Following up on race

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Glenda Buya-ao Claborne

Someone asked me why, in my article last week, I suggested looking at race relations from the assumption that each person, white or colored, is potentially a racist, a bigot, a pervert.

"Isn't that too cynical a view of human nature?" she asked.

Yes, it is cynical. But there is a difference between cynicism that leads to despair and cynicism that calls for self-control. I certainly do not want the despairing kind but would consider a certain degree of the second kind as necessary to check our so-called virtues based on the supposed vileness of the other. It is a mistrust that is more directed at one's self and to one's own group than to the other or outside groups.

Another person asked me what I know about prejudice and discrimination against blacks.

No, I cannot claim to fully grasp what it must be like to be black in American society. I may think I understand W.E.B. Du Bois' ever-present sense of double-consciousness and A. Poussaint's contained but corrosive rage. But, no, the Negro's blues and mine are not the same and will never be.

But that is precisely what I wanted to point out in my previous article: that in lumping different minority groups under a common umbrella of discrimination and oppression by a white majority, we fail to recognize the unique experience and contribution of each group to a common American society. What is worse is that the opportunism and self-interest of a few ghettoized the harrowing experience of each group.

When one minority group, however, manages to overcome prejudice and discrimination and achieve great things in society, we are quick to take on the arrogant stance like, "If the Vietnamese boat refugees were able to do it, why can't the blacks?"

This is plain ignorance of the different histories and circumstances that each group had to go through. One major difference between blacks and other minorities is that blacks were forced out of Africa and were owned body and soul for quite some time. Other minority groups came to the United States voluntarily, also suffered prejudice and discrimination, but were not auctioned off and put to work like farm machinery.

It would be well for those whose groups were able to overcome prejudice and discrimination to realize that just as there are debilitating cumulative effects of negative stereotypes, there are empowering cumulative effects of positive stereotypes. Nobody pulls him or herself up entirely by his or her own bootstraps. We benefit or suffer from the past. For all the good things that we have, we can only say that by the grace of God, we were able to overcome.

We must also understand that skin color does matter. I do not know whether white European colonialism spawned and ingrained the prejudice against dark skin. But even in Southeast and southern Asia, lighter skin is preferred than darker skin. I remember my dormmates in Manila, who scrubbed their faces with whitening creams until their faces were silky white but the rest of their bodies were brown. In Sri Lanka, where most people are dark-skinned, the gradation from light-dark to dark-dark is still used to measure beauty and wealth.

When one thinks that blacks must live with their skin color, then we may be a bit more understanding of the prejudice that they have to go through.

Having said that, we must not assume and presume that disadvantaged groups necessarily want things made easier for them. That is an insulting presumption because I know from my conversations with blacks and other minorities, that they are very aware of the prejudices against them but they do not want anybody's sympathy, nor do all minorities want special privileges from the government. All they want is some quiet understanding of what it must be like to be in their position and only from that point can our giving and sharing toward a common good become acceptable and meaningful.

Glenda Buya-ao Claborne is an undeclared graduate student and can be reached via e-mail at Glenda.Buya-ao.Claborne@wildcat.arizona.edu. Her column, Sitting on the Fulcrum, appears every Monday.