2001年，布什政府签定一个跨党派的教育法案，名字叫做No Child Left Behind Act，我的哲学课教授兼好朋友，一个研究柏拉图的学者David嘲笑说，这个法案叫做No Chile Left Act还差不多。我觉得这是迄今他给我讲过的最好的笑话。今天我要说的可以叫做No Asian Left.
Virginia Tech的校园血案爆发到肇事者被认定，全亚洲所有国家在美的侨民都提心掉胆过了好几天，等到肇事者国籍被认定，除韩国外所有国家的国民都长长吁了一口气。虽然Cho同学移民美国已经15年了，但是自从被认定是韩国人以后，韩国卢总统已经给小树丛打过两次电话了都，韩国大使还号召在美韩人轮流绝食32天。我想起小时候看过的揭露旧社会地主凶残的小人书，上面说地主家狗死了，要农民给披麻戴孝下跪以葬父亲的规格葬之，没想到现在我有机会看个实况。我也不能不想起契诃夫的小说《小公务员之死》，在那个小说里，小公务员在剧院看戏时打了个喷嚏，担心唾沫星子溅到前排的部长身上，他于是一而再再而三的道歉，终于部长大人被打扰到烦不胜烦，说了句“滚出去”，小公务员踉踉跄跄回到家，倒下就死了。我觉得应该把《项链》的情节加进来，比如说那个部长其实不是部长，只是看起来象部长，不过已经足以把小公务员吓死了。这样的死，才能比鸿毛还轻。
没在美国呆过，没在美国深入到社会中，是很难体会到种族这个概念的。当年关颖珊在盐湖城冬奥会上输给了Susan，整个美国一片兴高采烈，报纸的标题是“Michell was Defeated by American!”要知道，关颖珊祖辈都已经是在美国土地上出生的地道美国人了。她唯一不美国的是她的肤色。在这个意义上，我一直不能原谅宋美龄，她最被美国人所引用的话是“The only thing the oriental about me is my face!” What a bitch!
“One of the lessons of these tragedies is to make sure that when people see somebody or know somebody who is exhibiting abnormal behavior, you do something about it, to suggest that somebody take a look,” he said. “If you are a parent and your child is, you know, doing strange things on the Internet, pay attention to it and not be afraid to ask for help and not be afraid to say, ‘I am concerned about what I am seeing.’ ”
“Oh hell, it doesn’t matter. He was just some fella from a crappy country tryin’ to better his life, doin’ a job an American wouldn’t do, takin’ up a place at college that an American didn’t want.
As a matter of fact I believe I heard Whorealdo half-assedly blame us by saying (I’m paraphrasin’)that he was just a poor bloke from a foreign country that was just never made comfortable in our culture. We didn’t do enough to make him feel at home. Nobody held his hand and sung kumbaya........”
“There is an extreme imbalance in China because of all the baby girls who have been killed. Scroll down the above link to read about it.
Ever since I learned years ago about the female infanticide that has been going on in China, I knew that a day would come when there would be a crazed army of young men there. There wouldn’t be enough women for wives and there would be another purpose for their lives as soldiers, most likely against the U.S.”
看来华裔美人怕得有理。
小树丛当然是有所指的。今天在科罗拉多大学，一名从麻省阿默斯特高中毕业的小孩在课堂上发表了自己对枪击事件表示理解的观点后，被同学报警逮捕。我想指出一点，新修订的《爱国法案》里有一条Ideological Exclusion，就是对于美国政府认为学术观点不受欢迎的学者，有权利限制入境。你以为这只是说着玩的吗？2006年2月2日的Boston Globe发表了一篇题为Shutting out a Voice for Islam的社论，社论披露，2004年8月，国土安全部吊销了一名瑞士裔有埃及血统在Notre Dame任教的伊斯兰宗教学者的签证，致其无法入境去哈佛演讲。如果该学者宣传极端伊斯兰教义倒也罢了，偏偏他恰恰是伊斯兰世界中主张和平、容忍的非暴力伊斯兰改革分子，当年夏天他刚刚在巴塞罗那的世界宗教大会上作过关于宗教宽容和世界和平的演讲。我倒觉得，可能是美国政府担心伊斯兰人民听了他的宣传真的放下屠刀，美国军火商就师出无名了。
anyway, anyone here watcted Bill O'reilly show last week ?
tell me what do u think ?
oh, btw, most of the posts i did was in a rush, and didnt have time to check for errors etc. by the time i read it after posting it was too late for me to edit.
so, thanks for bearing with me last week, everyone
MSNBC的1998年奥林匹克头版标题赫然在目"American Beats Out Kwan".相继地方报纸象Seattle Time Sports的头版标题也都仿效,于是就有了迅速在美传开的"American Beats Kwan."这难道不能说明问题吗? 迫于华裔社会及舆论的压力,MSNBC做了道歉.道歉的原文在此: "MSNBC apologizes for an error that may have been interpreted to state that U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan was not American. The error appeared briefly in a scrolling marquee during coverage of the Winter Olympics and was corrected quickly. However, the marquee was picked up by MSNBCs push technology, News Alert. So to some, it might have appeared the error was on the site for a longer period or was not corrected. MSNBC apologizes for the bulletins wording.
Edmundo Macedo Executive Sports Editor" 这里说明了几点: 1. 此报道内容"was on the site for a longer period or was not corrected" 2. 道歉的人没有直接承认"Kwan is an American" 3. 道歉更没有指明他们未来会如何避免再发生这样的错误
"gentlemen: I am writing to register my deep disappointment and shock at your recent headline, "American beats Kwan." What do the writers think Michelle Kwan is?! She is an AMERICAN citizen, not a foreigner. I recognize your apology but feel compelled to respond to such a display of ignorance.
I was born and raised in the United States. I have never lived anywhere but the United States. I do not speak a second language. I happen to be an AMERICAN of Asian ancestry. I am an elected member of the Seattle City Council and can only be grateful that msn was not operating when I was elected, for I fear your headline might have been something along the lines of, " American citizen defeated by Choe." Americans represent several different ethnicities and races and should be recognized by the media as such.
Your headline was a reminder to me that there is much work that continues to be done across this country on the subject on racial literacy, even in this state where we elected a governor - an AMERICAN governor of Chinese ancestry - by the largest margin ever. I was shocked and saddened to see such an unenlightened state of journalism in my own back yard.
"当年关颖珊在盐湖城冬奥会上输给了Susan，整个美国一片兴高采烈，报纸的标题是“Michell was Defeated by American!”" -- 别在这胡说八道了！你知道事后有多少美国人批评那报道吗？你知道事后美国有多少电台，电视评论家批评那报道吗？什么“整个美国一片兴高采烈”，简直是一派胡言！不懂你为什么要在这煽动种族主义呢？！
Title: Colorblind to the Reality of Race in America., By: Haney López, Ian F., Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 11/3/2006, Vol. 53, Issue 11 Database: Academic Search Premier
Colorblind to the Reality of Race in America Section: The Chronicle Review How will race as a social practice evolve in the United States over the next few decades? The American public, and indeed many scholars, increasingly believe that the country is leaving race and racism behind. Some credit Brown v. Board of Education, the revered 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision pronouncing segregated schools unequal, and the broad civil-rights movement of which the decision was a part, with turning the nation away from segregation and toward equality. Others point to changing demographics, emphasizing the rising number of mixed-race marriages and the increasing Asian and Hispanic populations that are blurring the historic black-white divide.
My sense of our racial future differs. Not only do I fear that race will continue to fundamentally skew American society over the coming decades, but I worry that the belief in the diminished salience of race makes that more likely rather than less. I suspect that the laws supposedly protecting against racial discrimination are partly to blame, for they no longer contribute to racial justice but instead legitimate continued inequality. We find ourselves now in the midst of a racial era marked by what I term "colorblind white dominance," in which a public consensus committed to formal antiracism deters effective remediation of racial inequality, protecting the racial status quo while insulating new forms of racism and xenophobia.
The Jefferson County school district, in Kentucky, covers Louisville and surrounding suburbs. A target of decades of litigation to eradicate Jim Crow school segregation and its vestiges, the district has since 2001 voluntarily pursued efforts to maintain what is now one of the most integrated school systems in the country. But not everyone supports those efforts, especially when they involve taking race into consideration in pupil assignments. In 2004 a white lawyer named Teddy B. Gordon ran for a seat on the Jefferson County School Board, promising to end endeavors to maintain integrated schools. He finished dead last, behind three other candidates. Indifferent to public repudiation, he is back -- this time in the courtroom. Gordon's argument is seductively simple: Brown forbids all governmental uses of race, even if designed to achieve or maintain an integrated society.
He has already lost at the trial level and before an appellate court, as have two other sets of plaintiffs challenging similar integration-preserving efforts by school districts in Seattle and in Lynn, Mass. But Gordon and the conservative think tanks and advocacy groups that back him, including the self-styled Center for Equal Opportunity, are not without hope. To begin with, over the past three decades the courts have come ever closer to fully embracing a colorblind Constitution -- colorblind in the sense of disfavoring all uses of race, irrespective of whether they are intended to perpetuate or ameliorate racial oppression. More immediately, last June the Supreme Court voted to review the Louisville and Seattle cases -- Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District.
Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, is thrilled. As he gleefully noted in The National Review, there's an old saw that the court does not hear cases it plans to affirm. The Bush administration, too, supports Gordon and his efforts. The U.S. solicitor general recently submitted a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to prevent school districts across the country from paying attention to race.
At issue is a legally backed ideology of colorblindness that could have implications beyond schools -- for higher education and the wider society. Yes, in a narrowly tailored decision three years ago, the Supreme Court allowed the University of Michigan to consider race as one factor in law-school admissions. But since then, conservative advocacy groups have used the threat of lawsuits to intimidate many institutions into halting race-based college financial-aid and orientation programs, as well as graduate stipends and fellowships, and those groups are now taking aim at faculty hiring procedures. This month Michigan voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban racial and gender preferences wherever practiced. And looming on the horizon are renewed efforts to enact legislation forbidding the federal and state governments from collecting statistics that track racial disparities, efforts that are themselves part of a broader campaign to expunge race from the national vocabulary.
Gordon predicts that if he prevails, Louisville schools will rapidly resegregate. He is sanguine about the prospect. "We're a diverse society, a multiethnic society, a colorblind society," he told The New York Times. "Race is history."
But the past is never really past, especially not when one talks about race and the law in the United States. We remain a racially stratified country, though for some that constitutes an argument for rather than against colorblindness. Given the long and sorry history of racial subordination, there is tremendous rhetorical appeal to Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 case upholding segregated railway cars: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."
Contemporary proponents of colorblindness almost invariably draw a straight line from that dissent to their own impassioned advocacy for being blind to race today. But in doing so, partisans excise Harlan's acknowledgment of white superiority in the very paragraph in which he extolled colorblindness: "The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time." That omission obscures a more significant elision: Harlan objected not to all governmental uses of race, but to those he thought would unduly oppress black people.
As viewed by Harlan and the court, the central question was where to place limits on government support for the separation of racial groups that were understood to be unequal by nature (hence Harlan's comfortable endorsement of white superiority). He and the majority agreed that the state could enforce racial separation in the "social" but not in the "civil" arenas; they differed on the contours of the spheres. Harlan believed that segregated train cars limited the capacity of black people to participate as full citizens in civic life, while the majority saw such segregation only as a regulation of social relations sanctioned by custom. The scope of the civil arena mattered so greatly precisely because state exclusions from public life threatened to once again reduce the recently emancipated to an inferior caste defined by law.
For the first half of the 20th century, colorblindness represented the radical and wholly unrealized aspiration of dismantling de jure racial subordination. Thus Thurgood Marshall, as counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the late 1940s and early 1950s, cited Harlan's celebration of colorblindness to argue that racial distinctions are "contrary to our Constitution and laws." But neither society nor the courts embraced colorblindness when doing so might have sped the demise of white supremacy. Even during the civil-rights era, colorblindness as a strategy for racial emancipation did not take hold. Congress and the courts dismantled Jim Crow segregation and proscribed egregious forms of private discrimination in a piecemeal manner, banning only the most noxious misuses of race, not any reference to race whatsoever.
In the wake of the civil-rights movement's limited but significant triumphs, the relationship between colorblindness and racial reform changed markedly. The greatest potency of colorblindness came to lie in preserving, rather than challenging, the racial status quo. When the end of explicit race-based subordination did not eradicate stubborn racial inequalities, progressives increasingly recognized the need for state and private actors to intervene along racial lines. Rather than call for colorblindness, they began to insist on the need for affirmative race-conscious remedies. In that new context, colorblindness appealed to those opposing racial integration. Enshrouded with the moral raiment of the civil-rights movement, colorblindness provided cover for opposition to racial reform.
Within a year of Brown, Southern school districts and courts had recognized that they could forestall integration by insisting that the Constitution allowed them to use only "race neutral" means to end segregation -- school-choice plans that predictably produced virtually no integration whatsoever. In 1965 a federal court in South Carolina put it squarely: "The Constitution is color-blind; it should no more be violated to attempt integration than to preserve segregation."
Wielding the ideal of colorblindness as a sword, in the past three decades racial conservatives on the Supreme Court have increasingly refought the battles lost during the civil-rights era, cutting back on protections against racial discrimination as well as severely limiting race-conscious remedies. In several cases in the 1970s -- including North Carolina State Board of Education v. Swann, upholding school-assignment plans, and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke -- the court ruled that the need to redress the legacy of segregation made strict colorblindness impossible. But as the 1980s went on, in other cases -- McCleskey v. Kemp, which upheld Georgia's death penalty despite uncontroverted statistical evidence that African-Americans convicted of murder were 22 times as likely to be sentenced to death if their victims were white rather than black, and City of Richmond v. Croson, which rejected a city affirmative-action program steering some construction dollars to minority-owned companies despite the fact that otherwise only two-thirds of 1 percent of city contracts went to minority companies in a city 50 percent African-American -- the court presented race as a phenomenon called into existence just when someone employed a racial term. Discrimination existed only but every time someone used racial language. Thus the court found no harm in Georgia's penal system, because no evidence surfaced of a specific bad actor muttering racial epithets, while it espied racism in Richmond's affirmative-action program because it set aside contracts for "minorities."
That approach ignores the continuing power of race as a society-altering category. The civil-rights movement changed the racial zeitgeist of the nation by rendering illegitimate all explicit invocations of white supremacy, a shift that surely marked an important step toward a more egalitarian society. But it did not bring into actual existence that ideal, as white people remain dominant across virtually every social, political, and economic domain. In 2003 the poverty rate was 24 percent among African-Americans, 23 percent among Latinos, and 8 percent among white people. That same year, an estimated 20 percent of African-Americans and 33 percent of Latinos had no health insurance, while 11 percent of white people were uninsured. Discrepancies in incarceration rates are particularly staggering, with African-American men vastly more likely to spend time in prison than white men are.
Or forget the numbers and recall for a moment the graphic parade of images from Hurricane Katrina. Or consider access to country clubs and gated communities, in-group preferences for jobs and housing, the moral certainty shared by many white folks regarding their civic belonging and fundamental goodness. Or, to tie back to Louisville, reflect on what you already know about the vast, racially correlated disparities in resources available to public (and still more to private) schools across the country. Racial dominance by white people continues as a central element of our society.
What may be changing, however, is how membership in the white group is defined. The term "white" has a far more complicated -- and fluid -- history in the United States than people commonly recognize. For most of our history, whiteness stood in contrast to the nonwhite identities imposed upon Africans, American Indians, Mexican peoples of the Southwest, and Asian immigrants, marking one pole in the racial hierarchy. Simultaneously, however, putative "racial" divisions separated Europeans, so that in the United States presumptions of gross racial inferiority were removed from Germans only in the 1840s through 1860s, the Irish in the 1850s through 1880s, and Eastern and Southern Europeans in the 1900s to 1920s. The melding of various European groups into the monolithic, undifferentiated "white" category we recognize today is a recent innovation, only fully consolidated in the mid-20th century. Now white identity may be expanding to include persons and groups with ancestors far beyond Europe.
Perhaps we should distinguish here among three sorts of white identity. Consider first persons who are "fully white," in the sense that, with all of the racially relevant facts about them widely known, they would generally be considered white by the community at large. (Obviously, racial identity is a matter not of biology but of social understandings, although those may give great weight to purportedly salient differences in morphology and ancestry.) In contrast to that group, there have long been those "passing as white" -- people whose physical appearance allowed them to claim a white identity when social custom would have assigned them to a nonwhite group had their ancestry been widely known. Of people of Irish and Jewish descent in the United States, for example, one might say that while initially some were able to pass as white, now all are fully white.
Today a new group is emerging, perhaps best described as "honorary whites." Apartheid South Africa first formally crafted this identity: Seeking to engage in trade and commerce with nations cast as inferior by apartheid logic, particularly Japan, South Africa extended to individuals from such countries the status of honorary white people, allowing them to travel, reside, relax, and conduct business in South African venues that were otherwise strictly "whites only." Persons who pass as white hide racially relevant parts of their identity; honorary whites are extended the status of whiteness despite the public recognition that, from a bioracial perspective, they are not fully white.
In the United States, honorary-white status seems increasingly to exist for certain people and groups. The quintessential example is certain Asian-Americans, particularly East Asians. Although Asians have long been racialized as nonwhite as a matter of law and social practice, the model-minority myth and professional success have combined to free some Asian-Americans from the most pernicious negative beliefs regarding their racial character. In part this trend represents a shift toward a socially based, as opposed to biologically based, definition of race. Individuals and communities with the highest levels of acculturation, achievement, and wealth increasingly find themselves functioning as white, at least as measured by professional integration, residential patterns, and intermarriage rates.
Latinos also have access to honorary-white identity, although their situation differs from that of Asian-Americans. Unlike the latter, and also unlike African-Americans, Latinos in the United States have long been on the cusp between white and nonwhite. Despite pervasive and often violent racial prejudice against Mexicans in the Southwest and Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic groups elsewhere, the most elite Latin Americans in the United States have historically been accepted as fully white. With no clear identity under the continental theory of race (which at its most basic identifies blacks as from Africa, whites from Europe, reds from the Americas, and yellows from Asia), and with a tremendous range of somatic features marking this heterogeneous population, there has long been relatively more room for the use of social rather than strictly biological factors in the imputation of race to particular Hispanic individuals and groups.
It seems likely that an increasing number of Latinos -- those who have fair features, material wealth, and high social status, aided also by Anglo surnames -- will both claim and be accorded a position in U.S. society as fully white. Simultaneously, many more -- similarly situated in terms of material and status position, but perhaps with slightly darker features or a surname or accent suggesting Latin-American origins -- will become honorary whites. Meanwhile, the majority of Latinos will continue to be relegated to nonwhite categories.
The continuing evolution in who counts as white is neither particularly startling nor especially felicitous. Not only have racial categories and ideologies always mutated, but race has long turned on questions of wealth, professional attainment, and social position. A developing scholarship now impressively demonstrates that even during and immediately after slavery, at a time when racial identity in the United States was presumably most rigidly fixed in terms of biological difference and descent, and even in the hyperformal legal setting of the courtroom, determinations of racial identity often took place on the basis of social indicia like the nature of one's employment or one's choice of sexual partners.
Nor will categories like black, brown, white, yellow, and red soon disappear. Buttressed by the continued belief in continental racial divisions, physical features those divisions supposedly connote will remain foundational to racial classification. The stain of African ancestry -- so central to the elaboration of race in the United States -- ensures a persistent special stigma for black people. Honorary-white status will be available only to the most exceptional -- and the most light-skinned -- African-Americans, and on terms far more restrictive than those on which whiteness will be extended to many Latinos and Asian-Americans.
Those many in our society who are darker, poorer, more identifiably foreign will continue to suffer the poverty, marginalization, immiseration, incarceration, and exclusion historically accorded to those whose skin and other features socially mark them as nonwhite. Even under a redefined white category, racial hierarchy will continue as the links are strengthened between nonwhite identity and social disadvantage on the one hand, and whiteness and privilege on the other. Under antebellum racial logic, those black people with the fairest features were sometimes described as "light, bright, and damn near white." If today we switch out "damn near" for "honorary" and fold in a few other minorities, how much has really changed?
In the face of continued racial hierarchy, it is crucial that we understand the colorblind ideology at issue in the school cases before the Supreme Court. "In the eyes of government, we are just one race here," Justice Antonin Scalia intoned in 1995. "It is American." That sentiment is stirring as an aspiration, but disheartening as a description of reality, and even more so as a prescription for racial policies. All persons of good will aspire to a society free from racial hierarchy. We should embrace colorblindness -- in the sense of holding it up as an ideal. But however far the civil-rights struggle has moved us, we remain far from a racially egalitarian utopia.
In this context, the value of repudiating all governmental uses of race must depend on a demonstrated ability to remedy racial hierarchy. Colorblindness as a policy prescription merits neither fealty nor moral stature by virtue of the attractiveness of colorblindness as an ideal. In the hands of a Thurgood Marshall, who sought to end Jim Crow segregation and to foster an integrated society, colorblindness was a transformative, progressive practice. But when Teddy Gordon, Roger Clegg, the Bush administration, and the conservative justices on the Supreme Court call for banning governmental uses of race, they aim to end the efforts of local majorities to respond constructively to racial inequality. In so doing, they are making their version of colorblindness a reactionary doctrine.
Contemporary colorblindness is a set of understandings -- buttressed by law and the courts, and reinforcing racial patterns of white dominance -- that define how people comprehend, rationalize, and act on race. As applied, however much some people genuinely believe that the best way to get beyond racism is to get beyond race, colorblindness continues to retard racial progress. It does so for a simple reason: It focuses on the surface, on the bare fact of racial classification, rather than looking down into the nature of social practices. It gets racism and racial remediation exactly backward, and insulates new forms of race baiting.
White dominance continues with few open appeals to race. Consider the harms wrought by segregated schools today. Schools in predominantly white suburbs are far more likely to have adequate buildings, teachers, and books, while the schools serving mainly minority children are more commonly underfinanced, unsafe, and in a state of disrepair. Such harms acccumulate, encouraging white flight to avoid the expected deterioration in schools and the violence that is supposedly second nature to "them," only to precipitate the collapse in the tax base that in fact ensures a decline not only in schools but also in a range of social services. Such material differences in turn buttress seemingly common-sense ideas about disparate groups, so that we tend to see pristine schools and suburbs as a testament to white accomplishment and values. When violence does erupt, it is laid at the feet of alienated and troubled teenagers, not a dysfunctional culture. Yet we see the metal detectors guarding entrances to minority schoolhouses (harbingers of the prison bars to come) as evidence not of the social dynamics of exclusion and privilege, but of innate pathologies. No one need talk about the dynamics of privilege and exclusion. No one need cite white-supremacist arguments nor openly refer to race -- race exists in the concrete of our gated communities and barrios, in government policies and programs, in cultural norms and beliefs, and in the way Americans lead their lives.
Colorblindness badly errs when it excuses racially correlated inequality in our society as unproblematic so long as no one uses a racial epithet. It also egregiously fails when it tars every explicit reference to race. To break the interlocking patterns of racial hierarchy, there is no other way but to focus on, talk about, and put into effect constructive policies explicitly engaged with race. To be sure, inequality in wealth is a major and increasing challenge for our society, but class is not a substitute for a racial analysis -- though, likewise, racial oppression cannot be lessened without sustained attention to poverty. It's no accident that the poorest schools in the country warehouse minorities, while the richest serve whites; the national education crisis reflects deeply intertwined racial and class politics. One does not deny the imbrication of race and class by insisting on the importance of race-conscious remedies: The best strategies for social repair will give explicit attention to race as well as to other sources of inequality, and to their complex interrelationship.
The claim that race and racism exist only when specifically mentioned allows colorblindness to protect a new racial politics from criticism. The mobilization of public fears along racial lines has continued over the past several decades under the guise of interlinked panics about criminals, welfare cheats, terrorists, and -- most immediately in this political season -- illegal immigrants. Attacks ostensibly targeting "culture" or "behavior" rather than "race" now define the diatribes of today's racial reactionaries. Samuel P. Huntington's jeremiad against Latino immigration in his book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity rejects older forms of white supremacy, but it promotes the idea of a superior Anglo-Protestant culture. Patrick J. Buchanan defends his latest screed attacking "illegal immigrants," State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, against the charge of racism by insisting that he's indifferent to race but outraged by those with different cultures who violate our laws. My point is not simply that culture and behavior provide coded language for old prejudices, but that colorblindness excuses and insulates this recrudescence of xenophobia by insisting that only the explicit use of racial nomenclature counts as racism.
Contemporary colorblindness loudly proclaims its antiracist pretensions. To actually move toward a racially egalitarian society, however, requires that we forthrightly respond to racial inequality today. The alternative is the continuation of colorblind white dominance. As Justice Harry Blackmun enjoined in defending affirmative action in Bakke: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."
~~~~~~~~
By Ian F. Haney López
Ian F. Haney López is a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. New York University Press has just issued a 10th-anniversary edition of his White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race, with a new chapter on colorblind white dominance.
这里提到的社区的支持，是与racism, discrimination, and prejudice 是格格不入的。种族主义以及歧视偏见是公平社会的毒素。容忍它们的存在，是容忍人类自绝。如果一个人因为自己从未感受到不公平的对待，因而认为没有必要反对歧视，这个人不是过于自私就是对同伴的不公平遭遇麻木不仁。
Thank you very much for the responses and comments. I am amazed by the volume of books you guys have read on the topic and how much you remember all the details. Since I move to the US, I have not had enough time and language skill to read beyond my area of study. This is a huge lose for me since I have quite broad interest and taste beyond my science discpline. If you happen to be in an area of science or engineering, I'd like to be your humble friend. Keeping discussion with you and the group here will help to keep my nurons alive. If you happen to be in an area of social science, please consider my posts as a grass-root voice. You may need this kind of base touch to build your theory because the ultimate purpose and end user/practioner of a social science is people, each individual person.
The Virginia Tech mass killing struck me hard. First of all, we Chinese have a reason to feel insecure as Passer-by had put it. Secondly, it triggered me to think how to prevent or avoid this kind of thing to happen in our life. My experence tells me that psycological health is the key. Social econmical, racial, and even sexual reasons are parts of the equation. But, the direct road leading to a tragedy is usually the perception of humilliation, hopelessness, and despair. To this end, I think that both society/environment and the individual are to blame. We need to build a society that is fair, hopeful, and people in it are more caring for others. On the other hand, we need to build stronger nerves in our children so they are more tolerant and forgiving as well as caring others. I think feeling secure and being loved in a good way for a child to grow healthy psycologically. This is the reason that I do not want to get racial issue into their lives. I talked with my kids after we heared the VT tragedy. I also called my nephews and niece who are in college in China. I said to them that this is an isolated case, no racial issue involved. Especially to my nephews and niece, I had took the opportunity to lecture them on how to cope with prejudices they face everyday. As much as I am trying to support them, they are still very poor village kids on today's Chinese colleges campuses.
As for whether go back to China or stay in the US, my attitude is to help your people (your family, your relatives, your village, or your country) as much as you can beside living your own happy life. At this stage, China does not need any of us to sacrify our living standard to serve the country. My way of servicing is to support my father, support my siblings' kids to go to college, and being a visiting scholar (在纳入百人计划） in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I am planning to set up a scholarship in my village school. I am trying to find a way so my contribution can be tax deductable. If anyone here knows a way please let me know.
It is great exchanging ideas with you. Wish you a relaxing and pleasent weekend.
My previous post got into a incorrect format. Sorry I am writing in English again. This is not in any sense to show my excellent English. Typing Chinese is simply too difficulty for me at the moment. I am speaking a local Chinese dialect. My Pinyin is some what different from the standard tonge, which makes my typing too time-consuming. English is just a lazy way out for me. Please don't feel offended.
I don't disagree with eithe of you when you discuss racial discrimination in the perspective of politics or in scholarly context. I may even support you or vote for you if your run for a governmental position. I've never heared any of the books that Anon listed. I am not planning to read them in my life time either. This is not my area of study and I don't have enough interest or time or English to understand them. I am talking more in the perspective of an individual, especially a father, on how to cope with every day life in the US. To this end I find that Passer-dy's comments are more helpful (Thanks Passer-by for sharing your thoughts).
I grown up in an underprivilaged background. I have exprienced people's prejudice since I was three years old (before that, I don't know wether there were there or not). Family members do not like the one who is not lovely, which is me. Rich kids look down on poor kids (me), Kids from a bigger village pickes on those from a smaller one (me), Student from cities feels supior to the students from countryside, who is me again. Shanghainese scorns the people from other part of China, which is me again. Young people who have lighter skin color and better looking do not like a person who is dark colored and looks not as good. This unfortunately happens to be me again. Oh, man, if I was as sensitive or unforgiving as any one of those who looked down on me, I probably could not have lived to this day, at least not as healthy. Some of them probably could not have lived, at least not as happily, to this day either. Thanks Heaven, I've lived through and some of those people, including my classmates from Shanghai, becomes my best friends. All these experience tells me that prejudice is as deep as the style and color of a coat. I care less for a person who judges another fellow by looking at style of the coat that the person wears.
Then, who has given me the confidence to travel to many parts of the world around the globe with only limited English and heavy local Chinese accent? What is the root of strength that enabled me to go into a college lecture hall, an academic symposiums, a business board room, or a court room with a pursuasive voice. I think it is the understanding and belief of general goodness of human being. At the end of a day, what matters is the content. People, especially well-educated and good natured ones, will very quickly get into the content of a person regardless the color of his suit. In the fourteen years since I came to the US, I have never felt being discriminated, not at least openly. No one has ever said to me "Your English sucks" or "Go back to China". Even if somebody said that to me, I probably would not care much, because that person would quickly regret he did it.
As for the Virginia Tech mass killing, a comparable case is the case of 马家爵 in China. I think that racial or economical factors play far less a role than psycology and love. Your history books and scholarly arguments do not offer much help in this regard. On the contrary, your argument rationalizes the behavior of Cho by blaming the society, which I find to be dangerous. This is the reason that I triggered me to respond to your blog.
Comparing with people from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia coutries, or even from the minority groups within China, a great advantage of us Chinese Han people is that we don't have minority or island mentality. Do you want to push this into the mind of your children? No, I wouldn't. I do not want my children to be sensitive and narrow-minded. This kind of personality/mentality is a pain to a team, to a family, and to the person him or herself. This is the reason I continue to make my point here. Keeping a broard mind helps. A racial sensitive and combative person may win every battle along his way, but he loses the big war at the end. It is hard to imagine that Hitler, Stalin, or 孙中山 could achieve the height that they had achieved if they had been too quick to consider themselves a minority, which each of them actually was one.
I appreciate the contribution from the black people in civil right movement and of Chinese American forerunners in San Fransisco in their fight for racial justice. Thanks to their couragous fight we are enjoying a far fair society than it used to be. I can see myself fighting for justice too. But, I will never put hate or devisive mentality into it. It is far too dangerous that way.
S o r r y I a m w r i t i n g i n E n g l i s h a g a i n . T h i s i s n o t i n a n y s e n s e t o s h o w m y e x c e l l e n t E n g l i s h . T y p i n g C h i n e s e i s s i m p l y t o o d i f f i c u l t f o r m e . I a m s p e a k i n g a l o c a l C h i n e s e d i a l e c t . M y P i n y Y i n i s s o m e what d i f f e r e n t f r o m s t a n d a r d t o n g e , so it t a k e s m e m i n u t e s t o f i n d a s i n g l e c o r r e c t C h i n e s e c h a r a c t e r t o u s e . E n g l i s h i s j u s t a l a z y w a y o u t f o r m e . P l e a s e d o n ' t f e e l o f f e n d e d .
I d o n ' t d i s a g r e e w i t h b o t h o f y o u w h e n y o u d i s c u s s r a c i a l d i s c r i m i n a t i o n i n t h e p e r s p e c t i v e o f p o l i t i c s o r i n s c h o l a r l y c o n t e x t . I m a y e v e n s u p p o r t y o u o r v o t e f o r y o u i f y o u r u n f o r a g o v e r n m e n t a l p o s i t i o n . I ' v e n e v e r h e a r e d a n y o f t h e b o o k s t h a t A n o n l i s t e d . I a m n o t p l a n n i n g t o r e a d t h e m i n m y l i f e t i m e e i t h e r . T h i s i s n o t m y a r e a o f s t u d y a n d I d o n ' t h a v e e n o u g h i n t e r e s t o r t i m e o r E n g l i s h t o u n d e r s t a n d t h e m . I a m t a l k i n g m o r e i n t h e p e r s p e c t i v e o f a n i n d i v i d u a l , e s p e c a i l l y a f a t h e r , o n h o w t o c o p e w i t h e v e r y d a y l i f e i n t h e U S . T o t h i s e n d I f i n d t h a t P a s s e r - d y ' s c o m m e n t s a r e m o r e h e l p f u l ( T h a n k s P a s s e r - b y f o r s h a r i n g y o u r e x p e r i e n c e a n d t h o u g h t s ) .
I g r o w n u p i n a n u n d e r p r i v i l a g e d b a c k g r o u n d . I h a v e e x p r i e n c e d p e o p l e ' s p r e j u d i c e s i n c e I w a s t h r e e y e a r s o l d ( b e f o r e t h a t , I d o n ' t k n o w if there was any or not) . F a m i l y m e m b e r s d o n o t l i k e t h e o n e w h o i s n o t l o v e l y , w h i c h i s m e . R i c h k i d s l o o k d o w n o n p o o r k i d s ( m e ) , K i d s f r o m a b i g g e r v i l l a g e d i s c r i m i n a t e t h o s e f r o m a s m a l l e r o n e ( m e ) , S t u d e n t f r o m c i t i e s f e e l s t h t t h e v i l l a g e s t u d e n t s a r e s t u p i d , w h o i s m e a g a i n . S h a n g h a i n e s e s c o r n s t h e p e o p l e f r o m o t h e r p a r t o f C h i n a , w h i c h i s m e a g a i n . Y o u n g p e o p l e w h o h a v e a l i g h t e r s k i n a n d b e t t e r l o o k i n g d o n o t l i k e a p e r s o n w h o i s d a r k a n d l o o k n o t a s g o o d . T h e l a t t e r h a p p e n s t o b e m e a g a i n . O h , m a n , i f I w a s a s s e n s t i v e o r u n f o r g i v i n g a s a n y o n e o f t h o s e w h o l o o k e d d o w n o n m e , I p r o b a b l y c o u l d n o t h a v e l i v e d t o t h i s d a y , a t l e a s t n o t a s h e a l t h y . S o m e o f t h e m p r o b a b l y c o u l d n o t h a v e l i v e d , a t l e a s t n o t a s h a p p i l y , t o t h i s d a y e i t h e r . T h a n k s H e a v e n , I ' v e l i v e d t h r o u g h a n d s o m e o f t h o s e p e o p l e , i n c l u d i n g m y c l a s s m a t e s f r o m S h a n g h a i , b e c o m e s m y b e s t f r i e n d s . A l l t h e s e e x p e r i e n c e t e l l s m e t h a t p r e j u d i c e i s a s d e e p a s t h e s t y l e a n d c o l o r o f a c o a t . I c a r e l e s s f o r a p e r s o n w h o j u d g e s a n o t h e r f e l l o w b y l o o k i n g a t s t y l e o f t h e c o a t t h a t t h e p e r s o n w e a r s .
T h e n , w h o h a s g i v e n m e t h e c o n f i d e n c e s o t h a t I c a n t r a v e l a r o u n d t h e w o r l d w i t h l i m i t e d E n g l i s h a n d h e a v y l o c a l C h i n e s e a c c e n t ? W h a t i s t h e r o o t o f s t r e n g t h t h a t e n a b l e s m e t o g o i n t o a u n i v e r s i t y l e c t u r e h a l l , a n a c a d e m i c s y m p o s i u m s , a b u s i n e s s b o a r d r o o m , o r a c o u r t r o o m w i t h a p u r s u a s i v e v o i c e . I t h i n k i t i s t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f g e n e r a l g o o d n e s s o f h u m a n b e i n g . A t t h e e n d o f a d a y , w h a t m a t t e r s i s t h e c o n t e n t . P e o p l e , e s p e c i a l l y w e l l - e d u c a t e d a n d g o o d n a t u r e d p e o p l e , w i l l v e r y q u i c k l y g e t i n t o t h e c o n t e n t o f a p e r s o n d e s p i t e t h e c o l o r t o f h i s c l o t h o r s k i n . I n t h e f o u r t e e n y e a r s s i n c e I c a m e t o t h e U S , I h a v e n e v e r f e l t b e i n g d i s c r i m i n a t e d , n o t a t l e a s t o p e n l y . N o o n e h a s e v e r s a i d t o m e " Y o u r E n g l i s h s u c k s " o r " G o b a c k t o C h i n a " . E v e n i f s o m e b o d y s a i d t h a t o t m e , I p r o b a b l y w o u l d n o t c a r e m u c h , b e c a u s e t h a t p e r s o n w o u l d q u i c k l y r e g r e t h e s a i d i t .
A s f o r t h e V i r g i n i a T e c h m a s s k i l l i n g , a c o m p a r a b l e c a s e i s t h e c a s e o f 马家爵 i n C h i n a , I t h i n k r a c i a l o r s o c i e l e c o n o m i c a l f a c t o r s p l a y f a r l e s s a r o l e t h a n p s y c o l o g y a n d l o v e . Y o u r h i s t o r y b o o k s a n d s c h o l a r l y a r g u m e n t s d o n o t o f f e r m u c h h e l p i n t h i s r e g a r d . O n t h e c o n t r a r y , y o u r a r g u m e n t r a t i o n a l i z e s t h e b e h a v i o r o f C h o , w h i c h I f i n d t o b e d a n g e r o u s i f y o u r t h o u g h t g e t h o l d o f s e n s i t i v e a n d n a r r o w - m i n d e d p e r s o n s o r y o u n g k i d s . T h i s i s t h e r e a s o n I s t a r t e d r e s p o n d t o y o u r b l o g .
C o m p a r i n g w i t h p e o p l e f r o m T a i w a n , J a p a n , K o r e a , S o u t h e a s t A s i a c o u t r i e s , o r e v e n t h e m i n o r i t y g r o u p s w i t h i n C h i n a , a g r e a t a d v a n t a g e o f u s C h i n e s e H a n p e o p l e i s t h a t w e d o n ' t h a v e m i n o r i t y o r i s l a n d m e n t a l i t y . D o y o u w a n t t o p u s h t h i s i n t o y o u r c h i l d r e n ? I w o u l d n ' t . I d o n o t w a n t m y c h i l d r e n t o b e s e n s i t i v e a n d n a r r o w - m i n d e d . T h i s k i n d o f p e r s o n a l i t y / m e n t a l i t y i s a p a i n t o a t e a m , t o a f a m i l y , a n d t o t h e p e r s o n h i m o r h e r s e l f . T h i s i s t h e r e a s o n I c o n t i n u e t o m a k e m y p o i n t h e r e . K e e p i n g a b r o a r d m i n d h e l p s . A r a c i a l s e n s i t i v e a n d c o m b a t i v e p e r s o n m a y w i n e v e r y b a t t l e a l o n g h i s w a y , b u t h e l o s e s t h e b i g w a r a t t h e e n d . I t i s h a r d t o i m a g e t h a t H i t l e r , S t a l i n , o r 孙中山 c o u l d a c h i e v e t h e h e i g h t that had achieved i n s o c i e t y i f t h e y h a d been too quick to c o n s i d e r t h e m s e l v e s a m i n o r i t y , w h i c h e a c h o f t h e m a c t u a l l y w a s one.
I appreciate the contribution from the black people in civil right movement and of Chinese American forerunners in San Fransisco in their fight for racial justice. I can see myself fighting for justice too. But, I will never put hate into it. It is far to dangerous that way.
1. Occupied America: The Chicano's Struggle Toward Liberation, Rodolfo Acuna, Canfield Press, San Francisco, 1972; 2. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, Neil Foley, University of California Press, 1997.
另外一本书是我自己正在看的： The Illusion of Inclusion: The Untold Political Story of San Antonio, University of Texas Press, 2000. 讲述的是拉丁裔在Texas参加美国政治的里程和他们的教训。
I don’t know about you, but it feels like the Virginia Tech massacre that took place on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA has left people emotionally drained. I know that I am. This is now being considered the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history and as it stands, Cho Seung-hui killed 32 people and injuring at least 30 others before turning the gun on himself.
It was also reported that the Virginia Tech massacre resembles another campus shooting that occurred in Austin, TX, where Charles Joseph Whitman, the Texas Tower sniper, fired 150 high-powered rounds of ammunition from the University of Texas Tower killing 16 people and wounding nearly 50 people. Until now, UT shooting was considered the deadliest campus shooting in US history. It has even surpassed the Luby’s massacre of 1991, in which twenty-four people were killed.
All this news can be found on almost any blog and news website. As more and more news emerges, there are several disturbing facts that happen to be over looked, but reveal a lot about how this country handles a crisis.
Playing the “Blame the Immigrant” Game: Inaccurate media reports Once it was reported that the shooter was an Asian immigrant, Asians have suddenly become the latest media topic. However, there is more than scapegoat one particular group; during the chaos, there was a troubling sign from the media in trying to link an individual act with something larger. Soon after the story broke, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed initially reported (which is no longer online) that the shooter was not only a Chinese immigrant but also a possible terrorist. The original link to that story has been updated with the correct information; however, the original report can still be viewed in its entirety on the pro-gun community forum named The Firing Line. Sneed wrote:
Authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.
The 24-year-old man arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source said.
In an apparent effort to be on top of the story, it was immediately picked up and cited by other corporate media, such as FOX News, MSNBC, and ABC News. A screen shot of the article can be found on the blog, Letters from China.
Even worse, one of the most unfortunate media debacles over the VA Tech shootings was the false accusations levied against Wayne Chiang, a Chinese-American who happens to collect guns and who also attends VT who also recently broke up with his girlfriend. Without waiting for the details from the local authority and going on a unfounded and stereotype-based “tip,” Fox News reporters Geraldo Rivera and Megyn Kelly insisted that Wayne Chiang “might have been the perpetrator” as Fox News not only were searching for his residence but also kept broadcasting his pictures from his Facebook page all over the airwaves.
… on the Fox Network, Geraldo Rivera broadcast Chiang’s Facebook page - though not his name - stating, “people might suspect that this might have been the perpetrator.” Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly then explained how, upon discovery of Chiang’s profile, the channel searched for him.
Sadly, Chiang was not only a victim of profiling, but also a victim of the old stereotype that “all Asians look the same.” Or, as he put it, was “five for five.” According Chiang, he was forced to go public after an Internet lynch mob targeted Chaing throughout the day with “numerous death threats, slanderous accusations, and ….. [a] barrage of [phone] calls.” By the end, his site had over 166,000 page views and on Tuesday, he had over 333,000 people visit his site. On the day of the massacre, his site was quickly filled with hate-filled comments such as: “so u are the asisan that shot up the school. i hate u and your people.” (note: comments are closed now)
In an interview with ABC, Chiang said: “Right now pretty much the internet thinks it is me … I am just interested in trying to clear my name.” One would think that once the gunman was properly identified this was an open and shut case in the court of public opinion, no debate, time to move on, unfortunately, this is not the case for Chaing. According to Chiang’s latest entry, he is still being “misidentified” as the shooter.
But Chiang wasn’t the only one who discovered how effective the internet can be in spreading unstoppable slurs and libel, At one point mechanical engineering student James Jay Kim also was “outed” as the killer. Kim was originally named in a Facebook discussion, which was later mention on the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The page was removed an hour later.
James Jay Kim was named in a Facebook discussion between students when one user asked the question: ‘Does anyone know who the shooter is?’ Kim’s name was posted in a reply, with other participants claiming they had been told by sources at the university that it was ‘definitely’ him.
It is not surprising for people to overreact in a time of crises; sometimes people may mishear or misinterpret information they may have heard. However, I don’t think that person misheard the news they were told from their inside sources from the university. The picture below is an AP photo taken by The Roanoke Times Alan Kim, the caption states: “An unidentified man is restrained during a manhunt on the Virginia Tech campus.” Unfortunately, it remains unclear who that person was and if he actually played a role in the shooting or if that person is actually James Jay Kim. These are questions we may never know or find out.
Since the media never apologized for misleading the public that day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao criticized the media the next day and said “that it is was a terrible mistake and a violation of professional ethics to publish reports before checking the facts.”
What is unfortunate about the aftermath of this tragedy is not that it further proves that this county is xenophobic, but the sloppy reporting actually had consequences. Because of Sneed’s column, a host of international websites carried the story with such headlines “Chinese student suspected of Virginia massacre,” which actually caused a near panic in China. When the report turned out to be incorrect, Sneed’s article was removed and updated, however, Sneed, without apologizing, provided a weak excuse for her reckless reporting.
Sneed’s online report Monday afternoon stated the initial investigation led law enforcement authorities to a preliminary suspect, who was a man from China.
Details and a description of the preliminary suspect accompanied reports available to law enforcement agencies via a national network checking on possible terrorist activities.
Sneed was not the only who tried to cover up their mess after causing a stir. According to a post on Sepia Mutiny, right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel reported that the shooter might be a “Paki” Muslim and according to Media Matters, she also claimed it was part of “a coordinated terrorist attack.”
The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).
Pakis are considered “Asian.”
Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.
Unsurprisingly, Schlussel also deleted her post from her blog, stating she was “spending too much time monitoring the slimy comments from the Nazi-infested Media Matters for America cretins.”
This is a disturbing trend among white media pundits in an effort to steer an entire population into thinking that one individual represents a whole community, even to the point of personifying a whole nation. They have no problem conjuring up bogeymen out of thin air, creating enemies out of lies and manipulations. To them, it is all about the rates and the first to provide a juicy gossip regardless if they ruined the lives and careers of honorable men and women; or create division and animosity between citizens. And when they’re caught, it has become second nature to amend their information in real time to cover up their sloppy tracks.
It is not surprising to see the political and media establishment responding to the Virginia Tech massacre as it does to every significant event of social malaise, with a combination of denial and self-delusion. It will be business as usual where a large majority of our society will never talk about the dirty little secret of assimilation or the myth of America’s model minority and how it does not always prevent racial alienation, rage, or depression.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho’s turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth,” Davids said.
“As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China,’” Davids said. … “There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him,” Roberts said. “He didn’t speak English really well and they would really make fun of him.”
Given that the model minority myth elevates Asians over minority groups, we can expect to see Cho dissected as an anomaly among South Koreans who “are not prone” to violence. But one thing for sure, this tragedy will only add fuel to the heated immigration debate and the need to increase deportation.
如果你也读书,那我给你列几本书,抽时间读一下(由易到难排列): Howard Zinn “A People’s History of the United States, ” Ronald Takaki的”Strangers From a Different Shore: a History of Asian Americans,” James Loewen “The Mississippi Chinese:Between Black and White,” Winthrop Jordan “White Man’s Burden,” Eric Wolf “Europe and the People Without History,” David Roediger “The Wages of Whiteness.”
please dont take what im about to say as a personal attack
when you say that as long as there is no LAW indicate the RACIAL Discrimation, then we are fine.
but you see, that's where you are wrong. LAW is WRITEN BY PEOPLE. if the supreme court can over rule the constitution, or make exceptions over it, then you know that no one is safe here. even the Latino Community understands that concept.
(FYI. the supreme court has Thomas Jefferson to thank for such power; Latin Americans were considered White before Brown Vs. Board of Education, B vs. BE was not the first colored case that were taken to the Supreme Court, there was another one involving a Mexican American immigrant as defendant case which was brought before the Supreme Court, and that case was the first colored case. )
that is merely the reason why there are over 30 or so seats been taken by the Latin community in the House of Reps. and only 11 or so Asians. and there are only so many seats in the House.
if you do not have a voice, then no one will hear you. just like what the Americans always say, Squeaky wheel, gets the oil.
and the Latin community understands that, so does the African-Ameircan community. Why do you think now there is a bill that's about to pass mainly concerning the illegal immigrants here in the US ? and the majority of that population is Latin Americans ?
if the congress can pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, then it certainly can happen again. the only matter concerning here is when.
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