usmbguest5318
Gold Member
In his essay "I, Racist," John Metta points out a key difference that he's observed between whites and blacks and cites it as the reason he has given up on discussing race issues with white folks.
I don’t talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than that.
To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of Black people. We don’t [as individuals] see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another state as something separate from [ourself] because we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.
...
Racism affects us directly because the fact that it happened at a geographically remote location or to another Black person is only a coincidence, an accident. It could just as easily happen to us- right here, right now.
Black people think in terms of "we" because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.
White people do not think in terms of "we." White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.
What [whites] are affected by are attacks on their own [individual] character. To my aunt [Metta's aunt is white], the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.
The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues “You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.” My aunt’s immediate response is not “that is wrong, we should do better.” No, her response is self-protection: “That’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything. You are wrong.”
(Source)
As a white person, being an object of racial inequity is something I've personally suffered not once in the U.S. during my nearly sixty years of living, to say nothing of racially motivated action that denied me something I sought or deserved to receive or achieve. Not in an overt way and not in any subtle way. The same is true of all my similarly high performing white peers -- family members, classmates, friends, club members, etc. -- yet it is not without exception so for my high performing black peers.
I've spent some time in Tokyo, and there, I most certainly did experience being the object of racism/xenophobia. I know I was the object of it because not only did an expat coworker tell me so, but so too did a Japanese colleague, and he wasn't even "beat around the bush" about what had happened and why, because I am white.
Truly, that that was the reason for what had happened would never have crossed my mind had I not been told, such, until then, was my utter obliviousness to the prospect and reality of racial discrimination happening to me, a white guy, and a bright, interesting, polite, successful, confident, and very good looking one to boot. Until that moment, I'd lived my life as one of those people whom "everyone" appreciates knowing, enjoys knowing and wants around, yet there, in that moment, I was an outcast. I knew it, and there was not one damn thing I could do about it, nor was there something anyone else was going to do about it.
That time in Tokyo was the first time in my life where I came to know what despondency feels like. (The second and last was when my wife was dying.) But I experienced racism in Tokyo, and I don't live in Tokyo or anywhere else in Japan, nor did I want to, not before and certainly not after the episode. I was eventually going to leave Tokyo and I knew it. There was "light" at the end of my tunnel, and I could see it. I didn't have to make that light appear. It was there the moment I arrived on that project.
If that's the emotional cauldron in which black Americans live to greater or lesser degrees and on a more frequent basis, and I'm told by my black friends that for all blacks it is, God bless them, for as Americans, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know how one can live like that all the time or even just on some occasion every year. (Not that I condone violence, but having "been there," in a manner of speaking, I understand how racial tensions and protests roil into violence.)
I don't know what other places a white person visit to so readily get a first-hand taste of being denied something on account of their race, but once one has felt it, one becomes pissed-off and jaundiced from then on. To this day and owing only to that experience, every time I meet a Japanese person, in the back of my mind, I find myself wondering what does that person really think of me, yet inasmuch as they are literally just that moment meeting me, they really shouldn't have any conclusions or notions, one way or another, about me.
What kinds of thoughts cross my mind in those instances? Irrational ones that, frankly, never otherwise do. Some examples include:
How did I, for the remainder of my time in Tokyo, overcome the issue of being discriminated against? I did exactly the same thing black Americans do; I self-segregated. From that point forward, I constrained my discretionary time to interactions with other European and American expats. That's something I've done in no other country in which I've worked or visited. Indeed, what I normally do is avoid activities and venues that are heavily frequented by expats, for spending most of my time with them isn't a particularly good way to discover for myself the people and culture of the country in which I find myself. Other than in Tokyo, there's been nothing to complain of by my so doing.
From my experience with discrimination in Tokyo, I came to understand the "I versus we" idea Metta expresses in his essay. Ever since then, I've made a point of telling colleagues and acquaintances that while they are in Tokyo, they should refrain from attempting to partake of certain things because they will be rejected.
I share with folks what I do about what to avoid in Japan because I know, just as black do, that it could just as easily be they made outcast as was I. I know that what happened had nothing to do with me specifically, but rather that my whiteness was the only requirement. hose Japanese people didn't know me. That makes it a "we" thing, not a "me" thing.
Maybe I shouldn't give them those warning? Maybe they should get to know what it feels like? I know that it's possible for me to thus advise them and it's possible for them to heed my suggestions, black folks in the U.S. pretty much don't have the latter option because they're not just visiting the U.S.; thus, try as they might, they can't constrain their movements to certain places and certain communities of people. Their only long-run option, not so much for their own sake but for that of their descendents, is try to do something about it.
My own experience being the object of negatively manifested racial bias suggests to me that one, especially a white American, must live through such an even to know what it feels like. That said, one does not have to live through it to accept as true the attestations about it and its effects, most especially when they come from millions who have and do live with it. I'm just one man, but when I read or hear the accounts of blacks -- be they shared through writings and elegies by people whom I've never met or in person by the blacks whom I know well enough to have such conversations -- the emotions and ways of responding to them are exactly the same ones I went through, had and yet have.
That's no coincidence for the human condition, no matter one's race, is universal. That the verisimilitude of my experience as an object of racism is, unsurprisingly, precisely the same as any black person's. The scars are exactly the same as black parents would try preventing their kids therefrom to obtain. Quite literally, any black American could to me say "I told you so." And, I know they'd be right. But I also know that had I not been through that experience, I may never have come to understand how "I versus we" matters, how it is detrimental to the oppressed and bolsters the position of the oppressor, when one is a not a member of the majority.
I don’t talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than that.
To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of Black people. We don’t [as individuals] see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another state as something separate from [ourself] because we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.
...
Racism affects us directly because the fact that it happened at a geographically remote location or to another Black person is only a coincidence, an accident. It could just as easily happen to us- right here, right now.
Black people think in terms of "we" because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.
White people do not think in terms of "we." White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.
What [whites] are affected by are attacks on their own [individual] character. To my aunt [Metta's aunt is white], the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.
The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues “You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.” My aunt’s immediate response is not “that is wrong, we should do better.” No, her response is self-protection: “That’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything. You are wrong.”
(Source)
I've spent some time in Tokyo, and there, I most certainly did experience being the object of racism/xenophobia. I know I was the object of it because not only did an expat coworker tell me so, but so too did a Japanese colleague, and he wasn't even "beat around the bush" about what had happened and why, because I am white.
Truly, that that was the reason for what had happened would never have crossed my mind had I not been told, such, until then, was my utter obliviousness to the prospect and reality of racial discrimination happening to me, a white guy, and a bright, interesting, polite, successful, confident, and very good looking one to boot. Until that moment, I'd lived my life as one of those people whom "everyone" appreciates knowing, enjoys knowing and wants around, yet there, in that moment, I was an outcast. I knew it, and there was not one damn thing I could do about it, nor was there something anyone else was going to do about it.
That time in Tokyo was the first time in my life where I came to know what despondency feels like. (The second and last was when my wife was dying.) But I experienced racism in Tokyo, and I don't live in Tokyo or anywhere else in Japan, nor did I want to, not before and certainly not after the episode. I was eventually going to leave Tokyo and I knew it. There was "light" at the end of my tunnel, and I could see it. I didn't have to make that light appear. It was there the moment I arrived on that project.
If that's the emotional cauldron in which black Americans live to greater or lesser degrees and on a more frequent basis, and I'm told by my black friends that for all blacks it is, God bless them, for as Americans, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know how one can live like that all the time or even just on some occasion every year. (Not that I condone violence, but having "been there," in a manner of speaking, I understand how racial tensions and protests roil into violence.)
I don't know what other places a white person visit to so readily get a first-hand taste of being denied something on account of their race, but once one has felt it, one becomes pissed-off and jaundiced from then on. To this day and owing only to that experience, every time I meet a Japanese person, in the back of my mind, I find myself wondering what does that person really think of me, yet inasmuch as they are literally just that moment meeting me, they really shouldn't have any conclusions or notions, one way or another, about me.
What kinds of thoughts cross my mind in those instances? Irrational ones that, frankly, never otherwise do. Some examples include:
- Is this person disdainful of my being white and their having to interact with me?
- Am I being viewed through the lens of what this person has heard about white Americans even before he and I have had any real interaction?
- Am I being viewed through the lens of what this person has heard about white Americans rather than on the merits/demerits of how I have treated and interacted with them?
How did I, for the remainder of my time in Tokyo, overcome the issue of being discriminated against? I did exactly the same thing black Americans do; I self-segregated. From that point forward, I constrained my discretionary time to interactions with other European and American expats. That's something I've done in no other country in which I've worked or visited. Indeed, what I normally do is avoid activities and venues that are heavily frequented by expats, for spending most of my time with them isn't a particularly good way to discover for myself the people and culture of the country in which I find myself. Other than in Tokyo, there's been nothing to complain of by my so doing.
From my experience with discrimination in Tokyo, I came to understand the "I versus we" idea Metta expresses in his essay. Ever since then, I've made a point of telling colleagues and acquaintances that while they are in Tokyo, they should refrain from attempting to partake of certain things because they will be rejected.
I share with folks what I do about what to avoid in Japan because I know, just as black do, that it could just as easily be they made outcast as was I. I know that what happened had nothing to do with me specifically, but rather that my whiteness was the only requirement. hose Japanese people didn't know me. That makes it a "we" thing, not a "me" thing.
Maybe I shouldn't give them those warning? Maybe they should get to know what it feels like? I know that it's possible for me to thus advise them and it's possible for them to heed my suggestions, black folks in the U.S. pretty much don't have the latter option because they're not just visiting the U.S.; thus, try as they might, they can't constrain their movements to certain places and certain communities of people. Their only long-run option, not so much for their own sake but for that of their descendents, is try to do something about it.
My own experience being the object of negatively manifested racial bias suggests to me that one, especially a white American, must live through such an even to know what it feels like. That said, one does not have to live through it to accept as true the attestations about it and its effects, most especially when they come from millions who have and do live with it. I'm just one man, but when I read or hear the accounts of blacks -- be they shared through writings and elegies by people whom I've never met or in person by the blacks whom I know well enough to have such conversations -- the emotions and ways of responding to them are exactly the same ones I went through, had and yet have.
That's no coincidence for the human condition, no matter one's race, is universal. That the verisimilitude of my experience as an object of racism is, unsurprisingly, precisely the same as any black person's. The scars are exactly the same as black parents would try preventing their kids therefrom to obtain. Quite literally, any black American could to me say "I told you so." And, I know they'd be right. But I also know that had I not been through that experience, I may never have come to understand how "I versus we" matters, how it is detrimental to the oppressed and bolsters the position of the oppressor, when one is a not a member of the majority.
The Japanese are a fairly closed society. Not big on immigration. Have reason to keep their culture the way it is. BUT -- if you're claiming that they just don't ADORE American culture also -- you'd be wrong. It's always ADAPTED to be "gift wrapped" in a more acceptable Japanese package -- but they are NOT anti-white. In fact, post war -- my F.I.Law loves to tell stories about how unexpectedly welcoming the Japanese were to the "occupation". The Chinese have a much larger SUPERIORITY complex based on race, than the Japanese. They admit it also. And I've worked in many Silicon Valley companies run almost exclusively as Japanese or Chinese shops and the only thing appearing to be racist would be in the Chinese run shops. There they are BRUTAL with their H1B visa workers also. Often having the bosses scream at them and stop short of flogging them in the aisles. It's the Asian respect of authority, to the point of being submissive and docile that disturbed me. 
