Abstract
Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of the psychological wage of whiteness, this article explores how contemporary rhetoric promoted by immigrant rights advocates in the United States valorizes non-white immigrant workers in relationship to African Americans. Specifically, I examine moralized claims regarding immigrants’ character, productivity, and value as well as their contributions to the U.S. and global economy. I emphasize how this discourse echoes and draws upon managerial and capitalist perspectives of labor as well as anti-Black rhetoric regarding African Americans as lacking a work ethic, militant, xenophobic, and costly to society. Finally, I briefly consider whether the wage of non-Blackness differs from the wage of whiteness as well as the possibility of an ethical immigrant rights discourse.

“Race, Illegality, and Detention”

October 13, 2011

The questions that we have been asked to explore are ones that I have thought about a great deal in the last decade, as a former activist in Asian American and immigration politics and as a scholar and educator who researches, writes about, and teaches about these issues.  These questions are:

• How does race and racism operate in U.S. immigration and detention policy?

• How is whiteness implicitly or explicitly operative in U.S. detention policy?

• What are the similarities and differences between the criminalization of African Americans and newly arrived immigrants?  Why are some groups of immigrants welcomed and others criminalized?

• How might the criminalization of particular racial others in U.S. detention policy be changed legally, politically, and culturally?

• Given the social and political polarization of U.S. society, what are the limits and possibilities of changing the role of race in U.S. detention policy?

I want to explore how race and racism are conceptualized and the implications for how we consider criminalization, legality, and the similarities and differences between African Americans and immigrants of color.  While I and many of us here can discuss how white supremacy informs immigration policy, I think our point of departure for thinking about race cannot be whiteness or white supremacy.  And I say this as an Asian American who is all too well aware, from research, from observation, from shared stories, and from the lived experience that I take on my body every single day, that white supremacy is ubiquitous and banal.  White supremacy is the stench of dog shit left all over gentrified neighborhoods and the smiles of white children who, as babies, already have more power than the majority of grown people of color will ever possess.  But despite the mundane nature of white supremacy, I think a Black/non-Black divide framework is much more useful for analyzing racial realities as well as for pragmatically addressing the issues of criminalization, surveillance, policing, incarceration, and deportation.

The Black/non-Black divide framework posits that being Black in the world is much more significant in terms of shaping life chances and ontological realities than being non-white.  Sociologists, notably George Yancey, author of the book Who is White: Who is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide, have studied the social rejection and isolation of African Americans and the implications for how we understand assimilation.  As Yancey notes in his book, “A black/nonblack dichotomy produces more understanding about contemporary race relations.  It suggests that the informal rejection of African Americans, rather than a tendency by the majority to oppress all minority groups in a roughly equal manner, is the linchpin to the American contemporary racial hierarchy.”

Most social scientists of assimilation don’t generally address the issue of surveillance and incarceration and have focused on indicators such as interracial marriage rates, residential segregation, educational obtainment, and income, and increasingly wealth.  Instead, they tend to focus on how African Americans do not tend to empirically demonstrate the assimilation patterns of not only whites but also non-Black people of color, including the “new immigrants.”  But anti-Black racism cannot be simply identified at the level of individual cases of suffering, of which, a significant number becomes a social problem, according to the celebrated sociologist C. Wright Mills.  Rather, anti-Black racism is a political project, a generative force, and a logic of social organization.  As Jared Sexton puts it, there is a “fundamental social truth” and it is “not simply that antiblackness is longstanding and ongoing but also that it is unlike other forms of racial oppression in qualitative ways— differences of kind, rather than degree, a structural singularity rather than an empirical anomaly.”

Considering anti-Blackness as a logic of social organization gives greater clarity to the nature of the state, of which immigrant rights activists constantly engage and confront.  While scholars such as Michael Omi and Howard Winant argue that the state is a racial state, some have made it clear that the state is not only racial but racist and not only racist but specifically anti-Black.  For example, Anthony Monteiro describes the U.S. state as “the principal organizer of racialized power.  As an instrument of racialized power, i.e. the power of white people over non-whites, especially black people, it functions to mediate class conflict and fissures among whites and to exert primarily command-and-control functions with respect to blacks.”

This is not to suggest that African Americans are the only ones affected, targeted, or criminalized by the state.  One of the common strategies for not dealing with anti-Black racism is to claim that African Americans are not the only ones who experience racism or state violence, a sentiment that some could say animates this very gathering.  But the scholarship that has informed my thinking never contends as much and only a willful misreading could lead to that conclusion.  Instead, an emphasis on anti-Blackness brings into clearer view what Sexton describes as “the (repressed) truth of the political and economic system”: that Blacks serve as “the prototypical targets of the panoply of police practices and the juridical infrastructure built up around them”—what Monteiro termed the “command-and-control functions” of the state.

Explained by Sexton:

Every analysis that attempts to understand the complexities of racial rule and the machinations of the racial state without accounting for black existence within its framework—which does not mean simply listing it among a chain of equivalents or returning to it as an afterthought—is doomed to miss what is essential about the situation. Black existence does not represent the total reality of the racial formation—it is not the beginning and the end of the story—but it does relate to the totality; it indicates the (repressed) truth of the political and economic system.

What relevance does the anti-Black nature of the state have for immigrant detention, deportation, illegality, and criminalization?  Whereas I could give numerous examples, there is one major point I want to address here: immigrant rights advocates need to re-examine their beliefs about Black citizenship.

Under the racial state, there is no such thing as Black citizenship.  The myth of Black citizenship scaffolds immigrant rights activism as well as the academic scholarship that supports it.  Regarding the latter, in Asian American Studies, numerous scholars are quick to emphasize that African Americans gained citizenship before Asian Americans and their comparisons of Blacks and Asians tends to argue that the racial formation of which the latter is subject is civic ostracism and exclusion—as if the racial subjugation of African Americans is somehow unrelated to the practices and logic of civil society.  In Latino Studies, there is an evident animus to African Americans, expressed as concerns about Black xenophobia and Black insensitivity to illegality.  The thread that binds Asian American Studies and Latino Studies scholarship is a belief in Black American citizenship, a hostility to which actually demonstrates that the legal document, in the case of Blacks, does not actually matter. What both Asian American Studies and Latino Studies, as well as immigrant rights activism and non-Black liberals and progressives in general presume, is that Black people have citizenship but that spectacles of anti-Black racism—such as the recent Troy Davis execution, the Oscar Grant murder by a white police officer at the Bart station in the Bay, or hurricane Katrina—demonstrate the contingent and flexible nature of citizenship.  Such gestures attempt to re-imagine African Americans as akin to immigrants of color, whose status is tenuous, contingent, and flexible to the demands of the nation-state, capital, and whites.

But for Blacks, there is no such thing as circumstance, pretext, or even, to use the words of immigrant rights activists, legality or illegality.  To assume as much means that we can identify historical moments in which Blacks are not guilty.  Of course, Blacks are not always guilty of committing the criminal acts they are accused of and in some cases, the courts have affirmed as much.  But Black people are never not guilty of being Black and thus their experience of being criminalized—which is ontological and not behavioral—cannot be conflated with or subsumed under frameworks common among immigrant rights advocates.  Or, as Kenyon Farrow, in his remarks at the recently held New York City Troy Davis Memorial succinctly put it: “we must come to accept that to be Black and ‘innocent’ is an oxymoron in the world we live in.”

My entry on the Chinese Exclusion Act is an effort to challenge the dominant accounts of the act, promoted by those who subscribe to the Commons School of History approach or to progressive colorblind approaches, both of which defend or apologize for white racism against Asians by arguing it was economically and morally justified.  Since I had first learned of the act over a decade and a half ago, I have been bothered by this defense of white anti-Asian racism, too often found in history books and promoted by too many white lefties and liberals.  Books written by Asian Americans and a few others have tended to take a more critical view of the economic argument and showed how much more was at play; increasingly more scholars are looking at the racial politics of immigration policies.  In addition, we can always consider, even when economics are involved, as they always are, why does white suffering (real or imagined) get to be used as a justification for white on non-white violence, a violence that has never been mutually inflicted to the same degree and with the same level of sympathy?  For my entry on eugenics I wanted to address how anti-Black racism and anxieties about the importation of “Black blood” among race scientists was a feature of eugenic approaches to immigration.

The entries “Chinese Exclusion Act” and “Eugenics” start on pages 105 and 189, respectively, and can be read in full in the Google Books edition. 

Abstract:

Tamara K. Nopper

September 25, 2011

Recently, President Barack Obama addressed the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and concerns that he was ignoring the disproportionately high unemployment rate among African Americans.  Defending his American Jobs Act, Obama emphasized the measure that would provide tax cuts to businesses–and specifically mentioned 100,000 Black-owned firms–if they hired a new worker or gave workers a raise.  One CBC member was quoted as saying that Obama’s speech “showed he’s going to fight.”

Obama’s jobs act will not make a dent in Black unemployment, which is now at a staggering 16.7%.  And despite emphasizing in his  CBC speech Black unemployment and  Black-owned firms, his proposal demonstrates more his capitulation to white supremacy than a willingness to challenge it.

Here’s why:

Tax cuts will not address the financial disparities that already exist among firms by race.  Indeed, Obama’s proposed measures for helping all (and not just Black) business owners in his jobs act privilege those firms with more money, that are more likely to be considered “innovative,” (hence the plan’s emphasis on patents and going global), who have a significant number of employees, and who are in the overall financial position to take advantage of a tax plan.  Black-owned firms already trail behind most other firms in most indicators.  Shown in the  most recent (2007) Survey of Business Owners, which is administered by the United States Census Bureau every five years, Black-owned firms make up only 7% of all U.S.-located firms.  Whites are over-represented  as business owners with 83% of all firms. The amount of receipts differs among racial groups, with Blacks only having $135 billion, which comprises less than 1% (.005% to be exact) of the $30 trillion in receipts for all firms.  The disparity in receipts does not necessarily reflect the number of business owned among racial groups.  For example, at an estimated 1.9 million, Black-owned firms outnumber Asian-owned firms by about 400,000, but the latter have over three times the receipts at $506 billion.  And while Blacks have about 300,000 less firms than Hispanics–the majority (91%) of business owners who identify as white, by the way–Black firms have only 40% of the  former’s receipts.  As a racial group, Blacks even lag behind  some ethnic groups.  Mexican American-owned firms, for instance, total about 1 million–a little under half of the firms for all Hispanics, regardless of race–a figure that is about 900,000 less than the number of Black firms, yet their receipts are higher at $154 billion.

These disparities are underscored when considering businesses that have employees, with the ability to have employees often related to the finances of a firm.  Black-owned employer firms make up 2% of all firms with employees, and whites own 81%.  Numbering only a little over 100,000, Black employer firms have receipts of $97 billion, which, like their receipts for all firms, make up 0% of all employer firms.  Asian American-owned employer firms have almost four times the total number and almost five times the receipts than Black employer firms, despite Asians comprising only one third of the population size of African Americans.  Controlling for the race of the business owner, Black employer firms, employing a total of about 900,000 people, pay the smallest average pay per employee among all employer firms.  Given this data, it is highly unlikely that tax cuts will alleviate Black unemployment as Black employer firms are already lagging financially behind those among most other racial groups. Even if Black employer firms, again totaling around 100,000, were all to hire one Black person, it is unlikely to decrease Black unemployment.   Given that an overwhelming majority of Black businesses are non-employer firms, it is highly unlikely that they will be in the financial position to grow their businesses by hiring workers–or to get the capital to do so–and thus “take advantage” of the proposed tax cuts.

One of the reasons why these statistics are so alarming is that a plethora of research, both from social scientists as well as just day to day observation and experience on the job market, demonstrates that African Americans are the least likely to be hired by non-Black firms.  And Black firms are already more likely to hire African Americans than non-Black firms.  Given the small number of Black employer firms, it is not surprising that unemployment rates for Black have generally surpassed all other racial groups, even when the economy was not in a financial crisis.   Non-Black firms, then, are not likely to hire a significant number of Blacks just to take advantage of tax measures (especially when there are growing numbers of non-Black unemployed to choose from) and Black firms, already lagging behind other racial groups by most indicators, cannot possibly be expected to resolve Black unemployment.  Nor could they if they wanted to as they don’t have the resources.

Some will say Obama did specifically deal with discrimination and Black unemployment in both his jobs act and his speech to the CBC.  For example, the proposal calls for challenging hiring discrimination against the unemployed.  However, how will he measure the unemployed in this policy?  Will it include the many Black people who are not even included in the Department of Labor statistic for unemployment?  Whatever the case, Obama’s jobs plan does not talk about racial discrimination.  Some may think it unnecessary for an act to do so given affirmative action policies.  Yet affirmative action policies have often been more commonly applied to corporate jobs and even then, corporate powers have largely determined what politically gets defined as affirmative action these days.  As the major source of new jobs, the overwhelming majority of small businesses are not subject to affirmative action policies due to the small number of people each firm employs.  And even if they were, the federal government has tended to be purposefully lax in enforcement and firms have also found ways to use what law professor Tanya K. Hernandez calls “the diversity defense” to hire non-whites but avoid having to account for discriminatory racial hiring practices.  In terms of talking about Black unemployment in his jobs act, the fact sheet–as well as his CBC speech–does cite the aforementioned Black unemployment rate.  More, the act mentions how Black youth are particularly affected so as propose a summer youth job program.  One purpose of the initiative, according to the jobs plan, is to help young people develop employment skills.  But many of these Black youth likely won’t be  hired  by non-Black businesses  so as to use and be paid for these skills, and again, Black firms  do not have the capacity to hire all of them.  Further, youth should not be in the position of financially supporting their communities and cannot be used to measure the financial health of their racial groups.  We would not expect whites dismayed about the financial crisis and their unemployment rate to focus simply on the employment prospects or summer job programs for white youth–indeed white youth are not even expected to work in the way Black youth are (nor  is employment promoted as an anti-incarceration initiative for white youth in the way it is for Black youth, but that’s another article). And summer programs are of course seasonal.  Finally,  summer youth programs do not resolve the fact that way too many Black adults cannot get jobs during any season.

Similar to some of his political predecessors, including Richard M. Nixon, Obama’s explicitly refers to Black unemployment and Black business in his CBC speech while promoting a Jim Crow economy–where Black people are largely left to their own devices to resolve a structural economic crisis with a little government support–in this case with the aid of a proposed tax plan for all firms that will  purportedly help 100,00 Black firms resolve Black unemployment or a summer jobs program in which Black youth can participate.  And similar to Nixon, who championed “Black capitalism” as a containment strategy to repress Black protest or criticism, Obama’s speech to a CBC increasingly and publicly frustrated with Obama’s response to Black unemployment, champions, albeit in a subtle way,  Black business owners as important social actors who he suggests will be “supported” (but not in a targeted way) through his proposed tax plan.  Like Nixon, Obama doesn’t challenge or address the larger political economy and anti-Black racism that is largely responsible for Black unemployment nor does he  purpose that non-Blacks have any responsibility in the economic life of African Americans, either in causing or resolving it.  Overall, an unwillingness to challenge racist hiring practices  towards Blacks among firms owned by non-Blacks–again 98% of all employer firms–can co-exist with Obama’s championing of Black firms in the name of addressing Black unemployment.

Overall, Obama’s jobs act and his speech to the CBC are examples of what sociologist Charles Gallagher terms “new colorblind racism,” meaning, unlike traditional colorblind racism, the approach minimally acknowledges racial inequality, and in this case, Black unemployment, without addressing racial hierarchies.  Although openly discussing the issue of Black unemployment and proposing a tax measure that will “benefit” all firms–and presumably 100,000 Black businesses as noted in his CBC speech–Obama does not challenge the existing financial disparities among businesses–or the role of  government programs and the financial institutions he perversely protects in shaping these disparities.  Rather, Obama’s CBC speech, in a Nixonian gesture that “recognizes”–some could even say celebrates–Black-owned firms, speaks simultaneously to both Black  middle-class (pro-)capitalists and working-class Black nationalists who value Black business as a sign of community health.  And despite his acknowledgment of the high Black unemployment rate and Black businesses, he also, like Nixon, simultaneously reassures non-Blacks that we will not be affected by his jobs act or by his  directed overtures, at least in speech, to the Black community.  In the end, Obama expects African Americans, in this case Black business owners and Black youth, to  largely shoulder the burden of resolving the Black unemployment crisis.

What Obama’s speech to the CBC demonstrates is not only his neoliberal tendencies but also his clever strategy of appearing race-specific in his policies.  Obama is an expert at racial double-speak and has found a way to promote a white supremacist agenda while still acknowledging race at certain moments.  And he has also found a way to appear as if he is championing African Americans, in the case of his CBC speech, Black business owners, while still permitting business as usual, which includes an unwillingness of non-Black firms to hire African Americans, a lack of government intervention into these hiring practices, an over-emphasis on developing Black human capital, and a capitulation to the white supremacist claim that the state cannot legislate hearts and minds and thus cannot force (job) integration.  While Obama may not win hearts and minds, he doesn’t have to let Blacks suffer just because non-Blacks are racist and are unlikely to stop being so anytime soon.  Instead, he can work towards another version of truly race-specific policies or adopt those that have  already been proposed by African American advocates.  Such initiatives are more likely to address Blacks’ economic status by creating economic programs that specifically target African Americans as a whole instead of simply shifting the burden of resolving Black unemployment on to the Black community.

]]> http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/why-obamas-black-job-plan-wont-resolve-black-unemployment/feed/ 3 tnopper http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/black-unemployment-in-the-multiracial-small-business-industry/ http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/black-unemployment-in-the-multiracial-small-business-industry/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:31:01 +0000 tnopper http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/?p=1230 ]]> Black unemployment in the multiracial small business industry

Tamara K. Nopper

January 13, 2011

A while back, my colleague, an African American college professor, and I were discussing Black unemployment in conversation with one of my areas of research, immigrant and minority-owned business.  She recounted a recent visit to a Dunkin’ Donuts in which she was pleasantly surprised to encounter a middle-aged African American man working at the store.  As she described, she pointed to this man as she thanked the manager of the store, a South Asian American, “for hiring him.”  When I asked what the manager’s reaction was, she told me he beamed instantly in response as if he was paid the highest compliment.  She also mentioned that the African American worker later whispered to her the same reply as expressed by his manager—“thank you.”

This story may seem odd for several reasons.  For one, it is difficult to imagine a white person walking into a business and thanking a manager (of any race) for hiring a fellow white person.  Second, when conversations about race and employment are discussed, a job working at Dunkin’ Donuts is not generally treated as the ideal opportunity by policy makers and advocates.  But let’s consider the significance of this story in relation to several issues: the crisis of Black unemployment, the increasing reliance on small business as a source of employment, and the growing number of non-Black people of color and immigrants in positions to hire employees in small firms.

The crisis of Black unemployment

Among the “civilian non-institutional population,” or those 16 years of age and older residing in the United States and who are not housed in penal, mental, or aging facilities or on active duty in the military, the Black unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) as of December 2010 is 15.2 percent whereas for whites and Asian Americans it is 8.3 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.

Some may attribute the higher rate of Black unemployment to the recession.  Others refute this explanation by drawing attention to how “labor market distress…among Black workers has been at catastrophic levels for decades.”  While “the highest employment rate for African Americans on record was in 2000,” the recency of this all-time high should not be taken as a sign of growing equality.  Allegretto and Pitts point out, “In the tough labor market of today, about one out every four Black workers is underemployed, but even in good times the ratio was one in seven.”  The crisis of Black unemployment, as Allegretto and Pitts explicate, is even more catastrophic when other measures of employment status are taken into account:

The hardship caused by this prolonged recession is not fully captured by the official unemployment rate. A more comprehensive account of economic stress for workers is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the U6—which is a broader measure of labor underutilization.  The U6 or underemployment includes the officially unemployed along with discouraged and marginally attached workers who have fallen out of the labor force and those working part-time because they can not find full-time work. By this measure, the situation in the Black community is dire. The Black underemployment rate went from 14.4% at the beginning of the recession and is now 23.6% just off a recent high, in June 2010, of 25.0%.

In other words, the issue of Black unemployment is not new and cannot be dismissed as specific to the current economic recession.  Many, particularly African Americans, have raised this point so as to counter both colorblind accounts of the recession’s economic impact and assertions of post-racialism after the presidential election of Barack Obama.  More, scholars have challenged conventional explanations and approaches for dealing with racial economic inequality as it relates to Black unemployment, including “the ambiguous (and overstated) relationship between social capital and ghetto underemployment” and the championing of education, as opposed to job creation, as the key to ameliorating Black poverty.  And popular publications have explored the difficulty of college-educated African Americans from getting hired or even garnering an interview in the professional world.

All of these issues are of course important to conversations about race, un/employment, and the enduring color line.  Yet a few interrelated issues remain under-discussed and under-studied when it comes to Black unemployment: the growing significance of small businesses as a source of employment and how racial disparities in business ownership may inform Black unemployment rates.

Small business as source of employment

Small business, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), the only federal government agency dedicated solely to small business development, is measured for research purpose as “independent business having fewer than 500 employees.”  Future research might consider how such an expansive definition, which informs the work of government agencies dedicated to business development, benefits wealthier small businesses more than others.  For now we can consider how, according to this definition, there are more employer businesses in the United States characterized as small (having more than 10 but less than 500 employees) than large.  Indeed, data indicates that the overwhelming majority of businesses in the United States are actually characterized as micro, or having less 10 employees.

Nevertheless, small businesses, as reported by the SBA, “create most of the nation’s new jobs, employ about half of the nation’s private sector work force, and provide half of the nation’s nonfarm, private real gross domestic product (GDP).”  Thus the recession’s impact on small business owners also has implications for employment rates.  The SBA reports, “More than half of the 763,000 jobs lost in the first two quarters of 2008 were lost in small firms, and unincorporated self-employment fell from an average of 10.4 million in 2007 to an average of 10.1 million in 2008—9.6 million by November and December.”

There are of course different types of jobs available in small and micro firms.  Some may be considered “professional jobs” that many college-educated applicants may seek out.  For example, when I worked as an international business consultant, many of the companies for whom I researched and wrote reports were established and run by people with business degrees or who had engineering or medical backgrounds; these companies had the money to enter into the international market and they hired mainly the college-educated, particularly those with business or finance backgrounds.  Yet many jobs in the small business sector, including franchise businesses such as a Dunkin’ Donuts, are being sought out by those without college degrees, certifications, technical skill, or work experience—or at least don’t require these to perform the tasks associated with certain jobs.  This is notably the case in many examples of service work.  Despite the tendency, common among many of the college students whom I teach, to correlate age and job type—where some forms of service work, such as working in a restaurant or being a janitor, is the domain of young people before they graduate from college and get a “real job”—many people of all ages and increasingly different educational backgrounds are employed for the long-term in service work, which now “props up” the U.S. job market.

The growing significance of the small business market for job seekers means that we need to consider how patterns of this industry may relate to the crisis of Black unemployment.  In the next sections, I consider two such patterns: racial disparities in business ownership and hiring practices of minority and immigrant-owned businesses.

Disparities in business ownership

As previously mentioned, the majority of businesses in the United States would be first characterized as micro and then small.  The Survey of Business Owners (SBO)—administered every five years by the U.S. Census Bureau—found relative parity, in 2002, among racial groups in terms of the percentage of employer firms that were micro, or had less than 10 employees.  About 80 percent of white-owned employer firms were micro whereas 85 percent of those owned by Blacks were.  For both Asian American-owned and Hispanic-owned employer firms, 84 percent were micro.  The Census Bureau, while releasing some of the data from the 2007 SBO, has not yet made available all of the data regarding the employer size of firms among racial groups as it tends to take several years after the survey is administered for findings to fully become public.

What 2007 data is available shows much greater racial disparities in patterns of business ownership than may be gleaned from the relatively similar percentages of micro employer firms among racial groups.  Regarding all nonfarm firms (with or without employees), whites owned 83 percent whereas Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race owned about 7 percent, 6 percent, and 8 percent, respectively.  Whites owned 81 percent of all firms with paid employees, whereas Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race owned 2 percent, 7 percent, and 4 percent, respectively.  The total payroll for white-owned firms was $1.9 trillion, and for firms owned by Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race, it was $23.9 billion, $82 billion, and $54.7 billion, respectively.

Part of the disparity in annual and average payrolls has to do with differences in the sales, receipts, and value of shipments.  Among firms with paid employees, racial differences in this area are striking: white-owned businesses have $9.4 trillion and firms owned by Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race have $98.8 billion, $461 billion, and about $275 billion, respectively.  This disparity may also partially explain other differences, such as the average annual pay per employee.  White-owned firms employ a reported 53 million employees earning an average of $34,843.  Of course, around $35,000 is not a lot for a person to make.  Yet out of all racial groups, white-owned firms have the highest amount of average pay per employee; workers in businesses owned by Blacks, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race earn an average amount of $25,971, $28,650, and $28,267.   While the average amounts earned by employees working in businesses owned by non-whites fall in the same range, African Americans, notably have the lowest amount.  Indeed, out of all racial or ethnic groups, including those in the category of Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander and American Indian or Alaska Native, employees of Black-owned firms earn the lowest average amount.

Additionally, the number of employees in employer firms differs by the racial background of the owner.  With 53 million employees, white-owned businesses provide jobs to about 45% of the 118 million employees counted by all employer firms.  Conversely, firms owned by Blacks reported about 920,000 employees whereas those owned by Asian Americans and Hispanics of any race reported 2.9 million, and 1.9 million respectively.  Stated another way, Black-owned employer firms only employ 2 percent of the people working in businesses owned by whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics of any race.

Race and hiring patterns among non-Black people of color and immigrants

One reason why these racial disparities in business ownership matter is because studies show that African Americans are often considered the least desirable workers by business owners and managers.  In many cases, employers often express more interest or satisfaction in other non-white groups, including those with an immigrant background, thereby reinforcing what W.E.B. Du Bois once described as “the color line within the color line.” Employers often associate African Americans with pejoratives such as being lazy, criminal, complaining, and expecting too many rights (as if this is a bad thing).  Conversely, other non-white groups, such as Asian Americans and Latinos, are considered hard-working, disciplined, easy to deal with, and perhaps most importantly, grateful.

Some, such as sociologist William Julius Wilson, have reified rather than challenged these employer perspectives by calling for African Americans to develop “soft skills”—disposition, work ethic, and ability to communicate with clientele—to combat Black joblessness.  While I have encountered plenty of rude African American workers, the emphasis on communication skills as a factor in Black unemployment is striking since it begs two questions.  One is, why is there a relatively lower unemployment rate among whites when many of them are incompetent, do their jobs poorly, and in the case of retail, treat many customers, particularly non-whites, with utter disdain?  The other is, how do immigrants demonstrate communicative soft skills among diverse customers when many of them speak limited English and sometimes are rude as hell?

Whatever the case, the bulk of the studies investigating the soft skills thesis as well as employers’ racial perceptions and hiring patterns have included samples of either racially unspecified employers (whom we can presume to be white) or those primarily comprised of white and Black respondents.  The focus on white employers makes some sense given that whites own about 80 percent of the businesses that have paid employees and my emphasis here on minority-owned and immigrant-owned enterprises is not meant to suggest we should cease being critical of the role white employers play in unemployment patterns among all non-white groups and African Americans specifically.  Yet the growing number of minority-owned businesses necessitates more studies examining the racial perceptions and hiring practices of non-Black people of color.  There are of course, some exceptions, such as an article recently published in the Journal of Labor Economics that examines the linkage between the race of managers and the race of the workforce:

Using more than two years of personnel data from a large U.S. retail chain, the study found that when a black manager in a typical store is replaced by a white, Asian or Hispanic manager, the share of newly hired blacks falls from 21 to 17 percent, and the share of whites hired rises from 60 to 64 percent. The effect is even stronger for stores located in the South, where the replacement of a black manager causes the share of newly hired blacks to fall from 29 to 21 percent. In locations with large Hispanic populations, Hispanics hire more Hispanics and fewer whites than white managers.

While this study examines the hiring practices of those working for a large retail chain, we  may also consider how such dynamics may operate in the small business retail sector, including those owned by ethnic or racial minorities.  In her examination of the hiring patterns of 75 white Jewish, Korean American, and Black merchants in predominantly Black areas of New York City and Philadelphia, sociologist Jennifer Lee found that in the latter city, merchants, including African Americans who had immigrant backgrounds, tended to prefer Black immigrants to African Americans.

Despite these, and a few other studies, little research in the area of immigrant entrepreneurship, as opposed to the literature explicitly studying Black joblessness and race and hiring, has critically examined the racial hiring preferences of immigrant and non-Black people of color entrepreneurs, a noticeable absence given that immigrants own about 11 percent of businesses with employees and that firms owned by Asian Americans and Latino/as employ over three times and two times the number of employees, respectively, than firms owned by African Americans.

I raised these issues in a class I recently taught that explored the relationship between globalization and immigrant and minority-owned business.  When examining theoretical debates about immigrant businesses as a source of jobs, I pointed out a limitation of the literature: although it explores whether jobs in immigrant-owned firms are exploitative or a step ladder to managerial positions or entrepreneurship, most studies do not discuss hiring discrimination among immigrant (of color) entrepreneurs.  Indeed, the word discrimination doesn’t come up much in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature as more benign terms such as “networks” or “kin” are used.  I asked my students if we should consider some of the practices labeled as networking to be indicative of discrimination?  My students seemed perplexed, perhaps because the concept of networking has become so hegemonic to the point where the inherent selectivity in the process is often not considered, thereby making it unlikely that some will call it discriminatory.  Additionally, unlike the urban studies and race and poverty literature which explicitly investigates employers’ racial perceptions of workers and applicants, the immigrant entrepreneurship literature provides few clues for how to deal with questions of discrimination.

In trying to propose solutions to the issue of unfair hiring, one student argued that the most qualified person should be hired.  I asked the class, what do we do in the situation where resumes don’t apply, as in the case of many small businesses, or in which people are competing for jobs that aren’t normally associated with high or middle skills, such as mopping floors or washing dishes or making coffee?  Many of my students seemed stumped, perhaps because many of them have not, as they shared, either worked in a service job or come from families who make a living doing so.

I shared several anecdotes with my class so as to engage the limitations of the immigrant entrepreneurship literature.  For example, I mentioned how some small businesses may have a following among African Americans but never hire Blacks.  I described how a popular Greek-owned pizza shop near where I live has many African American customers but I have never seen one Black person working there (the kitchen is an open one) but they hire different Latino ethnic groups, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, and whites.  Another story I recounted was about the time I once asked the owner of a popular Middle Eastern restaurant in downtown Philadelphia that I frequented if he would be open to hiring someone I knew and who I strongly recommended.  When I said the name of the man who I suggested, he nodded and told me to bring him in and that he would hire him or get him a job in one of his friends’ businesses.  But when I brought the man, an African American with an “Arab-sounding name” to the restaurant, the Lebanese business owner never followed through in helping get him the job that he had, a week earlier, told me was available.  All of this when the applicant had work experience in restaurants and was earning a college degree, in other words, he had the criteria of which the absence of purportedly hurts Black applicants’ chances of being hired.  The restaurant, while serving good food, is known for their terrible service, provided by both Middle Eastern and white young men and women.  A few Middle Easterners and Latinos cook in the kitchen.

I also mentioned to my students how this racial exclusivity may even occur among businesses that are considered “progressive,” as in the case of an African-owned coffee shop in a primarily Black residential area in Philadelphia which has become the hub of progressives with customers running the gamut from white anarchists, African Americans, and non-Black people of color.  Yet in all of the times I have been there (over several years and at different days and times) I have never seen African Americans working—only whites, Africans, and Latinos.  I also pointed out that in some cases, small businesses can hire Black employees and still segregate them in ways that are consistent with negative stereotypes of African Americans, as seen at a breakfast restaurant in North Philadelphia that I have frequented since I arrived in Philadelphia.  While the store is Korean immigrant-owned, the staff is all Black and Latino/a, an anomaly for an Asian-owned business.  Yet the owners, a hetero-married couple, are the only ones who are permitted to touch the cash register or conduct financial transactions with customers, who, before the full-scale gentrification of the neighborhood, were primarily Black.  The Black staff, who spoke fluent English, were required to bring the bill and the money to the cash register while customers waited patiently for the Korean owners—who were not proficient in English, including the urban slang spoken among some of the customers—to interpret the bill and open the cash register.

As I emphasized to the class, the types of small businesses commonly owned by immigrant entrepreneurs—restaurants, coffee shops, clothing stores, hair stores, delis, bodegas, small groceries, dollar stores, franchise restaurants, etc.—most likely involve applicants being seen by either the business owner, the manager, or other staff members when they are submitting their application or inquiring about job openings.  Put simply the applicants’ race may be more readily viewed and thus may not be as easily concealed by processes that may help increase the chances of being called for an interview (but not necessarily hired) such as “whitening the resume,” i.e., removing indicators of one’s ethnic or racial background in an effort to make one’s resume more “universal.”  I told my students another story, which did not include an immigrant entrepreneur but did exemplify my point: while in college I worked at an independently-owned fast food restaurant at the mall in my hometown.  The then (longtime) manager is a white man.  He loved listening to hard core rap and dated a Black woman.  Some of my co-workers were African American, two of whom were on welfare.  One of them struggled with a drug addiction, as did some of my white co-workers (I remember someone pointing out that one white male worker was always wearing long-sleeve shirts—even in the summer—under his uniform shirt, to cover up signs of his heroin habit).  Despite the diversity of the staff and the range of problems that all racial groups had, I was told by the white manager to tell him the race of the applicant when I gave him an application submitted by a shopper at the mall.  Someone non-Black mentioned that customers were concerned there were too many Black workers at the restaurant.  At the time, there were only about four Black workers out of a staff of ten.

Conclusion

I raised these stories of Black employment in my class so as to critically engage some of the limitations in the existing immigrant entrepreneurship literature.   A few students expressed disinterest or annoyance at my anecdotes.  Indeed, one white student in the class seemed particularly bothered, not by the content of my stories it seemed, but rather with me telling them.  She demanded that I provide national data to demonstrate my points and then was upset when I could not.

While we can wonder whether the demand for national data came from a hostile place, the request is intellectually intriguing.  It is also highly unlikely to be met anytime soon. According to law professor Tanya Hernandez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) focuses on employers as opposed to individual workers and thus does not collect data on the racial background of perpetrators of racial discrimination or harassment on the job.  While the groundbreaking Multi-city Study  of Urban Inequality explored some of the issues I raised, I know of no national survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Labor, or the Department of Justice that has asked entrepreneurs or managers about their racial views of applicants and employees or what racial treatment people receive on the job if hired.

While I doubt a national survey will ever be taken by the federal government, we can consider why there isn’t more research as well as public debate regarding Black unemployment in the multiracial small business industry in which an increasing number of non-Black people of color and immigrants have the potential to hire staff.  While the issue of racial discrimination and hiring has been largely covered, the immigrant entrepreneurship literature, with few exceptions, has yet to fully address this issue.  I don’t know why this is but I wonder if the absence may be related to two dynamics. One being the tendency to valorize immigrant-owned businesses as evidence of immigrants’ belief in the American dream of social mobility through hard work and discipline—a characterization that has made it difficult for people, from academics to customers to advocates, to raise critical questions about the racial perceptions and behavior of immigrant entrepreneurs.  The other is the tendency to associate small businesses, particularly those with a small staff or owned by immigrants, with networking, kinship, and family labor, which often results in a lack of scrutiny about hiring processes.  Many immigrants of color actually hire non-family labor but the unfortunate tendency to assume that some immigrants of color, such as Asians, “look alike” may influence people’s perceptions that workers are biologically related.  More, the common employment of Latino/a immigrants, particularly Latino men, in small businesses suggests that we can’t assume every worker is related to the owner unless we simply believe that whites, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, and Blacks (including those who are African American or Caribbean or African nationals), all have a Latino/a cousin or two they’ve decided to employ.  Whatever the case, the academic literature, as well as the general public, has tended to give small mom and pop stores, including those owned by whites, as well as immigrant-owned businesses in particular, a free pass when it comes to not hiring African Americans.

Additionally, we can consider what role the “diversity defense” plays in subverting critical questions of the hiring practices of small businesses.  As Hernandez describes, the diversity defense involves “the way in which legal actors view a racially ‘diverse’ workplace as the equivalent of a racially harmonious workplace,” “lack of judicial knowledge about non-White racial hierarchies generally,” and “viewing all people of color as the same and overlooking the particular histories of racial animus within and across different ethnic groups,” which  “can cause a perceived equivalence of workplace diversity and racial harmony.”   While Hernandez is preoccupied with discrimination law, her diversity defense framework is relevant for my emphasis on Black unemployment in the multiracial small business industry.  How might anti-Black discrimination against African American applicants and workers be obscured by a non-white, i.e., “diverse” staff?  In other words, if Asian Americans or Latino/as or Black immigrants are seen working in a small business (owned by any race), are questions about the absence or segregation of African American staff off the table?

Oddly, academics have actually addressed the diversity defense more than progressive activists of color.  I say oddly since I have found that academics are usually behind activists when it comes to identifying social dynamics to investigate.  While the scholarship doesn’t always use the phrase “diversity defense,” there is a good deal of literature examining how employers prefer non-Black people of color over Black workers and use this diversity to conceal and defend their anti-Black racism.  Progressive activists of color, including those with access to the media, tend to not raise the issue of Black unemployment as it relates to the hiring practices of immigrants and people of color, perhaps because it troubles the demand for multiracial coalition.  Whatever the case, it is noticeable that when it comes to the issue of Black unemployment, the academic literature, even with its limitations, is actually more willing to critically engage the topic of Black unemployment in relation to non-Black people of color than many progressive activists.

Why I oppose repealing DADT & passage of the Dream Act

Tamara K. Nopper

September 19, 2010

One of the first books I read about Asian American feminism was the anthology Dragon ladies: Asian American feminists breathe fire.  In one of the essays, author Juliana Pegues describes scenes from a “radical Asian women’s movement.”  One such scene involves lesbian and bisexual Asian and Pacific Islanders marching at Gay Pride with signs reading “Gay white soldiers in Asia?  Not my liberation!” and “ends with the absence of all soldiers, gay and straight, from any imperialist army.”

Although it has been over a decade since I read this passage, I return to this “scene” as I watch far too many liberals and progressives praise the possible repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) as well as the possible passage of the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act).

In some ways, I understand why people are supportive of such gestures.  The idea that certain identities and status categories, such as gay or lesbian or (undocumented) immigrants are either outlawed or treated as social problems has rightfully generated a great deal of sympathy.  And the very real ways that people experience marginalization or discrimination—ranging from a lack of certain rights to violence, including death—certainly indicates that solutions are needed. Further, far too many non-whites have experienced disproportionate disadvantages, surveillance, and discipline from both DADT and anti-immigrant legislation.  For example, Black women, some of whom are not lesbians, have been disproportionately discharged from the U.S. military under DADT.  And anti-immigrant legislation, policing measures, and vigilante xenophobic racism is motivated by and reinforces white supremacy and white nationalism.

Yet both the repeal of DADT and the passage of the DREAM Act will increase the size and power of the U.S. military and the Department of Defense, which is already the largest U.S. employer. Repealing DADT will make it easier for gays and lesbians to openly serve and the Dream Act in its present incarnation may provide a pathway to  legal residency and possibly citizenship for some undocumented immigrant young people if they serve two years in the U.S. military or spend an equal amount of time in college.

Unsurprisingly, the latter, being pushed by Democrats, is getting support from “many with close ties to the military and higher education.”  As the Wall Street Times reports:

Pentagon officials support the Dream Act. In its strategic plan for fiscal years 2010-2012, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness cited the Dream Act as a ‘smart’ way to attract quality recruits to the all-volunteer force…

‘Passage of the Dream Act would be extremely beneficial to the U.S. military and the country as a whole,’ said Margaret Stock, a retired West Point professor who studies immigrants in the military. She said it made ‘perfect’ sense to attach it to the defense-authorization bill.

Louis Caldera, secretary of the Army under President Bill Clinton, said that as they struggled to meet recruiting goals, ‘recruiters at stations were telling me it would be extremely valuable for these patriotic people to be allowed to serve our country.’

Additionally, in a 2009 Department of Defense strategic plan report, the second strategic goal, “Shape and maintain a mission-ready All Volunteer Force,”  lists the DREAM Act as a possible recruitment tool under one of the “performance objectives”:

Recruit the All-Volunteer Force by finding smart ways to sustain quality assurance even as we expand markets to fill manning at controlled costs as demonstrated by achieving quarterly recruiting quality and quantity goals, and through expansion of the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program and the once-medically restricted populations, as well as the DREAM initiative.

What concerns me is that far too many liberals and progressives, including those who serve as professional commentators on cable news and/or progressive publications (and some with a seemingly deep affinity for the Democratic Party) have been praising the passage of the DREAM Act.  Unsurprising is that many of the same people support the repeal of DADT.  While a  sincere concern about discrimination may unite both gestures, so too does a lack of critical perspective regarding the U.S. military as one of the main vehicles in the expansion and enforcement of U.S. imperialism, heterosexuality, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and repression against political dissent and people’s movements in the United States and abroad. Far too many liberals and progressives, including those critical of policies or the squashing of political dissent, take an ambivalent stance on the U.S. military.  It is unclear what makes some of these folks unwilling to openly oppose the military state.  Perhaps it’s easier than dealing with the backlash from a variety of people, including the many people of color and/or women who are now building long-term careers in the military.  Or maybe it’s more amenable to building careers as pundits in both corporate and progressive media,  both of which may be critical of some defense spending or “wasted” (read unsuccessful) military efforts but not necessarily of U.S. militarism.

Whatever the case, the inclusion of more gays and lesbians and/or undocumented immigrant youth in the U.S. military is not an ethical project given that both gestures are willing to have our communities serve as mercenaries in exchange for certain rights, some of which are never fully guaranteed in a homophobic and white supremacist country.  Nor is it pragmatic.  By supporting the diversification of the U.S. military we undermine radical democratic possibilities by giving the military state more people, many of whom will ultimately die in combat or develop PTSD and health issues and/or continue nurturing long-term relationships with the U.S. military, including a political affinity with its culture and goals.  We will also have a more difficult time challenging projects of privatization, the incurring of huge amounts of debt, and the erosion of rights and protections in other countries—efforts buttressed by the threat of military action—which ultimately affects people in the United States.

Of course I am not the first person to raise these concerns.  As the comment from Pegues, with which I began, reveals, there are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folks, many of them non-white and non-middle class, who promote a queer politic that challenges the heternormative desires of mainstream movements, including that pushed by some LGBT organizations and their purported “allies” within the Democratic party and heternormative people of color organizations.  Some of these folks organize for better economic opportunities, access to housing, and safer existences in the civilian sector for poor and working-class LGBTs.  And some also  openly oppose military recruitment or challenge the push for gays and lesbians to (openly) serve in the military by countering  with “Don’t serve” as a slogan. For example, Cecilia Lucas, who grew up in a military family, writes in a 2010 Counter Punch article:

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is bad policy. It encourages deceit and, specifically, staying in the closet, which contributes to internalized as well as public homophobia, thus perpetuating discrimination and violence against LGBT people. Banning gay people from serving in the military, however, is something I support. Not because I’m anti-gay, nope, I’m one of those queer folks myself. I’m also a woman and would support a law against women serving in the military. Not because I think women are less capable. I would support laws against any group of people serving in the military: people of color, tall people, people between the ages of 25 and 53, white men, poor people, people who have children, people who vote for Democrats—however you draw the boundaries of a group, I would support a law banning them from military service. Because I support outlawing the military. And until that has happened, I support downsizing it by any means necessary, including, in this one particular arena, sacrificing civil rights in the interest of human rights…

It is tricky to write an essay that accepts discrimination as a means to an end. In what remains a homophobic, racist, sexist society, I fear enabling a slippery slope of arguments for identity-based discrimination. Although, of course, the entire notion of citizens who are “protected” by a military discriminates against people based on the identity factor of nationality. Hence my point about human rights trumping civil rights. My argument that we should be fighting against, not for, gay people’s inclusion in the military is not actually about gay people at all. Nor is it about wanting others to do our dirty work for us. As I said, I think everyone should be banned from military service. But if the goal is demilitarization, fighting for even more people to have the right to join the military makes no sense. There are plenty of other civil rights denied gay people for which we still need to fight—civil rights that do not trample on others’ human rights.

As Lucas’s comments reveal, opposing LGBT folks from serving openly in the military is not to condone the harassment and unfair surveillance that they experience; nor is it meant to support a culture that suggests they should stay in the closet in the name of military stability and national security.  Rather, it is to discourage the attractiveness of military enlistment as well as martial citizenship, a process that  provides marginalized groups a “pathway to citizenship” via military service.  More, opposition to people serving in the military is also grounded in an understanding that the military negatively impacts practically everyone in the world (including those in the United States), and in particular people of color and/or women and/or gays and lesbians, and not just those who are discriminated against while serving or who are expected to serve as pathways to citizenship or access to education.

Along with folks like Lucas, there are immigrants and their allies challenging us to rethink the possible passage of the DREAM Act because of its pro-military provision and for basically “making a pool of young, bilingual, U.S.-educated, high-achieving students available to the recruiters.” Some have withdrawn their support for the current version of the act in objection to its terms.   For example, a letter from one such person, Raúl Al-qaraz Ochoa,  states:

Passage of the DREAM Act would definitely be a step forward in the struggle for Migrant Justice. Yet the politicians in Washington have hijacked this struggle from its original essence and turned dreams into ugly political nightmares. I refuse to be a part of anything that turns us into political pawns of dirty Washington politics. I want my people to be “legalized” but at what cost? We all want it bad. I hear it. I’ve lived it. but I think it’s a matter of how much we’re willing to compromise in order to win victories or crumbs…So if I support the DREAM Act, does this mean I am okay with our people being used as political pawns? Does this mean that my hands will be smeared with the same bloodshed the U.S. spills all over the world? Does this mean I am okay with blaming my mother and my father for migrating “illegally” to the U.S.? Am I willing to surrender to all that in exchange for a benefit? Maybe it’s easier for me to say that “I can” because I have papers, right? I’d like to think that it’s because my political principles will not allow me to do so, regardless of my citizenship status or personal benefit at stake. Strong movements that achieve greater victories are those that stand in solidarity with all oppressed people of the world and never gain access to rights at the expense of other oppressed groups.

I have come to a deeply painful decision: I can no longer in good political conscience support the DREAM Act because the essence of a beautiful dream has been detained by a colonial nightmare seeking to fund and fuel the U.S. empire machine.

Unfortunately, the willingness of folks like Lucas and Al-qaraz Ochoa as well as others to critically engage  military diversification or the passage of the DREAM Act given its military provisions have gotten less air time or attention among liberal and progressives actively pushing for both measures.  In terms of repealing DADT, it is unfortunately not surprising that the rejection of military inclusion by LGBT folks has gotten minimal attention from professional progressives, some of whom are straight.  Too many straight people who profess to be LGBT allies tend to align themselves with the liberal professional wings of LGBT politics given shared bourgeois notions of “respectable” (i.e., not offensive to straight people) gay politics that also promote a middle-class notion of democracy—and supports the Democratic Party.  Additionally, it’s more time efficient to find out what professional LGBT organizations think since they are more likely to have resources to make it easier to learn their agendas without as much effort as learning from those who politically labor in the margins of the margins given their critical stances toward the political mainstream.  Yet given the tendency for many professional progressives to be on the internet and social media sites, it is a bit telling that many have supported DADT without addressing the critical stances of some LGBT folks against the military state that are easily available on the internet.  This noticeable lack of engagement raises some questions: Why is it that the straight progressives are more willing to have gays and lesbians serve in the U.S. military (or get married) than, let’s say, breaking bread with and seriously considering the political views of LGBT folks who take radical political stances against the military state (as well as engage in non-middle-class aesthetics)?  And why do many straight progressives fight for LGBT folks to openly serve in the military—one of the most dangerous employment sites that requires its laborers to kill and control others, including non-whites and/or LGBTs, in the name of empire—but rarely discuss how working-class, poor, and/or of color LGBTs are treated and politically organize for opportunities in the civilian sector job market where they are also expected to remain closeted, subject to homophobic harassment and surveillance, or excluded  altogether?

Also concerning is the willingness of many progressives to support the DREAM Act despite it possibly being tied up to a defense-authorization bill and having support from a diverse group of people united by a commitment to military recruitment.  While some support is due to a righteous critique of white supremacy that shapes pathways to citizenship, some (also) support the DREAM Act because it serves as a form of “reparations” for foreign policies and colonialism toward third world or developing countries once called home to many of the immigrant youth or their families targeted by the  legislation  That is, the famous quote “We’re here because you were there” seems to be the underlying mantra of some pushing for the act’s passage.  Yet if “being there” involved the U.S. military, it is unclear how a resolution to this issue, ethically or pragmatically, calls for immigrant youth to serve for the same U.S. military that devastated, disrupted, undermined, and still controls many of the policies and everyday life of the immigrants’ homelands.

Partially to blame for the uncritical support of the DREAM Act are different factions of the immigrant rights movement, as well as funders and some progressive media, that have pushed for an uncritical embrace of the immigrant rights movement among progressives.  It is difficult to raise critical views of the (diverse) immigrant rights movement, even when making it clear that one rejects the white supremacy and white nationalism of the right wing (as well as white-run progressive media and progressive institutions, such as some labor unions) without experiencing some backlash from other progressives, particularly people of color.  In turn, critical questions about how immigrant rights movements may support, rather than undermine U.S. hegemony or white supremacy, have been taken off the table at most progressive gatherings, large and small.  Subsequently, while some may express concern about the DREAM Act being part of a defense-authorization bill, there are probably fewer who will openly take stands against the bill given the threat of being labeled xenophobic by some progressives unwilling to reject the U.S. military state or interrogate the politics of immigration from an anti-racist and anti-capitalist perspective.  In the process, the military may end up getting easier access to immigrant youth who may have difficulty going to college.

As the passage from Dragon ladies shows, some take into account the complexity of identities and political realities as well as maintain oppositional stances against those apparatuses that are largely responsible for the limited choices far too many people have.  Many of us are looking for ways to mediate the very real vulnerabilities and lack of job security, as well as forms of social rejection that causes the stress, fear, and physical consequences experienced before and especially during this recession.  And given the recent upsurge in explicit gestures of white supremacy and white nationalism as demonstrated by the growing strength of the Tea Party, it may be the most expedient to play up on the shared support of the U.S. military among a broad spectrum of people in order to secure, at least on paper, some basic rights to which straight and/or white people have gotten access.  But progressives who support the repeal of DADT and passage of the DREAM Act might instead consider other political possibilities explored by some of those who are the subjects of such policy debates; these folks, some of whom are desperately in need of protection, job security, and safety, encourage us to resist the urge for quick resolutions that ultimately serve to stabilize the military state and instead explore more humane options—for those targeted by DADT and the DREAM Act as well as the rest of the world.

*The image used with this article is created by Chris Vargas for Against equality: Queer challenges to the politics of inclusion.

**Thanks to Bruce A. Dixon’s commentary on the DREAM Act in Black Agenda Report (BAR), which gave a link to the 2009 DOD Report, to which a reference was inserted in this article after Dixon’s appeared in the September 22, 2010 edition of BAR.

I wrote this in 2008, before I had my own blog; Kenyon Farrow graciously posted it on his blog.  To deal with the stress of the situation I detail, I wrote notes and ideas on the little white bag provided in the seat pockets to passengers during my flight.  I couldn’t write my way out of the situation I experienced but I knew when I got off the plane that I was going to go home and write this essay.

“Southwest Airlines & ‘The Souls of White Folk’”

Tamara K. Nopper

March 2, 2008

In his 1920 essay “The Souls of White Folk,” African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois raised the question: “‘But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?’” Answering his own query, Du Bois responded, “Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!”

A recent incident I had while flying on Southwest Airlines demonstrates Du Bois’ point. I therefore detail the situation here both to document it and to theorize its relevance for understanding contemporary white supremacy.

As is practice with Southwest, I had boarded the plane when my category of seating was called. Having been lucky enough to download the boarding pass for category A, I was among the first to pick my seat. Shortly after sitting down, an older white man sat in the seat next to mine. He then proceeded to spread his legs wide open as if, to quote a wise person I know, “he thought he had balls the size of pumpkins.” In response to the uninvited pressing, I requested room for my legs. The man then proceeded to imperiously point his finger to the floor to emphasize that his feet were within the boundary of his seats. He never addressed the fact that his legs were spread beyond them so as to invade my space and press up against my body. Instead, he said to me, “You’re a big girl.” Talking on my cell phone, I interrupted my conversation to calmly tell the man “Don’t fucking talk to me that way.”

With his right hand, the man reached across himself to grab my left arm. With my arm in his grip, he looked me in the eyes through his glasses and replied, “I’m going to slap you in your mouth.” I freed myself from him and then stood up. I called out to the steward at the front of the plane that I needed assistance since I had just been grabbed by the person sitting next to me. Hurriedly, the man bolted out of his seat, muttering that he would move. As he exited the row he made it a point to emphasize that I had cussed at him, neglecting the fact that he had made the comment that initiated our negative exchange.

I turned around to be met by a young, white woman steward named Crystal G. Webb. When I told her that I had been assaulted by the man who was now making a mad dash for a seat a few rows back, she began to laugh. As she bit her lip, a smirk escaped. I informed her that I did not appreciate her laughing and that I did not pay to be assaulted on a plane. She then asked me if I wanted to speak to her supervisor, to which I said yes.

Ms. Webb returned with an older white woman named Ms. Terri Parker. Wearing a Southwest uniform that was more official than that worn by Ms. Webb, she led the two of them as they approached my seat. Before she reached me, another older white man had sat down in the seat that had been vacated by my assailant.

I repeated my story to Ms. Parker, adding that Ms. Webb had laughed at my concerns. Ms. Parker asked me if I would like to press charges. I said yes. However, I changed my mind when I learned that it would require me to get off the plane with the man who had assaulted me and be placed on a later flight.

That should have been the end of it since I should have been able to choose whether or not to press charges. But, as Du Bois pointed out, the nature of white supremacy requires that white people own everything, including the last and final word. True to form, Ms. Parker made it a point to remind me that I had cussed at the man, an issue I never concealed when describing the situation. I reminded Ms. Parker that the man had said to me that I was a big girl. Notwithstanding the fact that I am a grown woman in my thirties, I am also an Asian American. And I am an Asian American woman who does not meet the racialized and sexualized body expectations that is omnipresent in the white racial imagination. Overall, as I mentioned to Ms. Parker, I thought that the man had felt comfortable pressing his leg into mine and then defending his actions with insults because I was a non-white woman.

Nevertheless, white supremacy does not yield to rationality. Instead, appeals to rationality will often make white people angrier. It appears that my incident with Southwest was no exception. Throughout the conversation, Ms. Parker rebuffed practically all of my concerns. For example, when I pointed out that the man had made a comment about my body that I thought was racist and sexist, Ms. Parker responded that she did not know what he meant. I pointed out to her that she did not have to think very hard to imagine what he meant since his comment was fairly explicit. When Ms. Parker continued to emphasize that I had cussed at the man, I asked her if this gave me license to grab, and threaten with another assault anyone on the plane who might cuss at me. Appearing to grow angrier with my appeals to her rationality—which was simply an act of bad faith, or a lie to myself—Ms. Parker repeated that I had cussed at the man. I asked her if she thought that I “brought” being manhandled and threatened “on myself.” She said no. I then told her that I did not need her to lecture me regarding my language since no one was addressing the man who had assaulted me.

Perhaps unable to watch a fellow white person being held accountable by an Asian American, the white man who was now sitting next to me jumped in the fray. He interrupted us to tell me that he did not think that Ms. Parker was lecturing me. She thanked him. I calmly turned to him and replied, “This situation does not concern you.” Ms. Parker, perhaps encouraged by—but not requiring—the support of this white stranger then told me that she would have me removed from the plane for attacking him. I had never raised my voice, pointed a finger, or laid a hand on this man. But somehow, telling the man to mind his own business when he was defending a white woman constituted an attack.

At this point I was not only stressed out, I was very scared. I was aware that I was on a plane that had, as I had estimated, about five non-white people on it. And this included the racially ambiguous individuals that I included in my count just so I didn’t feel so isolated. But isolated I was as I watched Ms. Parker apparently grow more livid and confident. At one point, she told me that I was “cussing at her,” to which I tried to explain that I was merely repeating what was said during the initial exchange. At another point she began to yell at me that she wanted to see my “ID.” To keep myself calm, I thought of Du Bois’ sage reflection: “I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them embarrassed, now furious!” Humiliated, I nevertheless calmly asked why she needed to see identification. She told me she wanted it for my “Southwest file.” The thought of having my name added to a mysterious file was obviously unattractive, so I just looked at her blankly and kept repeating to all of her comments, “Yes, Ms. Parker.” She appeared to grow more incensed the more I called her Ms. Parker. She then reminded me that I was the one who had wanted to press charges and therefore should not have a problem now with showing my ID. Remembering that earlier in the conversation Ms. Parker had mentioned that she had police waiting outside, I tried to diffuse the situation as it became apparent that I was now the accused.

I was, in my mind, morally accused of going outside of the boundaries expected of me as an Asian American woman. While Asian American women have become, as scholar Susan Koshy describes, the desired partner of white heterosexual men due to racist and sexist perceptions of being both appropriately submissive and sexually deviant, my behavior was probably viewed as similar to that racistly associated with Black people. Consistent with white supremacist images of Blacks, I was taken as loud, unwilling to compromise, unapologetic, inappropriately masculine, and making stuff bigger than it is.

A Black person would have most certainly been arrested and forcibly removed. I was, most probably due to being Asian American, not. I was nevertheless racially guilty of transgressing three boundaries. First, I had demanded parity with a white person. Second, I had attempted to hold a white person accountable for his actions. And third, I had the nerve to describe my situation and critically assess it within an understanding of anti-white supremacist racial and gender politics. Indeed, it appears that transgressing the second and third boundaries was perhaps what invoked the most hostility. For example, while she chastised me loudly, Ms. Parker dealt with the white man who had assaulted me quite differently. Now hunched down in seat 12a, the man was approached by Ms. Parker who asked him if he had grabbed me. I did not hear his reply but I did hear Ms. Parker ask him if he apologized. Apparently he said yes because Ms. Parker returned to my row to inform me that the man had apologized, as if that was that. Perhaps angry that I was still not arguing with her, this conversation concluded with Ms. Parker threatening to take down my identification unless I promised to not talk about the situation with any other customer on the plane. Not knowing what else to do, I simply said yes.

As I resigned myself to a long ride next to the white man who had chastised me on behalf of Ms. Parker, I began to weep. My body shook with the stress of that experience and the knowledge that this was not an isolated incident. I have, as have many of my friends, indeed, the majority of the world, experienced this type of situation so many times: having white people tell you that what happened to you does not matter, that it is your fault, or that it did not even happen. I also wept because I was scared. I knew I had no way out because in the end I could not win against white moral authority because they owned what is taken as true. While I could write out the facts of my case, it made no difference. Indeed, consistent with various U.S. court cases that restricted non-white people’s ability to testify on their own behalf or on behalf of their kin, I was basically reminded over and over again throughout the incident that I had nothing to say that was legitimate. Indeed, I was threatened with further discipline if I spoke at all.

Yet the white man who had defended Ms. Parker continued to talk to me, even as I sobbed. He tried to get me to stop crying, perhaps because it made reading his Dean Koontz novel less enjoyable. Engaging in another act of bad faith, I pathetically tried to appeal to his sense of white ownership by asking him if he had any daughters. At that point I was just trying to make peace with the man I would be forced to sit next to for the next three hours. He told me he had several. I asked him if he would like his daughters to be talked to the way I was. He told me no, and that the man was clearly sexist in talking about my body. Yet this did not stop the Koontz reader from repeatedly pressing his leg against mine throughout the flight, a gesture I felt afraid to address for fear that I would be accused of causing more problems.

Additionally, the man felt it necessary to reiterate that Ms. Parker was not lecturing me. I explained to the man (another act of bad faith) that if he had disagreed with Ms. Parker, she may not have been so angry at me for asking him to not get involved. Perhaps my comment was what compelled him to paternalistically say that he knew that this could not go well for me. This assessment was coupled with the conclusion that Ms. Parker was simply doing her job and was just trying to make things as easy as possible. An excuse that I have heard given by many apologists of white supremacy, such an assessment did little to ease my anger or fear. Nor was I comforted by his revealing that he was a civil rights attorney and therefore “knew” these things. The thought of people relying on this man to defend their legal rights in court only made me feel worse. Well, perhaps that is an overstatement; I felt pretty shitty when, before the flight took off, Ms. Parker addressed my tears by asking, in a soothing voice, if I was okay. In the blink of an eye, Ms. Parker had gone from white cop to white mommy and I had to accept both positions.

Demonstrated by my experience, whiteness, as Du Bois pointed out, is defined by its ability to own everything. In this present stage of white supremacy marked by an explicit and ubiquitous fear of white loss, this ownership hinges on two political claims: white suffering matters most and whites have a monopoly on moral authority. As white people express more and more dissatisfaction with their lives—a dissatisfaction that is often guided by the physical and symbolic presence of non-whites in spaces from which they had previously been restricted—their claims of white suffering grow more pronounced. Related whites often feel that they have no reason to be held accountable. Thus, holding them accountable for anything is translated as oppressing them and in turn, causing their suffering.

This conclusion is generally coupled with the belief that what whites say is true simply is. Indeed, moral authority is something that whites never seem to lose control of, even when conceding their own limitations or fears. Described by scholar Yen Le Espiritu as the “We Win Even When We Lose Syndrome,” this variation of white supremacy acknowledges white vulnerability in the face of “defeats” caused by the resistance of non-whites to a white supremacist agenda. While this notion of white vulnerability is driven by racist, sexist, and homophobic fears of competing with or being held accountable by other races, it is nevertheless one that allows whites to “win” even when they “lose” by retaining moral authority. This form of white ownership means that Rocky Balboa can lose to a Black athlete but nevertheless walk out the victor in the end, Chinese manufactured goods may be vilified but recalls of U.S. products ignored, and I can be threatened with being forcibly removed from a plane for raising my concerns regarding being assaulted. What all of these examples have in common is that they centralize white suffering and use it to buttress white moral authority.

While white supremacy does not require any rational basis for its moral authority, the notion of white suffering is, and has always been, a stated reason for white violence and disciplinary actions against non-whites. In my experience with Southwest Airlines, I was punished for not simply taking what a white man gave me. A gesture that again is associated not with Asianness but with Blackness, I apparently caused this man to suffer by not keeping quiet when his leg pressed against mine. Instead, I was assaulted and threatened by him, laughed at by a young white woman, chastised and disciplined by an older white woman, and then forced to listen to another white man next to me basically try to say he was helping me out. My situation, along with those that mirror it, shows that in the end white moral authority or appeals to it are the only politically recognized truths. The way in which the notion of white suffering informs contemporary white moral discourse therefore requires a looking backward into the souls of white folk that Du Bois interrogated over 85 years ago.

On progressive “red-baiting”

Tamara K. Nopper

September 4, 2010

In response to a critic, a popular progressive figure commented, “I’m defender of republican democracy, US Constitution and liberty and justice for all.  I’m progressive dem, not authoritarian leftist.”  While perhaps correct in the self-description,  such comments hint at an intellectualized version of red-baiting.

Red-baiting of course is not new and today many people throw the word leftist as well as radical, revolutionary, Socialist, Communist, or Anarchist, around like they are accusations rather than developed albeit  perhaps diverging  positions regarding capitalism, the state, and for some of  us, white supremacy.  Most of the people who are the most vociferous in publicly denouncing leftists are white conservatives, including corporate news personalities and members of the inherently racist and white nationalist Tea Party.  Yet progressives critical of racism, poverty, corporations, and government officials have their own ways of red-baiting.

Not all of the targets of this red-baiting of which I speak are associated with Marxist organizations or have specific organizational affiliations.  Nor do most progressives publicly use pejoratives such as “Commie” or “Pinko.”  Yet  some will strategically use terms such as “authoritarian leftist,” “radicals” or “revolutionaries”  or “Marxist” when trying to deflect questions posed by people unimpressed with their political positions but whose opposition cannot easily be dismissed as driven by white supremacy or conservatism.  Such gestures are consistent with red-baiting; individuals can simply shut down inquiry or interrogation of their political positions by strategically using labels unpopular among a general public trained to hate such terms; the strategic use of these labels plays upon white nationalist fears and pan-racial bourgeois sentiments by invoking the specter of revolutionary and liberation movements, armed struggle or armed resistance or rioting (as opposed to pacifism or non-violent resistance), militant Black power, and  a classless society.  In the process, such gestures take advantage of, and implicitly condone  the aggressive campaigns by the mainstream press, most academics, and the state to demonize and criminalize stances that are too oppositional against white supremacy or capitalism or state violence.  The use of such labels, while sometimes correct in their assertion (since there are many who proudly identify as having certain affiliations), often work to insulate progressives  from having to explicitly articulate their positions and why they are committed to the ones they take, thus situating their stances, as undefined as they may be, as logical or natural as opposed to ideological and  up for debate.

For example, consider the path and reaction to Barack Obama’s historic election.  Many people, from a variety of backgrounds, who wanted him elected openly castigated people as “radicals” and “revolutionaries” for not supporting Obama or for not understanding how politics “is done.”  Those critical of Obama for being too conservative were expected to keep quiet or were carelessly labeled these terms.  These labels, which are really badges of honor rather than insults, were thrown around to isolate and treat as irrational those who made supporters of Obama uncomfortable.  After Obama’s victory, many of us were expected to hold off on expressing critical views of the election so as to respect the euphoria.  Whereas after 9-11 those critical of empire were supposed to remain silent so as not to cause more pain for the victims and the nation, after Obama’s election we were supposed to keep quiet until the  celebration was over.  Even as Obama reveals himself to be, as one friend puts it, an operative (as opposed to simply being “scared” of whites), many people writing books and commentaries about the significance of Obama’s election defend their positions with red-baiting.  It is not uncommon to hear authors go out of their way to ridicule “radicals” and “revolutionaries” for taking issue with Obama.  That they rarely have to identify what they mean by these terms or why they are ridiculing such politics speaks to the ease in which they can engage in such red-baiting among their audiences.

Other examples of progressive red-baiting include 1) the difficulty of getting or keeping a job in progressive non-profits or in progressive academic programs if you take a critical stance against capitalism or wealth accumulation as opposed to “class inequality” or poverty 2) the wholesale dismissal of armed struggle, direct action tactics, street protests, and marches by many pundits and scholars quick to remind their audiences that they only support (or condone, really) non-violent resistance; 3) the re-narration of political and intellectual history in which certain oppositional figures and organizations are celebrated or remain icons but their confrontational stances against capitalism, the state, and the American project are left out or treated as ephemeral, naïve, or a bitter emotional response to discrimination or bad treatment in certain organizations; 4) the re-posing of revolutionary political organizations for mass consumption where they are sanitized as less threatening and thus more compatible with the American dream as well as the non-revolutionary white left; 5) the need to make sure that one’s audience and critics know  that one is not too far left and the use of certain code words to do so; 6) the need to remind the public that one is a “reformed” radical and now willing to work with certain entities that one’s politics previously sought to confront; and 7) going out of the way to rescue some figures from the “accusation” of being a Communist, Socialist, or Anarchist.  Regarding the last point, while it is unfair to Socialists that President Obama has been depicted as one and everyone appreciates being remembered “correctly,” such gestures often reveal a shared red-baiting among those who make accusations and those who respond, as seen in some of the recent defenses of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. on whether he was a Socialist or Communist.

There are of course important ideological differences and sources of contention among all of those thrown under the bus by these progressives, with some not necessarily having a particular organizational affiliation or having to critically engage limitations within the organizations we are a part of, especially when it comes to dealing with analytical approaches and practices regarding race, gender, sexuality, and nationality.  And critical engagement and reflection among the left is important and sorely needed.  In some cases, people of color have rightfully challenged Marxist or anti-capitalist organizations about questionable decisions and directions.  And people of color both in and outside of these organizations are rightfully critical of how non-whites are either marginalized or exotified by whites who privilege class analysis over race or are purposefully ignorant of the history of anti-capitalist politics among communities of color and our organizations and thus “pleasantly surprised” to “meet” people of color critical of capitalism.  Yet terms such as “authoritarian leftist,” “radical,” or “revolutionary,” while perhaps confusing to some, are basically code for being too oppositional against capitalism or the state and in some cases, being too confrontational against white supremacy and white nationalism.  The terms are also code for being dogmatic, too aggressive, socially inept, unwilling to listen to ideas, and having a difficulty integrating useful nuances into, or dealing with contradictions in our ideological frameworks.  While yes, I have met leftists of all stripes who possess all of these tendencies—and I could easily be accused of the same—I have also met and seen and read and heard thousands upon thousands of capitalists, pro-capitalists, and progressive democrats who also possess these traits.

Yet for some reason, perhaps because it is more compatible with the capitalist party line and more appeasing to whites, being an authoritarian progressive who is anti-leftist or anti-radical or anti-revolutionary or anti-Marxist is not considered by many as a form of dogmatism, but rather political “common sense” and purportedly more humanistic than, let’s say, openly confronting  or naming the sources of millions of people’s misery.  It also means you are more likely to get published and keep a job or be offered a new one by those who run progressive institutions that seek to serve as alternatives to the political climate at most professional jobs.  Being dogmatic about one’s progressive tendencies may result in being targeted by white supremacists who troll the internet and watch corporate news (and who will attack with a vengeance anybody who doesn’t believe in the inherent inferiority of non-whites or the sanctity of the free market)—a stressful situation that can result in real personal losses, to be sure.  Indeed, most people critical of the right wing  or even moderates are subject to scrutiny and attack. and people of color, in particular Black people, experience this backlash in degrees far greater than whites and often have less institutional support to counter such witch hunts.  Yet too many progressives, despite having significant points of disagreement among them, seek to  protect themselves, insulate their positions from interrogation, or gain currency by relying on red-baiting tactics and distancing themselves from  those they publicly dismiss as “authoritarian leftists,” “radicals,” or “revolutionaries.”

]]> http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/on-progressive-%e2%80%9cred-baiting%e2%80%9d/feed/ 3 tnopper http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/white-men-under-attack-reverse-%e2%80%9cyellow-fever%e2%80%9d-from-%e2%80%9cjust-an-asian-girl-in-the-world%e2%80%9d/ http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/white-men-under-attack-reverse-%e2%80%9cyellow-fever%e2%80%9d-from-%e2%80%9cjust-an-asian-girl-in-the-world%e2%80%9d/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:42:07 +0000 tnopper http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/?p=736 ]]> White men under attack: Reverse “yellow fever” from “just an (Asian) girl in the world”

Tamara K. Nopper

June 7, 2010

One of my guilty pleasures is the show Law & Order.  I say guilty pleasure because its premise—a cop show—is nothing short of repulsive as are the requisite story lines, characters, and narratives regarding the state and criminality.

While I can deconstruct the racial, gender, sexual, and class politics of every Law & Order show I have ever watched, a particular one stands out to me because its main suspect was, like me, an Asian American woman.  The episode, “Just a girl in the world” (season 20, episode 2), featured the character Emma Kim, an Asian American journalist who reports being attacked by a cab driver.  It is later revealed that Kim reported a false claim in order to throw off detectives from their investigation into the murder of Daisy Chao, an Asian American Crime Scene Unit investigator whose dead body (discovered by her white fiancé) is shown in the opening scenes.

Kim is caught as the murderer after seducing Cyrus Lupo, the white detective (Anthony Anderson plays the black detective, Kevin Bernard, in the biracial cop duo).  Lupo, whose hand Kim clutches as she makes a false identification of a man in a line up, takes Kim home as she has stressed how shaken up she is by her experience.  Upon revisiting Kim’s place, Lupo discovers a key piece of evidence—red lingerie, no less—hidden in Kim’s closet, which links her to Chao’s murder.  The discovery causes Lupo to become visibly distraught as Kim, naked, eagerly waits for him to return from the bathroom to her bed.

Many viewers were probably both riveted by and accustomed to the sexual/racial combination of an Asian American woman and a white man.  Data does show that, out of people of color, Asian Americans have the highest outmarriage rates, particularly with whites and in the last decade, there are more commercial advertisements featuring white men and Asian American women together.  While outmarriage is indeed a sociological phenomenon and shaped by racial and sexual politics, I think too many people are obsessed with this pairing to the point that non-Asian friends have been shocked to learn from me that for the most part, Asian Americans overwhelmingly marry other Asians.  Some people are concerned with Asian American and white pairing for ethical reasons, including potential self-hatred among Asians, the adoption of troubling tropes to describe Asian desire towards other Asians (for example, a gay Asian male scholar once pointed out to me that a common argument made by Asian women that they don’t want to be with Asian men because it would be like being with their “brothers,” i.e., incestuous, is a discourse that seems particularly used by Asians to avoid same-race (hetero) relationships), the valorization of the white race over other groups, particularly Blacks, and the political economy of desire, sex, partner-choice, and marriage (hetero and same-sex) informed by a global racial order and capitalism in which Asian women are valuable commodities to men of all races, including Asians.  Thus, it can be politically ethical to interrogate Asian/white pairings rather than naturalize them as many whites (and unfortunately Asians) do.  Nevertheless, some of the fixation on white men and Asian women pairings make me question the motives behind  some queries.   For example, many straight Asian men are angered by Asian women dating outside of the race, but don’t question their own standards in terms of what type of Asian woman they want to get with (which all too often seem to be the same type that white men seek out).  Nor do enough Asian men challenge the way in which Asian beauty and body standards too often coincide with those imposed and reinforced by the white world, standards that all too often determine which Asian women’s interracial relationships they are concerned with.  And I’ve had a few “progressive” men of color I know spot a white male/Asian woman pair and ask me why Asian American women will (purportedly) only get with white men or make sure I know that white men “like me.”  While interracial relationships and desire are sociological topics, some of my conversation partners will go on and on about white men and Asian women.  Notwithstanding their heterosexism (for example, they seem to be oblivious to the many Asian male/white female pairings or Asian/white same-sex couples I see), I have sometimes wondered if they were simply concerned with themselves having sex with Asian women.  This thought has occurred to me when some of my questioners stare at me intently for what seem like long periods of time as if they are waiting for me to disprove their thesis by giving them a blow job right there and then.  Sometimes I’m simply trying to have a coffee with folks, not explain “the ways of Asian women” to them.

Whatever the case, what made this Law & Order episode particularly disturbing was not so much that Kim’s character appeared to only date white men, but that she was viewed as targeting white men for devious reasons, whether to get her bills paid or to avoid capture by the police.  Also disturbing was that Kim’s targeting of white men was depicted as a reverse form of “yellow fever,” a popular term used by Asian Americans to describe non-Asian men who purposefully seek out Asian women for sexual pleasure due to our perceived sexual submissiveness and perverse determination to pleasure men (in gay communities, the term “rice queen” is employed to describe white men who seek out Asian men to be bottoms or their sexual houseboy).  When making her false claim that she was attacked by the cab driver, Kim tells Bernard and Lupo that she suspected the cabbie had “yellow fever.”  Bernard and Lupo look at her perplexed and listen intently as she defines the term and then proceeds to accuse the cab driver, a Latino, of sexual assault.  Convinced by her report, Bernard and Lupo track the driver down, thus wasting their time looking in the wrong direction.  Kim’s deviousness then, serves to build superficial community among men of different races as all are, despite Kim’s targeting of white men, negatively affected by her deception.

Later, Lupo falls for Kim and “struggles” with his interest in a victim in a case he is investigating, especially as he learns that she is purportedly suffering from a health issue.  The subtext is that Lupo is also dealing with whether he has “yellow fever,” an ethical struggle meant to affirm his humanity, not Kim’s.  It is only after Kim admonishes Lupo for treating her as a vulnerable victim—thus absolving him from whatever anxieties he might have had regarding his hidden racialized lust (depicted as his “getting too close to the victim”)—does the detective become more visibly comfortable with his sexual interest in Kim.

As if this was not concerning enough, I watched with disgust as the story line developed to reveal that Kim not only murdered Chao (over a white man no less), she had manipulated other white men with a similar story line she fed Lupo.  Through the course of the investigation, Kim transforms from an Asian American woman with sexual agency vigilant about men’s “yellow fever” to a “maneater” or “gold-digger” who plays up her purported health issues to win over unsuspecting white men.  These white men are of course depicted as colorblind men who simply want to love Kim across the color line but who end up ensnared in an Asian American woman’s racial fixation with white men.  Thus, not only are these men, like Lupo, absolved of having “yellow fever,” they are the victims of Kim’s anti-white racism.

It gets worse.  During the courtroom scene, Kim is interrogated by Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter, also a white man, about her deceptive activities.  I watched in horror as Kim challenges Cutter’s depiction of her as a maneater by literally touching her vagina on the stand and saying to the assistant D.A. that he knows he “wants this.”   As she grabs her crotch, Kim’s face contorts a la porn scenes of women having painful pleasure and her voice changes into one of defiant sexuality.  In response to this spectacle, Cutter is stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes frozen in perplexed amazement at Kim’s testimony.

Being an Asian American woman (and man) in the world means having to be subject to questions about our genitalia, sexuality, our presumed perverse proclivity to want to please men, and to have our partner and sexual choices scrutinized at length.  This is an intrusive and annoying experience, one that is constantly negotiated, even at a relatively young age.  At a high school dance, a boy told me that his uncle had been in “the war” and that he told him that Asian women are good in bed.  I remember when I was working at a pizza shop during college how my co-worker, a boy in high school, felt comfortable telling me that he heard Asian women give “good blow jobs.”  He did this of course without solicitation, as race and fellatio would hardly be my subject of choice as we stood waiting, dressed in our uniforms and visors, to sell greasy pizza slices to shoppers at the mall.  Also during college, a classmate hanging out in the dorm with me and my roommate told me (again unsolicited), as he watched television nonchalantly, that he had heard Asian women have shallow vaginas and wanted to know if that was the case with mine. When I questioned why he would feel comfortable asking me this, he acted surprised and continued to repeat what he had heard as if repetition would make the query less offensive.  And of course I’ve had to constantly encounter the phrase “Me love you long time,” first introduced in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket and immortalized by the rap group 2 Live Crew.

As a professor who teaches courses on Asian American history, I have to deal with (presumably straight) male students who get too excited about discussing the gender and sexual dynamics of anti-Asian racism.  For example, in one class, when we were discussing the stereotypes regarding Asian women’s sexuality, one white male said that the reason why Asian women are looked at in the way we are is because of the Kama Sutra and its sexual positions.  In other classes, in which we read material about Chinese women prostitutes during the 19^th century, I have encountered many (again presumably straight) non-Asian men who are smiling widely and making eye contact with each other even as we are reading about brutal physical violence against (as well as resistance from) Chinese prostitutes.  And I’ve literally had white men in the room cheer when I have said we are going to be looking at the topic of prostitution in Asian immigrant communities.  Needless to say, many of the same students grow really quiet and get red in the face when we discuss how the concept “yellow fever” is employed by some to describe the racial and sexual gaze towards Asian women  that informs some of their classroom behavior.

While these experiences in and outside of the classroom are repulsive, angering, and traumatic, what made the Law & Order episode particularly disturbing is that it introduced the issue of “yellow fever” only to suggest that the claim is a false indictment.  This has several implications.  First, it reinforces the idea that women are too quick to falsely accuse men of sexual violence.  While there are instances of women who make false claims, one of the underlying themes of the episode was to intimate that men, as a class of people, are actually vulnerable to women’s false accusations.  In this sense, women’s false accusations are treated as an “ism” similar to racism or sexism.  And in the case of the Law & Order episode, men are depicted as victimized by women who use false claims of vulnerability (health issues, being attacked by another man) and also give them permission to be caretakers—as opposed to simply demanding women “know their place.”  Basically, men are depicted as victims once they forego any macho tendency to control the situation and instead, make decisions based on compassion, emotional sincerity, and reciprocity.  The white men victimized by Kim were uncomfortable with treating her too paternally until she suggested that they were being patriarchal for not considering what she wanted—which is for them to give her what she wanted.  Being encouraged to have emotions or be accountable to women was depicted as a form of entrapment, indicating the anti-feminism embedded in the storyline.

Second, the discussion of “yellow fever” at the beginning of the episode suggests that it is Kim, as an Asian American, who is too race and gender conscious and not the white men she has manipulated.  As such, claims regarding “yellow fever” are treated as figments of Asian Americans’ racial and sexual imagination.  In a post-civil rights era in which victims of racism have to demonstrate that we experience discrimination—using an overly scientific measurement that requires a narrow (read white) operationalization of racism—this dismissal of “yellow fever” is meant to indict claims of racism.   The white men, then, who Kim accuses of “yellow fever” are actually the victims of reverse racism.  Kim, as a stand-in for a devious Asian American sexuality (as opposed to Daisy Chao, the “good” Asian American policewoman murdered by her cunning Asian sister), is basically “playing the race card” (as well as the “gender card”) by talking about “yellow fever” so as to conceal her duplicitous targeting of white men.  Although it is mainly white men who are largely responsible for transforming Asian women’s (perceived) sexuality into a global commodity, the white men in the episode are the objects of Kim’s racism and sexism and not the other way around.  That Kim takes these white men to be rich or with resources also plays on the current perception common among whites that calling them “privileged” is a form of (anti-white) racism akin to the negative imagery associated with African Americans.  Thus, Kim is not only engaging in reverse “yellow fever,” she is engaging in anti-white reverse “yellow fever.”

Third, Kim’s false claim of “yellow fever” serves to invalidate the important work of feminists of color, particularly Black women, who have valiantly worked to educate the public about the particular ways that women of color are racistly and sexistly viewed, for different reasons and to different degrees, as perpetrators of sexual innuendo and fantasy as opposed to victims and survivors.  Thus, Kim serves as a stand-in for all women of color who are being unveiled for asserting the presumably false claim that unlike white women, our sexuality is racialized as possessing degrees of deviance purportedly encoded in our blood, culture, or nationality.

In this sense, Kim was not only Asian American, she served as the “Black” character on the show.  While not ontologically Black, she was depicted as making false claims against whites, raising the issue of racism to cover up her own deviance, and imposing her racial and sexual proclivities, as well as her (refuted) critical analysis, on to white men when presumably, they were simply trying to treat her as “just a girl in the world.”

As many have pointed out, claims of reverse racism have been used to discount the continuation of white supremacy in the post-civil rights era.  And, as many women (and I am including white women here) have discussed, negative imagery of us making false claims has been used to dismiss concerns with sexual harassment and sexual violence.  In the case of Asian American women, the idea that we are quick to impose our presumed deviant sexuality onto white communities (and thus making whites vulnerable) has been a feature of anti-Asian racism since the first waves of Asian immigration to the United States, which started in the mid-1800s.  In the post-Cold War era, perceptions of Asian women’s sexuality are also related to military excursions in Asia and the perception, popularized in war films and tales of sexual adventure from pathetic military veterans, that we are all some type of prostitute, whether hidden in massage parlors and brothels or “brought home” from somewhere.  I am not politically opposed to sex work but I take issue with the fact that it’s criminalized and treated as an inherent feature of people of color’s, and in this case, Asian American women’s, sexual “character,” as opposed to it being a form of labor (i.e., “work”).

While the image of Asian women as prostitutes (whether hidden or domesticated) has become a staple feature of American popular culture and racial fantasy, the Law & Order episode treated this image of Asian women as foreign to white men.  As “just a girl in the world,” Kim’s character was not a victim of racism and sexism but instead the perpetrator of it against white men.  Consistent with discourses of reverse racism—and reverse sexism—it was Kim who was forcing the white men to see her as Asian and as a prostitute of sorts when they simply wanted to love and care for her.  Kim’s depiction (of herself) as the object of “yellow fever” was not only an act of deception, it was unintelligible to the white men she accused of wanting her.  Subsequently, Executive Assistant D.A. Cutter could look on in horrified bewilderment as Kim grabbed her crotch on the stand while proclaiming that men “want this,” even though her sexualized affect and body language comprise a staple depiction of Asian women in popular culture and conversational folklore since the Vietnam War.