After VT: Expecting the Worst

I wonder if the VT massacre will lead to a backlash against Asians? Is the race problem in America so severe that we have come to expect such a thing?Apparently the answer is yes. VT students of Asian decent left campus within a day or two after the incident, expecting the worst.

Racism has become routine, like dealing with hurricanes and tornadoes.

Making Racism Illegal

At the heart of the debate on the racist and sexist comments of Don Imus is the question: Where do you draw the line between acceptable free speech and unacceptable, illegal hate speech?

Before we can deal with that question, there is another: Is it even possible to legislate love and morality? The answer to this has usually been a resounding no. People’s hearts cannot be changed by the passage of laws, for no laws on matters of the heart can be enforced. So the reasoning goes. But a close look at American history shows that this widely accepted reasoning is simply untrue.

America legislated matters of the heart time and time again. Countless laws were passed to institute hatred and hostility where none existed. Our history is crystal clear: for the first five decades and more of slavery in North America there was no instinctual feeling of hostility between Africans and Europeans. Quite the contrary was the case. The two populations united so readily that by the 1670s slave owners feared they might lose slaves as a class. The children of black and white parents, so-called mulattoes, were far less likely to submit to slave culture, far more likely to rebel. It was as if calves and colts would simply walk away from the farm, an investment become lost because it gains a mind of its own.

The slave laws, and the later Jim Crow laws, were instituted to create systematic hostility between Europeans and Africans where none had existed before. They legislated that Europeans should hate Africans – and that they should love only Europeans like themselves. Social engineering at its worst.

So yes, you can idea legislate love and hate. But how to fix the Imus case? Simple. We make racism illegal, but we preserve First Amendment rights. If Don Imus wishes to use racist language that is his right under the First Amendment. But he does not have the right to jeopardize the community by subjecting the public to them. Free speech is a privilege and a responsibility. When speech becomes a danger to the public good then it is legally banned – the old “yelling fire in a crowded theater” analogy.

People who like to drink alcohol have the legal right to drink it; they do not have the right to drink it to excess and drive on public roads. People who hate have the legal right to speak racist statements; they do not have the to do so over public airwaves, for this, to mix analogies, would be yelling fire in a dry tinderbox.

What Imus Needed

Is it possible that the Don Imus show tends to cross over lines into offensiveness because there are no strong African American voices in the administration of the show? Wouldn't this fire be put by the diversification of the staff to include highly qualified people of African American and other non-European backgrounds?

Rosie's Asian Targets Too Quick to Take Offense?

Our sister Rosie argues that she mocks the Irish accent for a laugh, and that people laugh when she mocks the Chinese language for the same reason. Perhaps not.

We laugh at the Irish accent because it is a pleasant surprise when she changes into a quaint character so suddenly. She is the magician who pulls an egg from behind our ear.

But we laugh at the Chinese mockery not because we are surprised or charmed, but because we think the Chinese sound so silly, childish, ridiculous.

When in doubt, let us imagine ourselves sitting in a Beijing audience and up on stage a television host is mocking Americans' pathetic attempt to speak. Don't tell me you wouldn't feel at least a slight twinge of discomfort at being ridiculed. And imagine that China had dominated the world for the last hundred years or so, and the West was considered backward. Different story, different humor.

I'll Take Manhattan - But Hold the Diversity?

Why is it that “smart and hip” TV shows set in New York City have no African Americans in them?

In the few episodes I've seen of Kitchen Confidential, a defunct show from 2005 now in reruns, there were no African Americans except for one overweight clownish character who did not return; Asians were in one episode and likewise were apparently gone for good thereafter; and there were no Hispanics at all – which is particularly surprising given that Anthony Bourdain, whose autobiography is the show’s basis, emphasizes their centrality in New York’s gourmet kitchens. What gives? Is it simply the realpolitik of agents needing to give good acting roles to white actors?

The history of Seinfeld should be a lesson to us all. People living outside the US and watching Seinfeld and Friends, among other shows, would think New York is not racially and ethnically diverse. My wife, for one, was shocked when she first visited New York in 1994, and couldn’t help but ask, “Why are all these different people here?”

I seem to recall that when Seinfeld was beginning to dominate, many critics questioned its lack of diversity and the consistent insensitivity to diversity in the show’s scripts and plots. A few points:

1. In reality, groups of friends in places like New York, LA, Miami, Philadelphia and London are at least as likely to be mixed than not. Ironically Jerry Seinfeld’s own real life friends and colleagues, as shown in his autobiographical documentary Comedian (2002) - a fascinating and highly artistic film - are quite diverse.
2. Maybe if the show had made a solid commitment to diversity the entire flap with Michael Richards would never have happened.
3. These days an all-white cast means you are losing valuable talent and audience – and money. Oprah’s success is not merely accidental. An all-white cast on a TV show or in a film is equivalent to an all-white basketball team in 1974; good, but its days are numbered. Message to Hollywood: Need to get ahead of the curve, folks.

Time to Relax

Recently our brother Don Imus, in responding to people who were offended by racist comments he and a colleague recently made on his radio show, counsels that they “relax.”

I completely agree with him. We should all relax. Especially those people of color who take offense at apparently racist comments directed towards them. They should give the European American the benefit of the doubt. Why act so impulsively, with a knee-jerk reaction every time someone calls you, or your wives, or your daughters ,“nappy-headed hos”? Relax. That’s what the doctor says whenever an unpleasant procedure is about to begin. Now this won’t hurt a bit. Just relax.

This blog is called Redwood Forest because it is the best place to share thoughts about difficult subjects like race. In the forest we are surrounded by powerful, ancient living beings that remind us, in their musky perfume, in the shadows they cast from heights beyond the arched ceilings of any cathedral or mosque, of the spiritual reality within everything. We are reminded of the Native Americans who have populated these forests and who follow a deeply spiritual path. Here we breathe, and we relax.

Wouldn’t Don Imus love to do his show from the midst of the redwoods? Wouldn’t that change his show? But then perhaps he would lose listeners, customers, revenue. In which case his sponsors and business managers would become all too nervous. They couldn’t relax. And then comes the knock-out argument, the checkmate: “If I stand against racism I may lose listeners. And if I lose listeners I may lose the show and it will be given to someone else. So if I don’t do this racism, someone else will. Might as well get used to it. Relax.”

Sounds like the accusers of witches: If I don’t accuse Martha Higgenbotham of consorting with the devil, someone else will, and her property will fall to him and not me.

The witch hunts are over. Time for a new kind of radio show, a new culture. Women are rising. Native Americans are rising. African Americans are rising. Funny thing about people rising in this day and age: they bring everybody up with them. So why get upset about it?

Relax, Don.

Rosie to China and Japan

ABC's The View should break out of the studio and let Rosie go with some cameras to China and Japan. China in particular is becoming more important in the world, and we owe it to ourselves to begin understanding it. What better way than to tag along with Rosie, who, like most of us, would be seeing it for the first time? That would also put to rest the negative reaction to her mocking Asian languages.

Rosie in Shanghai and Tokyo? Nobody could resist watching that.

Serena's Complaint

Back in the day you could throw as many punches as you wanted at an African American female and have no repercussions whatsoever. Easy targets.

Like Elizabeth Eckford, who was surrounded by a howling mob when she tried to integrate Little Rock High School in 1957. Those were the days! Anyone could just step right up to a brown-skinned person and have at it. You certainly wouldn't hear her speak up and defend herself like Serena Williams did, talking about, "As an African American I'm not going to stand for it." Excuse me? Wouldn't this be what we used to call uppity?

Yes, Serena is going up and up like a golden eagle. And her rising is not preventing all the rest of us from taking to the sky.

Why don't we join her, high above the Redwood Forest.