From: jj@alice.att.com (jj,  curmudgeon and clueless old white boy)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: Perceptions, Realities, Perceptions
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:05:39 GMT
Reply-To: jj@alice.UUCP (jj,  curmudgeon and clueless old white boy)
Distribution: soc
Organization: NJ State Home for Bewildered Terminals

In article <78805@ut-emx.uucp> joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang) writes:
>Why not?  All it takes is a society that looks beyond the color of
>one's skin, and one that regards Asian, African, or Hispanic as no
>more relevant than Irish, Polish, or German.  Does that sound so
>impossible?
(well, it's not JOE I'm arguing against here, bear in mind!)

Well, that sounds pretty impossible to me, at least until we have
people try to point out the similarities between most human
experiences rather than the differences, and until we have
people trying to work together across "lines" instead of
drawing new ones, and trying to firm up the old ones.  Until
people stop paying attention to color (and stop saying
"You're asian, if you don't agree with me you're a race
traitor and a twinkie sellout, you sub-human, you"), we're 
not going to have a color-blind society.  Until people
realize that a color-blind society isn't a homogenious
society, we won't have it.  Until people realize that
a "melting pot" is really a 'stew-pot', where all sorts
of different things nestle next to each other and
combine to make the whole more than the parts, we
won't have a color-blind society.

Until people realize that each and every call for separatism
is a call for more racial hatred, for more hurting and killing,
and for more pain, we won't have a color blind society.
That's why I know that separatism is so purely
and simply evil.

<<someone slams Joe for being a race-traitor and sellout>>

>You see.  This is the sort of thing that annoys the heck out of me.

I don't blame you.  It seems very much like the Klan's
"if you don't agree with me, you're a sell-out to the race",
doesn't it?  Why is it that the people who are screaming
"organize", "race first", and all those things sound so much
like Klan wannabees?


>I'm Chinese, and I'm completely unwilling to compromise on this fact.
>If "the powers-that-be" asked me to give up the slightest bit of my
>"Chineseness" in return for being a "American," I'd tell them to get
>lost, because that's completely unacceptable to me.
And that, I think, is the point of treating people as individuals.
RATHER than as races.  You are what you are, and why is it up
to some petty bigot to want you to be something else, or to call
you a race traitor.  I'm sorry, folks, but I'm getting really
tired of all this 'race traitor, race traitor' excrement, you guys
sound just like some of the residents of 1939 Germany to me.
I think you need to read some history.

>The fact, however, is that I've never been in a recent situation in
>which the establishment has asked me to stop being Chinese, and no
>white person has recently challenged my identity.  (Again, this may be
>because I stay in academic circles a lot, and people are more
>broad-minded there.)
And because you probably drive bigots away very quickly by
looking like an effective person, rather than a useful
(to them, that is) victim.  Most bigots are also really
insecure bullies, and a self-assured person can truly
cause terror. <Yes, I'm quite sure.>

>But I've been accused several times by AA activist of not respecting
>myself and of not being proud of who I am.  As a result, I have found
>myself defending my identity against AA activists more often than
>defending against "the establishment."

>Strange isn't it????????
No, AA activists are like most other activists, I think.  They want
to increase their influence, using racial hatreds and prejudices,
and to hell with what it does to the world, or to their
victims of any race.

Separatism is racism, regarless of whether it comes from George
Bush, Dowdy Jackson, or Hoyt Sze.  In all cases that I'v ever experienced
or read about, racism causes more hurt, more pain, and eventually
more killing.  The separatist arguments I see here are astonshingly
close to some of the africaans rationalizations, and we know just
how THAT fiasco is going to turn out, don't we?  All fall down,
dead. This is what you WANT?  Stay away from me and mine with it.
-- 
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american