source of racism, the solutions to racism, and Will’s token Dan is wrong argument. I think I would have to talk to Will in a round about way before I could generate any sufficient answers to my questions regarding Will’s position. That’s generally how Will and I converse about most issues. As such more will probably be said during the comments section than the actual post. But before all of that a couple of clarifying notes.

First if it hasn’t been made clear by now this string of posts is not talking about overt racism. Nor is the purpose of this string of posts to generate some standard to call other people racist by. These posts were intended to help me (and anyone else) better recognize racist tendencies and notions that might be hiding within me (or yourself). Ultimately these posts hopefully generated some food for thought that would help you become a better person. I know that thanks to the responses a great amount of clarity has been reached for me (though far short from where I need to be) and I think I now have the basic tools to really start addressing this issue in my life. (Not that I hadn’t been addressing it previously, but now I can do so much more rigorously than before.) One issue that was not addressed as much as I would like was the issue of how one balances the celebration of differences, and the (for lack of a better term) entrenchment of differences. I feel Will’s point three sort of address the issue so I’ll leave it up to the comment section to flush it out if need be. Well on to Will’s observations.

Will points to the source of what might be the basis for humans developing some of our notions about race. From what I got from Will’s response I gather that when we start making classifications based on day-to-day experiences we tend to give people that are similar to us the benefit of the doubt. I think it is implied that this is not the sole source of our racial notions. My first question is sort of a abstract one and might not do a lot of people any pragmatic good (but you know what it’s my blog and I haven’t gotten any complaints so I’m going to do whatever I feel like.). By saying that we in general give people that are more similar to us the benefit of the doubt; does this imply that we are hard wired for racism? That is our minds work in a way that by default will form more favorable opinions about people that look like us (or are similar) than people who are different. It seems odd to me that human beings would have a genetic disposition that would be so far from the real truth of the world. I can see how humans might have evolved into such a state, but saying humans are hard wired for racism seems unacceptable to me. I’m also having trouble establishing when the leap happens from giving people who look like me (by look like me I mean similar to me) the benefit of the doubt to developing negative notions about other people. The concept of benefit of the doubt does work in a lot of instances but what about instances where nobody is like you. Do you think that being alone where everyone is different than you increase or decrease the likelihood of developing racist ideas? An example would be a black person who had to live in an all white town. Would that black person have a greater likely hood of developing a notion that all white people hate black people? Another source of racial notions are ones that are taught. I think that this is a larger source of racial notions than any other. Do you agree with this assessment? If you do then are these racial notions more like indoctrination, or do you think that we give deference to people that would teach us these ideas because people who tend to teach racist notions about other people tend to be similar to you? Another difficulty is where do positive yet harmful notions come from? An instance would be the idea all Asians are good at math. If we give the benefit of the doubt to people that are similar to us then how do these notions develop? Once again please forgive me for being hard to follow, it’s just the way Will and I tend to converse about issues.

Will’s second part of his response was a suggestion about how to address the racist notions that we might develop or currently have. Will’s basic advice is we should focus on the similarities we all have. I have some concerns about this approach. Granted my instincts tell me that this approach is right, but as stated earlier my instincts tell me it’s wrong as well. First by focusing on similarities do we lose sight of the value of diversity? That is if we are always focusing on why we are similar isn’t there a tendency to under appreciate the variety that makes us or other groups special? A corollary question is if we keep focusing so hard on the things that make us similar do we become insensitive to the differences that are a concern to people who are different?

Will’s third section is his token objection to Dan’s point of view. Not that the argument is a token argument, or that Will and Dan always disagree. It’s just that the three of us, Dan, Will, and Me are bound to be wrong about something, so it’s just inevitable that the three of us will find something to disagree about. But I think that this is a good thing. My only issues/questions are dealing with criteria and evaluation of usefulness. How do you judge if an institution is inclusive? Also if an institution is inclusive, when does it outlive its usefulness? I think that the Tuskeegee Airmen story is an African-American story. If it weren’t about race then it would have been no different than any other story in the war. In other words if the Tuskeegee Airmen weren’t black would the story been as important? I think the answer is no. It’s not about black people flying; it’s about black people overcoming adversity, adversity that was caused by an idea rooted in a lie.

Jimmy's Definition is "Dan"gerous

I think the concerns in Dan’s response are strong concerns. In fact I share all of them. There is a strong pejorative meaning to being a racist. I also think that the negative connotations associated with being a racist are a good thing. I also think that if we throw the words racist and racism around in a non-serious fashion we dilute the impact of the negativity surrounding those words.

I do think that Dan’s position would agree though that it is a good thing to examine one’s self to see if one has racism or anything else that is bad in them. So if one is taking a serious look at one’s inside (for lack of a better word), and looking at some things and saying to one’s self that those things might be racist, I don’t think one dilutes the power of the word racist. To me the dilution comes when one says, “hey I have a racist tendency and I’m ok with it.” It’s not the identification of racism, but the lack of desire to improve as a person that dilutes the power associated with the word racism.

I am unclear as to your position on this statement; it is possible to have some racism in you but still not be a racist. I know I didn’t make it clear from my original post, but this was the underlying assumption. For instance, I can think all Asians like to eat rice. That idea might be racist (I really don’t know if it is or not), but I wouldn’t consider anyone that held that view to be a racist. My concern is where you (by you I mean I) draw the line between having racism inside of you and being a racist. For instance is it racist to feel uncomfortable around black men? Is it racist to avoid black neighborhoods? Is it racist to not date Mexican men because you feel that they won’t be faithful? There are the obvious cases such as the advocating of violence or denial of rights based on race. It’s the close calls that concern me. I find it difficult to make a line in the close cases. My strategy has been to try and eliminate all racism in me so that I never have to consider the line. Another aspect of drawing the line, to me racism depends a lot on intent. I think if you hold a belief because you feel by mere status of your race (whatever that notion is) you are better than another that is racism. But if you do it out of ignorance, I don’t know what to say on that.

On your second disagreement to my position, I think I should clarify. I think you might have misread or over applied what I was getting at. I completely agree with your statements: “The fact is that there are eternal truths.” “We should not be afraid to stand up and say X is wrong”. I completely agree that one should criticize cultures for doing evil acts. I think we need to understand the justifications for the practices before you make a judgment on it. Or in other words we need to make an informed judgment. For instance the Inuit culture’s practice of infanticide might have existed because everyone else would have died without it. Does it justify the practice? I’m going to say no but there are certainly arguments of its justification that extend beyond the mere “it’s my culture” argument.

The dilemma that enters my mind from your second response is when can we say someone is evil? For instance, there is a strong cultural norm for men in Mexico to have affairs on their wives. Both of our positions can agree that this social norm is wrong and evil. I feel very comfortable calling the men that do this evil. I think it is possible to draw a distinction between thinking someone is evil and hating them. In my faith I am called to love especially those people. When you apply your standard can you call these men evil when they continue the practice? Another example is a culture that says its ok to force sex on your wife (or Rape). I have no problem calling those who practice rape on one’s spouse evil. It would be different in some instances where the person did it and stopped doing it (don’t get me wrong the act is still evil, but I would find it harder to call the person evil). But I think in the cases where there is a social norm of rape or adultery and the person conforms to the social norm I have no problem calling them evil. Do you advocate calling the practice evil and the person not evil in these instances? Do you think you can call someone evil, period? If so what is your criteria? These are sort of unfair questions, as I have not answered them myself. But I think they are questions I need to ask to flesh out your stance.

You also made a third statement about exclusive groups. I think that exclusion, as rule is bad. I don’t think “pride” groups are necessarily bad. One good example of this is Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee (the man, the legend) advocated Chinese people taking pride in what the culture was about. The purpose of the pride though was to unite Chinese people and then teach it to others. People don’t fear what they know and understand according to Bruce. To unify so that one can show the beauty of the culture is a good thing. So any “pride” groups is a good thing if its goal is to unify a group so it can show how beautiful it is to the rest of the world. You probably feel the same way but I thought I’d just clarify this viewpoint.

Lastly there are a slew of things that really didn’t fit anywhere under your response but I think your response sort of touched on them. The primary focus of my post was to try and see how we as individuals can be better people. It wasn’t to try and develop some standard by which we judge other people. I was hoping that by this kind of discussion everyone could come up with a more thoughtful standard to apply to himself or herself (this will be discussed in the post regarding Will’s response a bit more). I see your point about by definition being too broad. You don’t have to use the word racist or racism. I think that those words are the closest approximation though. Now it is being judgmental as well but I think racism is a sub category of judgmental. I think that there is a lot of common ground between Dan’s and my point of view. However, I do feel the issues that Dan addressed (while extremely important) do little to shed light on the primary issue in the original post. What about those evaluations that are almost fundamentally just matters of preference? Beauty is a prime example. For example I know a woman that thinks white is an ugly color and thinks that brown skin is much more beautiful. I consider that racist. But that consideration is based purely on a gut feeling. I’m not comfortable basing my evaluation of racism on a gut feeling. It’s hard for me because the evaluation (or judgment) isn’t about good or evil rather it's about preference. I just don’t have a clue as to how to articulate in a logical way my gut feelings about these kinds of evaluations.

Hume's Principle of Anonymous Causation

My last post generated some interesting comments. All the responses were well thought out and had strong arguments. I think this was due to the ability of the issues in the post to help us be better people. I’m writing this post in response to the three viewpoints advanced by the comments. My hope is that members of these three viewpoints (not necessarily the authors) can clarify some questions I had regarding their positions. Also I would like this post to provide some inspiration to the three viewpoints, maybe helping to further clarity your point or expanding the ideas in them to situations you may not have contemplated. I’ve labeled the viewpoints as the following (because I can): Hume’s Principle of Anonymous Causation, God be Willing, and Jimmy’s Definition is “Dan”gerous. I plan to make three posts, one addressing each viewpoint. Well on to the viewpoints.

People of Hume’s Principle of Anonymous Causation:

I think for the most part you are correct in the assertion that knowledge of the physical world is done via induction. I don’t want to get into a huge debate between Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein (and other assorted people only geeks read) regarding the nature of knowledge. It is enough to say that in regards to how we formulate opinions about a certain group of people I think your position is correct. However this doesn’t answer the following issues:

1) Now that we know how our ideas about groups of people are derived are we slaves to that idea (classification)? Or are we free to modify them? Not the lip service modify, but a true change in the nature of our what we believe to be true.

2) If we can modify then should we modify them? If we should, under what conditions should we?

3) This still doesn’t address evaluative assertions about objective facts that have been associated with a group. For instance all people of religion X have hairstyle Y (say it’s a fact proven by excommunication if you don’t have hairstyle Y). By definition if you don’t have hairstyle Y you are not a part of religion X. Then you make the evaluation I think hairstyle Y is ugly, so people in religion X look ugly. People being in X or having hairstyle Y is an objective fact. Something being ugly is an evaluation completely independent of fact. When should we be concerned about those kinds of evaluations?

Your response also mentioned the topic of dispelling simpler stereotypes. The two examples you pointed out I think can easily be dispelled by facts. For instances you could look up accident statistics or the percentage of people who are terrorist in relation to population. As with most “simpler stereotypes” I think mere fact finding and evaluation will dispel the stereotypes. The issue that concerns me isn’t stereotypes so much as the evaluations we make on the stereotypes. (See unanswered question 3) Now I know that stereotypes are a serious issue but the focus of my post was to ponder the question of evaluations.

On your issue of being offended at good willed intentions, I first have to quote my friend. My friend lets call them, Beef Jerky stated while we were watching the God Father 1, “the pathway to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Cloaking bad judgments in the guise of good intentions does a couple of dangerous things. Fist it lets the person doing things that might be hurt full to perpetuate the action. Second it gives the person who is making bad judgments a cover so they don’t’ have to evaluate their thoughts, they can simply go on not having any motivation to improve.

I have an example to ponder; most of the facts will be made up so bare with me. Peggy is the most popular girl in her high school. She’s beautiful everyone loves her. (I know people should be loved for their minds but we are talking about high school). A new girl moves into town. She’s from a land far away where the people of her land shave half of their head. Everyone as school is sort of weirded out by this new girl. She has a hard time making friends. Well our hero Peggy decides to help. She befriends our new girl. In fact she decides to take her shopping to buy her some clothes so she can fit in better. Our new girl is very thankful. Peggy decides to take it up a notch, she says to our new girl, lets go get your hair fixed; your people would be pretty if you didn’t cut your hair that way. Now if we retreat to good intentions we shouldn’t be offended at Peggy. Nor should Peggy have any problems, her heart was in the right place. It seems that good intentions insulates the individual from searching deep and improving as a person in this instance.

The next viewpoint to be addressed will be Jimmy’s Definition is “Dan”gerous. Please stay tuned.

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

I had a conversation with a friend (we will call them Leaf) of mine, sort of on the spur. We were driving and Leaf made an observation about a person and instantly mentioned how racist Leaf’s observation/thought was. We talked and concluded we all (yes that includes me) have racist stereotypes. Leaf agreed, and we didn’t really talk about it in any depth. I think it was because for the most part the observation/thought by Leaf was rather benign. But my mind kept on churning. A conflict arose in my mind; I wasn’t able to yield anything insightful to say; and because of how complex the conflict is; I remained silent about it.

This conflict affects most of us on a daily basis. I have no real answer to it. It primarily revolves around two ends of a spectrum, but the real problem happens because of human nature. So let me get to the body of the issues.

I make the assertion that we human beings are classifying beings. We make distinctions. That table is white, or it’s red, or it’s black. That organism is a cat. Certain distinctions are easy, like ones based on scientific classification. For instance this rock is a such and such kind of rock because it has such and such characteristics. Granted the characteristics that make a rock such and such are arbitrarily agreed to, but nonetheless we need to make distinctions to understand what something is. Some distinctions are harder than others because they are vacuous. For instance that person is tall. You have to ask well what do you mean by tall, or tall compared to what? There are even tougher ones like such and such is evil/bad. Or such and such is wrong. Or such and such is alive. Definitions that help us make distinctions in these areas are yet to be settled, thus making the classification near impossible in certain instances. More often than not you get answers like I don’t know if such and such is alive. There are clear cases in these groups, but there are also cases where things are difficult. Now some may say that is where the gray area comes in. It still doesn’t matter because we still try and need (by our nature) to make distinctions. With gray area issues (I’m conceding the existence of a gray area for the sake of argument) we will have to make distinctive assertions like such and such is evil enough to render this kind of action, such and such is alive enough to require this kind of protection. Even in gray areas we make distinctions. It’s just a part of being human.

In our society and in my own personal sense of ethics, we have made the assertion that it is desirable to be culturally sensitive, aware, and appreciative. Our society and my own personal sense of ethics have also concluded that racism, or rather making cultural and ethic pre evaluations are bad.

So what are the basics of racism? Racism happens when one takes a preconceived notion about a race/culture and applies an evaluative judgment about that notion and then applies it to an individual. For instance a clear case of racism is black people have a disposition for violence, you see a black person at a job interview and then don’t higher them. But you can apply a preconceived notion and not have it be racist. For instance Muslims don’t eat pork. (I realize Muslim is a religion and not an ethnic group but I’m using a really broad definition of racism, see above.) So when you host a dinner party to which you invited your Muslim friend you decide to leave pig off the menu. Hey some just don’t dine on swine. Dog on the other hand, now there’s an animal with character. Sorry got side tracked. I know in the examples given above one was a false preconceived notion and one was a true one. I don’t think that changes the working definition of racism or the conflict that I will talk about.

So what must we do in order to be culturally sensitive, aware, and appreciative? A fundamental part of that is to know what constitutes a culture. That is we must develop notions and apply it to a group of people. In order to understand a culture I must know what people of that culture do for custom, believe, how they resolve conflicts, where values are placed, etc. Now there are a slew of issues that are raised by this requirement. I won’t go into depth about the issues; it is enough to say that one will have a hard time constituting what a culture is. But for the sake of argument I am assuming that I can define a culture.

Here comes what I consider the essence of what the conflict is. Racism is the evaluative application of a preconceived notion on an individual, cultural sensitivity requires creating preconceived notions based on individuals. So where do we draw the distinction between racism and cultural sensitivity? Some cases are clear, you don’t shoot an African American in a dark ally because you have built up a preconceived notion that most felons are African American. Some are still clear but less so; you don’t ask an Asian immigrant at a dinner party if they’d rather eat with chopsticks. You don’t instantly turn your radio to hip hop channels when you are ridding in your car with an African American person because you think that’s the kind of music he/she would like. I’m talking about the instances where it’s hard to make an evaluation as to its properness. An example would be, “hey he/she is dressing so black”. Or how about she is totally dressing Chinese, and she happens to be Chinese. Now these instances seem to be rather benign, but what if we add an evaluation of some sort. For instance she is wearing her hair so X, and I think X is unattractive. Or he is dressing so X, and I think X looks so stupid. Or person Y’s culture believes only a man can ask a person out on a date, and I think that is so backwards thinking.

Obviously more thought is needed on this topic. I have yet to generate an answer for the issue. I have a gut feeling, but I'd hate for the differance between racism and cultural sensitivity to be based on a gut feeling.