I went to an excellent talk at this EARCOS
Conference by Anne Sibley O’Brien. The title was: The Formation of Racial
and Cultural Identity and she came to it from an unusual perspective—her
story as a minority white American growing up in Korea. Though a minority in
one sense, she also had the entire history of white dominance and privilege in
the background that allowed her to read books and see movies and watch TV where
she was the norm. That certainly made her experience quite different from say,
a Chinese American growing up as the only Chinese family in town (as the main
character in Lisa See’s China Doll or my childhood friend, David Quon
did), with Charlie Chan showing in the movies and no one in the school books
resembling them.
Her talk unleashed a stampede of wild horses which I’ve been
trying to corral into coherent thought, but it’s hopeless. The needed
discussions are so profound and so various and so complex that each thought is
a chapter in itself in a book I will never write. But after a few more remarks
here, I’ll try to at least house each horse in a bulleted corral for future
consideration.
Ms. O’Brien talked about her own wild horse stampede when
she went to a talk titled “The Neuroscience of Bias” and the realization that
we are genetically programmed to note difference (apparently 6-month old babies
can already distinguish race) and make judgment of “the other.” Makes sense as
a survival strategy. Without it, we couldn’t distinguish between the dangerous
tiger and the harmless house cat, the delicious blackberry and the malicious
poison oak. But then comes all the cultural practices that get set in motion
and solidified as “the way it spozed to be,” from scientific theories of racial
inferiority concocted to allow slave masters to sleep peacefully at night to
clitorectomies in various West African cultures or bound feet in China or
homophobia just about everywhere. Now the plot thickens and not happily so.
Turns out we are all biased, each and every one of us and
even the best-hearted amongst us, unconsciously driven by old biological and
cultural programs. What the culture feeds us has enormous impact. Growing up
with David Quon, George Gonzales and Bill “Lump” Blackshear, I already was
crossing lines of separation and finding friendship in human qualities
independent of race and cultural origin. But on TV, images of Tonto, Amos and
Andy, José Jimenez, Charlie Chan were being imprinted on my young brain. I feel
my friend and colleague from Ghana Kofi Gbolonyo like a long-lost brother, but
still I grew up watching Tarzan and reading Little Black Sambo. I have two
strong, independent daughters who beat me in basketball, Boggle and baking, but
still I watched Betty Boop. One of Ms. O-Brien’s missions is to enlarge the
imagery of “the other” through children’s books, both as an illustrator and an
author and I’m convinced this is essential.
The good news is that our brain’s wiring for bias is the
starting point of the discussion, but not the end. It is not an excuse to shrug
our shoulders and say, “Oh well. Guess that’s just the way it is.” But neither
can we leap over the rough terrain of difference, both biological, cultural,
perceived and otherwise, into the lioned and lambed beauty of our common shared
humanity. The only antidote is increased awareness, consciousness and of
course, intention to widen one’s world to include all. It requires questioning
assumptions handed down, working through fear of the other, refusing the
invitation to feel superior— and working to create a new culture for our
children that will save them some (but not all) of this difficult work. I love
it when the kids at school see some old movie portrayal or hear history’s
stories and respond with puzzled looks, “What was wrong with those people?” And most of what was wrong was far beyond
any one person’s control or choice, simply was the air we collectively breathed
passed down from one ignorant generation to another.
People like me spend some time defending, either to others
or ourselves, that we aren’t racist or sexist or homophobic. How could I be,
with a gay African-American Orff mentor, a mixed-race granddaughter, teachers
and students from some 45 countries who I enjoy, admire and even love? And yet
these images and assumptions still live on in my brain and influence my
perceptions and ideas, whether I’m aware of it or not.
I do think it’s worth being less glib by calling us all
racists (though admit it! That title caught your attention!). That’s a charged
word and I suggest that there’s a large divide between just about everyone I
know and General Custer, Sheriff Clark or Hitler. “Bias” is a more accurate
term and applies to us all equally. And really, I complete understand why
racism is mostly a black and white issue in the U.S., but it’s time to enlarge
the discussion. My childhood friend David Quon says that the black kids in my
town insulted him the most and some of historical American black culture’s
issues with women, gays and even Africans need to get up on the table along
with everything else. Though a victim of bias will elicit more sympathy and
understanding than the perpetrator, it’s still not okay to carry other biases
forward without challenge.
One of the biggest takeaways from Ms. O’Brien’s talk is that
even as I yearn for and accent and aim for the shared humanity end of the whole
matter, I will never wholly understand what it’s like to be a stranger in a
strange land, to be a minority constantly under judgment, disdain,
marginalization and yes, real danger, as recent events so depressingly affirm.
I’ll always be the boy on the basketball team who is simply a player on the
team, never the one girl on the team who will always be “the girl” on the team,
with every action and reaction under surveillance as the “other.” Even if I
lived the rest of my life in a remote Ghanaian village, I’d still carry my male
privilege, see images of a white Jesus Christ and be somehow connected to everything
the British brought in when they colonized Ghana.
So much for the corrals. I’ve let horses run freely around
and that’s fine, it’s a start. I’m looking forward to investigating more about the neuroscience of bias and keeping the discussion alive. Thanks
to Ms. O'Brien for her work and stimulating presentation. Let’s keep it all
moving forward, people!
