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...and I walked up to him and I said you know your bike's blocking my way.
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And I mean he just turned around and kind of looked at me, had his helmet on, he opened his visor,
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and he said "I'm busy. I'll get to it in a minute"
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Sort of telling me, "I've got the power, you don't".
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I felt like it was misplaced rage.
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I felt like it was focused on me, but it was misplaced rage.
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And I'm afraid of that.
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I run into it, and I'm afraid, and I think that...
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I read the media, I watch television, read the newspapers,
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and all I get is this reenforcement, all I get is reenforcement about these negative stereotypes.
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And it takes a real effort to, sort of, combat this.
-
I am reluctant and fearful of further division between us.
-
I'm worried that dividion between us will happen even more where we won't come back together.
-
That, that's something that is, runs deep with me.
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That stops me from looking at areas that get hard,
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when it comes to other people of colour.
-
I have been, uh, a little bit nervous about getting into this,
-
and not wanting to have us uh... y'know just laying our junk out on the table
-
without acknowledging that it's a, that there's a context of white racism that we live within,
-
that helps to separate us and confuse us about each other.
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And I do agree that um, you have to look at inter-ethnic racism within the context of white supremacy,
-
but I disagree with the fact that you can't cover that up, because it is there
-
and we have to deal with it
-
before we can do anything about white racism.
-
We have to deal with that conflict,
-
because it's there, and in my opinion it's growing.
-
By exploring inter-ethnic racism, we've torn apart the unity that we built up earlier
-
when we were jsut attacking white people.
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[Victor interrupting] ... the bit about attacking white people,
-
I think attacking white racism... I don't think it's about attacking white people.
-
There is some anger, um, underlying real anger,
-
and we're afraid to express it because we want to as Victor said maintain some kind of unity here
-
that we've established.
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Maybe we should take the risk and lay it all out.
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[Roberto] I mean, talking about it helps.
-
Bringing it out into the light helps.
-
It loses some of its mystery.
-
Some of its power.
-
Growing up. I picked up stereotypes
-
that Blacks were lazy, that they were violent, that they were dangerous.
-
I mean, there still is a tape in the back of my head that plays back all the time,
-
but there's another tape that I've developed that says that this isn't true.
-
When I see Asian people being, uh, praised for intelligence,
-
and Black people invalidated for being stupid,
-
I feel bitter about it.
-
You know, cause, I know I'm very smart, I've always been very smart,
-
and you know, it hurts me to see that acknowledgement given up to other people,
-
when it's taken away from me.
-
And all the people in my community, with very few exceptions where I grew up,
-
worked very very hard.
-
My mother worked hard, my grandmother worked hard, my aunts & uncles worked hard,
-
they worked themselves to death,
-
and they pulled and they pulled on their bootstraps,
-
and those suckers just tore off, and they didn't get no place.
-
You leave home every day,
-
your parents instill in you that you're a good person,
-
you know
-
you're a moral person.
-
Yet when you go out into the world, yknow,
-
just because of the colour of your skin, people avoid you,
-
they look at you as if you're a potential killer,
-
they don' t think you're as smart as they are,
-
you watch the news, who do you see being taken away in handcuffs all the time?
-
It's somebody that looks like you, somebody that could be you.
-
You're always under suspicion, so at times you do wonder if it is you.
-
In my father's restaurant, it was, y'know, make sure we don't have Blacks come into our restaurant
-
because it'll mean tha white people won't come into our restaurant.
-
And you know... people, white people don't want ... Blacks in the restaurant.
-
But all tha time, the whites were really encouraging that, without knowing it.
-
And that's why when I hear about the Black and the Asian community, I feel so sad about that,
-
because I think that there's a way in which we've been really used, used, to put down Black people.
-
y'know, especially the L.A. riots, y'know?
-
"The poor little Korean grocer, if only Blacks could work as hard as us,
-
with such great family values,
-
y'know, look what they get, then the Black people beat em up, burned down their stores",
-
y'know, and the fact of it was, we were both being exploited,
-
we've been both taught to be really scared of each other.
-
And I, I, it just, it's it's, I mean it hits me here, y'know?
-
Because, many of you know because my mother was murdered by an African American man.
-
I can be just as angry and buy into my father's stereotypes about African American men,
-
but I knew where he was headed with that.
-
I knew where he was headed.
-
That all African American men murder and kill,
-
and he wanted me to pass that on to my child,
-
but I know the stories he told me about the racism that's happened to us,
-
and somehow, I just wanted to say "REMEMBER what happened to us!"
-
Just remember what happened to us happens to everybody else.
-
And I know he wanted somebody to stop that.
-
He wanted another Asian man to stand up for him.
-
He wanted another Black man to stand up for him.
-
And maybe, another white man to stand up for him.
-
I have had, um, a fair number of experiences
-
of being, um, or feeling invisible from Black to Latino,
-
where essentially I've been given the message that
-
my issues as a brown person are not as important or as bad as a Black person's
-
because of the ligh..., I'm whiter, y;know.
-
So, um, that somehow the measuring of the colour line,
-
um. you're either black or you're white
-
and if you're in the middle there, then, it doesn't count.
-
Like, I watch out to see, alright, now which one are you gonna be?
-
The one that values my experience, or the one that says
-
the only thing you need to do is pay attention to what happens to Black people.
-
Y'know, so when I meet you, that's the kind of thing that goes through...
-
OK now which one are you gonna be? Which one are you gonna be?
-
Y'know, that's uh, the tape that goes on.
-
You mention the skin colour and I think if you go back to when we were slaves
-
or enslaved in this country,
-
um, the lighter skinned slaves were the house slaves,
-
and they usually had more privilege.
-
Now, you bring that into the 20th century,
-
and a lot of Black people may equate lighter skin with more privilege,
-
and that's why they don't see that you would have a problem that we would have.
-
In, you were talking about skin colour, within the Black community,
-
well in the Latino community there is skin colour also...
-
[Loren] What about Asians...
-
[Lee Mun Wah] Asians too...
-
And the darker you are, the kind of lower you are on the scale.
-
And like, mothers when they have a baby and the baby is white,
-
"Oh que blanco!" or whatever, "beautiful!" You know?
-
"_es casi rubio!" you know? "He's almost blonde"...
-
You know, I know that many Black folks resent any signs of assimilation,
-
whether it be amongst other people in the Black community, or in oher ethnic communities.
-
Y'know, and some of it's the skin colour stuff,
-
uh, whether you're in the Black community or uh other people of colour communities,
-
if you're lighter, there's less trust often,
-
and more like, "well, you might use that light skin uh that you have
-
to get more goodies out of white folks".
-
My experience has been that white folks feel more at ease with people
-
that are closer to the colour that they are.
-
You know, and that I get to do stuff that my mom can't do,
-
my mom's significantly darker than I am.
-
I have had an easier time putting white folks at ease, uh, you know, because I'm not Loren's complexion,
-
and that can create static between me and Loren...
-
[David L] I get the impression sometimes from the African American community
-
that Asians are perceived as privileged,
-
that educationally we've achieved, economically we've achieved, we're almost like white people dammit,
-
and therefore we're hated just, I mean...
-
[Loren] What you can do, and maybe I'm putting too much pressure on you but,
-
I think what you can do is make people understand how you achieve what you achieve,
-
show em how you worked hard for it, that you weren't given anything.
-
Again, I want to dispel the myth that all Asians have made it economically,
-
because, that's not the truth,
-
but the ones that do are very visible.
-
[Victor] I was just thinking "the model minority", y'know, and that it's... what a set up.
-
Y'know, it's like "why can't you people be more like those people?
-
And then you wouldn't have the problems that you have"
-
[David L] I think we are comparing each other based on white people.
-
We are not white enough and therefore we chastise or criticize each other
-
for not being like the white model.
-
I think that's, that's why I call it internalized racism,
-
cause I don't think that I in a vacuum am racist against Blacks,
-
but because I come from a white context that Blacks are not like whites,
-
and therefore I should be against Blacks,
-
or Asians are not like whites, therefore I criticize Asians for not being like whites.
-
I was wanting to think that I was white.
-
I was wanting to blend in,
-
I was just wanting to assimilate to this extreme degree,
-
til I realized who I really wanted to be,
-
and I looked back,
-
and my family's internment in the concentration camps had a huge impact on them.
-
They didn't want to identify with being Japanese,
-
because when they said they were Japanese,
-
they were discriminated against severely & locked up.
-
They didn't want to identify as being Buddhist anymore,
-
so my grandfather became Christian to blend in,
-
and he like lost his real religion,
-
and just now I'm starting to reclaim that.
-
My dad taught me a lot of lessons.
-
Family jokes about him being the Archie Bunker of the family, y'know?
-
And um, Chinese are like loud and noisy businessmen that try to take your money or something like that.
-
Several of my family members do not like Japanese.
-
I think a lot of the older ones especially
-
still remember the Sino-Japanese war,
-
in which Japan invaded China and prettymuch brutalized a lot of people.
-
[Yutaka]... int he process...
-
[David L] Yeah, and a lot of them remember that, and that continues.
-
I think they perceive the Japanese as arrogant, distrustful, extremely violent, and repressed.
-
[Yutaka] ...a lot of that... so much of that's true too, that's the hard thing to deny.
-
[David L] But it's not true for a lot of Japanese people...
-
[Yutaka]... right, for us sitting right here...
-
The number of times where I have not intervened on your behalf, or on your behalf,
-
even on your behalf, for my own people, you know,
-
where racism has flown, and I've let it fly
-
about Black people, about Asians, about other Latinos even, about Indians,
-
and I've, I think I have a lot of shame about that,
-
and so if I expose that, what are you gonna think of me now?
-
You know, that kind of stuff is part of what makes this heavy for me.
-
A woman was talking about "oh those Cubans are taking over Florida",
-
you know, just running with it,
-
and I sat there, and I didn't say anything.
-
And finally she said "Hugh, I wanna ask you something.
-
I hope you know I wasn't wanting to offend you".
-
And all of the things that I wanted to say, I sat on.
-
You know, I sat on it.
-
That's an example to me of being shameful and embarrassed
-
of not coming to intervene on your behalf, or on my behalf for that matter.
-
I understand.
-
Earlier in my life I was totally surrounded by white people,
-
and that was my life aside from my family.
-
It was all white people around me.
-
And every once in awhile, I'd hear a comment like that, or something like that
-
about Cubans or Mexicans or whatever,
-
"oh but Roberto you're not like that, I mean, I wasn't talking..."
-
I wasn't even Roberto then, I was Bob or something like that.
-
"Oh Bob, but you're not like that" ...
