Today KQED (NPR affiliate) ran a program entitled Secret Asian Woman about the perceived racial inequities that Dmae Roberts undergos as a half-asian woman who can pass as white. For the most part I stay quiet on the particulars of these sorts of seemingly oversensitive claims of racial injustice since I lack enough personal experience with the situation to productively comment. However, while I’m not half-asian myself my fiance is and after dating for five years or so (and explicitly asked her opinion for this post) I’m quite confident that I’m not merely being naive about how people treat half-asian women. Given the social pressure not to dispute these sorts of claims and the potential for even false perceptions of racial injustice to cause suffering and undermine our resolve to combat genuine racism I feel it’s important for people to speak up against unjustified hypersensitive claims of racism¹.

I don’t doubt that Dmae Roberts has experienced genuine (and horrific) racism in her life². It’s certainly no overreaction to call her grandmother’s expressions of disappointment that Dmae’s mother couldn’t have been white racist. The rejection and poor treatment of her and her brother by other young children on account of her race was also literally racist. However, as Dmae admits herself at the time she never thought it was a huge deal when she would be made fun of by other kids on account of her race. It is only in retrospect that she interprets it as being hugely significant. Obviously it’s awful how cruel children are are to anyone who doesn’t fit in but nothing she describes about their behavior is any worse than the way children treat those who are different on account of being nerds, having a skin condition or whatever other weakness they seize upon. As the victim of this kind of behavior myself I certainly don’t want to trivialize the harm of this behavior but we should avoid the fallacy of treating children’s cruelty as dramatically worse because it falls into a historically recognized category of adult cruelty. It’s not something we’d like to believe but children are incredibly cruel and we shouldn’t implicitly send the message that it’s okay because their cruelty is based on a child’s lisp than on their racial background.

It’s understandable that someone like Dmae would come to see the world through the lens of race, just as kids who grow up poor often come to see the world in terms of social class and smart academic kids can come to see things in terms of popularity and jocks vs. nerds. However, this fact doesn’t make it the case that talking about a “Chinese fire drill” is a racist remark. The etymology of the term is irrelevant since the users of the term don’t reflect on it and unlike terms like “negro” use of the term doesn’t suggest affiliation with any anti-Chinese prejudice. Racial theorists might want this term to be racist but the fact that in actual practice Asian-Americans aren’t offended when their white friends use the term makes it a non-racist term. Similar points can be made about other things Dmae brings up like people imitating the martial arts master from Karate Kid. It isn’t racist now because it doesn’t suggest any prejudice or dislike and the last thing we would ever want to do is widen the class of comments that we decide express prejudice. We want to reduce the potential for accidental offense not increase it.

This brings us to the central hypocripsy of Dmae’s piece, an attitude that puts decades of progress against racism at jeopardy. Most of the complaints Dmae makes about modern events (not her grandmother or being raised in the midwest) ultimately reduce to the fact that people recognize race and view it as a genuine matter of commonality or difference. She complains that people ask what ethnicity she is or inquire about how her parents got together. Dmae gets very upset when a friend of hers comments, in response to Dmae’s claim that she can tell that some other girl is also half-asian not white, that you can tell but we can’t. In other words her complaint is essentially that people identify themselves with their racial group yet the other half of the piece is all about Dmae having pride in being half-asian and making a big deal out of racial identity. Dmae comments several times that she feels particular kinship with other half-asians even expressing how grateful she is that there are now more people like her out there. But if your ethnic background dictates certain common experiences that are justifiable grounds to feel kinship with others surely then being white in America involves certain commonalities (if nothing else the failure to have these experiences) that justify talking about what ‘we’ experience.

What I find so objectionable about this piece is that it threatens to undo much of the progress we have made towards racial equality. Sharon (my fiance) just assumes that she isn’t being the subject of racial discrimination (except the benefit of having more guys who want to date her) and as a result doesn’t suffer racial resentment or anger. However, it’s very easy to make yourself see racial bias around every corner and that perception can cause almost as much pain as true racism. It’s this pain that is why it’s important to eliminate racism in the first place so it’s similarly important to prevent this false perception of racism, not to mention the harm this does to the cause of eliminating true racism. Equating your experience as a half-asian having to hear people comment about “Chinese fire drills” or asking about how your parents met with the sort of things that happened at Jena not only trivializes real racism but creates faux feelings of racial victimization where they don’t need to exist.

Dmae’s family may be racist and growing up in the midwest when she did may have exposed her to some racial prejudices but give me a break. A half-asian woman in the US in this day and age is hardly oppressed. Somehow having more guys who think you are hot doesn’t make me very sympathetic.

Update:

Just to be clear I think my fiance’s experience is particular to the treatment of half-asian women (it may not even extend to guys) by whites. I’ve certainly had other half-japanese friends complain about the way other japanese people treated them (primarily when they lived in japan). It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if half-asians generally had trouble being accepted by the asian communities but my fiance has never really seen a reason to go out of her way to socialize with people because they share her ethnicity (and knows less about Taiwan than I do…and I just watch CNN). In short I think this is a peculiarity of the way our culture regards Asians and Asian girls in particular (if anything the stereotyped as hot and smart which is hardly an oppressive burden). I think there is still real racial discrimination that goes on and if you are half-black you probably run into real problems as a result but that’s one of the reasons it’s important to distinguish being oversensitive and offended by the term “Chinese fire drill” and real racism that we need to work hard to eliminate.

In any case part of what I wanted to point out here was the harmfulness of an attitude that always takes individual accounts of racial difficulty at face value while discouraging others from speaking up to say, “Hey, I don’t have those kinds of problems.” In short it bothers me that I’ve yet to meet a half-asian girl who had any significant problems with discrimination by whites but yet this one woman’s story is broadcast on the radio as if it was totally typical.