The Worldly - A World Culture Web Magazine and 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization

by JENNIFER CHANG, founding editor

Those of us who live in California, especially Los Angeles, are terribly, terribly spoiled. We are swathed daily in the “sun-kissed mist” wistfully crooned about by Al Jolson. We know how to party, said (says…?) Tupac. And in Los Angeles, most of our racism is out in the open. Take that, rest-of-the-country!

“Is she being sarcastic?” Well, hear me out.

A luxury of living in a place that’s basically an amalgam of minorities is that our differences are as plain as the noses on our faces… the eyes on our faces, the skin on our faces. On any given day, we shop in the same supermarket aisles and suffer through the same traffic jams with people whose countries of origin, if listed, could rival the roll call at a UN conference in diversity. If you’re determined to be a racist here, you have your job cut out for you. If there’s a stereotype you regard as fact, you’ll encounter enough counterexamples by the end of a work week that your “theory” about any one race becomes untenable. If you utter aloud something racist in a public place, you’ll turn to find at least one person within earshot that you’ve directly offended, and plenty of surrounding others who are outraged on his or her behalf, and likely one or two that are vocal about it.

I would never claim that racism doesn’t exist in Los Angeles, or in cities like it; it does. Diversity in these cities, however, frequently puts our racists into positions where they have to defend or apologize for their ignorance. I once interned at an office where a woman said to me, “we used to have another one of you working here,” referring to another Asian. With no prompting from me, she stopped herself, she blushed, she apologized effusively. I wasn’t nearly as offended as she was embarrassed.

A breakdown of our population of racists: the wiser of them snap out of it. The more stubborn of them are driven to harbor their bigotries in secret and in silence. And the most incorrigible among them face a lifetime of struggle, of being scorned or ridiculed, of being called out time and time again …

That is, unless they move elsewhere.

It’s these select “elsewheres,” and the racists that come out of them, ladies and gentlemen, that is the subject of discussion today.

As I’ve said, Angelenos are spoiled rotten, and I among them. There’s a certain brand of unchecked, unabashed, and utterly un-self-conscious racism that many of us never, ever have to encounter. After coming into close and extended contact with it, I can tell you that—like the ineffaceable, reeking putrescence of the Bog of Eternal Stench in the 1986 film, Labyrinth—the stinky awareness of this racism “smells bad for the rest of your life, and it’ll never wash off.”
It was the winter of 2006 and I was dirt poor. Like any struggling writer/actor/artist in this crooked town, I sought relief on Craigslist, putting out feelers for a roommate to share the burden of rent. One of the first responses to come in was from a girl from an affluent borough outside of Boston, a Harvard grad—a girl who stated at the time that she was a professional athlete.

Now, the most intelligent, cultured and well-read person I currently know is a graduate of Harvard. I had strong basis for my faith in the university as an admitter of the crème de la crème of our society. Yes, I had a good impression of Harvard (surprise!), and I foolishly based my decision on that impression.

Not knowing much else about her, I met this girl’s boyfriend first when he stopped over briefly on reconnaissance. He was a clean-cut, attractive and articulate Korean fellow. I told myself that a Caucasian woman who was comfortable and open-minded enough to date an Asian man was probably going to be fine in my book.

I knew I had made a grave mistake the very first night she moved in. After introductions, our first conversation was about our respective recent trips to China—mine for work, hers for a race. With an air of superiority, she told me that many of her fellow athletes didn’t want to interact with the Chinese locals, but that she was someone who, unlike them, “tolerated all races.”
Sirens went off. Red flags zipped up the flagpole. “Tolerated” was a word and concept I rarely ever heard used anymore in the context of race relations, and for good reason. I’d like to think that nowadays, we regard the concept of racial “tolerance” as lazy (as opposed to “understanding” or “appreciation,” both of which require effort) and somewhat insulting. It implies that there is something about races and cultures that’s a nuisance—a burden that needs to be nobly borne by others. But there I was over-reacting, I thought. Social consciousness too often gives way to rash indignance and outrage and…

“By the way, why do Chinese people idolize white people?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, Chinese people want to be like us or something.”

Oh no she didn’t!

But alas, she did. Caught completely off guard, I stumbled through a line of questioning that might have led her to an opportunity to save face. Had I known then that she wasn’t like the woman I had worked with at my internship—that she wasn’t embarrassed and saw no error in a statement like that—I wouldn’t have bothered. I asked her if she was confusing that notion about the Chinese with something she might have heard about the Japanese? But maybe not of the Japanese now, but of 150-some years ago during the Meiji Restoration? Who had integrated a number of Western institutions into their societal construct…?

But that was absurd and awkward. Of course that’s not what she meant. She looked at me vacantly and shrugged. She had said exactly what she meant, and didn’t understand where the confusion was.

Introductions continued. To get better acquainted, I tried to fish out her interests in music. Did she like Fergie? Fergie is my favorite because she’s so Fergalicious. I don’t know what that means, but I want to be it, too. In response, she said that Fergie was “trashy” because she “acted black.” And when I asked her what she thought of Beyoncé, she described her as “completely worthless.” Now, I acknowledge that everyone has their tastes in music, but one could see here by her choice of descriptors that what she was commenting on wasn’t isolated to musical style.

I retired to bed that night feeling unsettled. Had I invited a racist into my home?

The weeks and months that followed answered the question. It wasn’t more than two days later that she called me over to her computer to show me a T-shirt she wanted to purchase. It was a spoof of the famous shirt from Napoleon Dynamite, and it read “Deport Pedro” across the front.
I shook my head and told her simply that it was tasteless.

What I didn’t say was that it was insensitive, that it was insulting, and that it was a slap in the face to anyone who is (or is friends with someone) of Mexican background, which in Los Angeles means a sizeable part of the population. Regardless of your politics on the subject, we know that by and large, immigrants are here legally or illegally for better opportunities and better lives for their families. They don’t need to be confronted, while casually walking down a street, with ugliness emblazoned across the front of a stranger’s shirt.

Could I see the humor in the shirt? Sure. It would be funny if worn by a Mexican who was trying to be ironic, or if it were worn by someone like Sarah Silverman, who uses a racist persona as part of her comedic shtick (and who ultimately pokes fun at racists in doing so). But could I see the humor in the shirt if it were worn by someone whom I knew had rancor for Mexicans?
That week, I was giving her a ride to Fred Segal when a few Latino men crossed the street at a crosswalk in front of us. From their age and the fact that they were carrying backpacks/messenger bags, I guessed they were college students. Presently, from my roommate’s side of the car, I heard a scoff and this word: “Illegals.”

And so it was that our time together as roommates was littered with these disturbing expressions of hate. One night she fumed at news of a stabbing that happened back at her old high school.

“And the person that did it wasn’t even from my town! They should just make everyone who’s not from my town get out of my high school and out of my town!” she declared. Clearly, to her, that the person who did the stabbing most likely had severe mental issues was not nearly as central to the event as was the fact that the person was from outside her affluent borough. Xenophobic, much?

One day I told her I was casting an acting role for a production company I worked for, and that I had been instructed to find a brunette. “Why?” she asked. “Blonds are the best.”
One day an acquaintance of hers said aloud that he didn’t like it when black people were “in your face with their blackness,” and she agreed, saying she knew what he meant. I wish someone would have explained it to me, because I still don’t.

One day I asked for her opinion about my appearance (at a time when I was misguidedly considering a side-career as a catalog model, since mine is a face that might make you want to buy a cardigan…?). She told me I was good-looking… “for an Asian”.

And many more casual remarks of the like.

One incongruous detail about her—the fact of her Korean boyfriend—nagged at me for a while, but that too eventually fit itself into the context of her ignorance. One night I asked her if her boyfriend would like to come to dinner with us so I could ask him about his upbringing in another part of the country, and compare it to the traditional Korean upbringing of friends back in my hometown of Cerritos. “Oh no,” she said, tilting her chin up and looking rather proud, quite suddenly. “He’s as far removed from all that as he can be”— “all that” I suppose, referring to his Korean heritage.

I doubted very much that that was true; her boyfriend and I had chatted that one night about Asia and Asia studies, and I hadn’t gotten that impression at all. But regardless of whether or not what she said was factually correct, it was clearly a good thing in her eyes that he’d divorced himself from “all that.” How benevolent of her to be dating an enlightened convert, ey? And the question of whether or not she could really respect him if she didn’t respect his background was also answered. She cheated on him with a recording artist whose concert she went to see. Her admitted justification: “It’s okay. He’s famous.”

The cherry on this—the most unsavory of sundaes—came near the end of our time together. Despite the fact that she was an athlete and had a bike, she wanted me to give her a ride in my car half a mile up the street to the bus stop (come to think of it, she often borrowed her boyfriend’s SUV to run very-local errands). There we were, me driving and she admiring her reflection in the vanity mirror on the passenger side when, all of a sudden: “Did you know that blonds are a dying breed?”

“Because the blond gene is recessive?” I asked.

“Yeah. I really should marry someone who’s blond-haired and blue-eyed. You know, to keep the race alive.”

I joked, “What race is that. The Aryan Race?”

Not hearing the sarcasm, she responded earnestly, “Oh, I’m the model Aryan. Hitler would love me. We even have the same birthday.”

Stunned. I was stunned. I waited for her to qualify the statement with something like, “Just kidding, that’s so messed up to say,” or something, anything that would make what I had just heard less horrible. There was no such statement, no embarrassed laugh, no goofy smile. The “model Aryan” continued instead to fiddle with her hair and admire her reflection.

After a long, silent pause, I said, “Well, don’t say that around any Jewish people, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, vapidly.

I wanted to scream. Where were the educational institutions that would have taught her about the historical events that made statements like this unacceptable? Why had they failed her? What classes had she taken at Harvard? Why hadn’t the foremost university in our country succeeded in educating her in this respect?

In the end, I failed her where the various other institutions and people in her life had also failed her. She was comfortable with her level of racism and ignorance because it went unchecked, because she likely grew up in a place and among people who never thought to check her (were they the type of people to agree with her?). In my case, I simply didn’t know how to respond, and so I didn’t. I’m sorry to say that it was also easier for me to avoid the confrontation and to assure myself that she’d meet someone, someday who’d have the cajones to tell her what a hideous human being her hate and her ignorance made her.

But long after she had moved out, I regretted not being that person. I hadn’t done the world any favors by staying silent. With the knowledge that people like her still existed in a country with a population as diverse as ours, my whole world had changed. It bothered me that somewhere out there, she was still going around telling people that she “tolerated all races”, and that she was touting herself as a role model.

As I’ve said, I had been terribly spoiled, as a Southern Californian to think that racists everywhere would be forced to change, or be driven into hiding in this day and age. Now I wondered, how many employers, law enforcement officers, or others who had power over me, would describe me as “_______, for an Asian”?

How many people would look at me and think that I would be better off if I were removed from “all that”?

How many people would see my friends and want them deported, and heck, how many of them would think this sentiment would make a good T-shirt?

How many people hear about atrocities that have fallen on other races and see no lessons to be learned from these shameful episodes?

At long last, we get to the point I’ve wanted to make all along: it was through this 9-month-long experience with this girl that I came to understand who the worst kinds of racists were, and by “worst,” I mean the ones who can do the most damage to our society.

The worst kinds of racists are the ones who believe, and the ones who feel free to say, that they are not racist, and then proceed to believe and say racist things as if they were the most natural and acceptable things in the world. They are the ones who tell you that they are not racists, so that you feel embarrassed or find it hard to point out the truth to them later. They are the people who see people of color as people to “tolerate”.

They do the most damage to our country because they create the illusion that racism is less of a problem than it is, so that we as a society grow lazy and less vigilant in addressing it. They harm us all because we may encounter them on their path to success, and when they tell us that they are not racists, and we believe them and good-naturedly help them along to positions of greater influence.

It’s this kind of racism and ignorance that infects people like Michael Richards, who thought it was okay to drop a barrage of n-bombs in a comedy club. It infects people like Senator George Allen, who saw no harm in pointing out an Indian college student in an otherwise all-white crowd during a campaign stop, and calling him “Macaca.” It infects people like presidential hopeful John McCain, who in 2000 publicly declared that he will hate “the gooks,” and “will hate them as long as [he] lives,” then refused to apologize for the comment. Some form of it even infects Hillary Clinton, who thought it’d be funny to joke that Mahatma Gandhi “ran a gas station down in St. Louis."

All of the above have at one point or another declared themselves “not racist,” and all are either highly-paid celebrities or politicians. Am I wrong to wish that, in getting to their places of influence in our society, they would have learned a little more about cultural sensitivity and respect along the way? They are, after all, now occupying positions and making decisions that affect many of us.

From one fortunate Southern Californian to you, dear reader, wherever you may be, whatever your background: this is an appeal.

Please have the courage, when faced with someone who is smug and snug in their ignorance, to challenge them on their beliefs about themselves. It’s the only way we can keep the more deceptive of racists from slipping into places they shouldn’t be (like into our homes) and into positions they don’t deserve to be (like into public office). No matter what they say, these people don’t “tolerate” us, and we shouldn’t sacrifice our comfort and our world… for theirs.