Me Nigger Too

In Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport I spotted a group of twenty something dudes–or is it dawgs–dressed in that distinctive urban hip hop style– baggy slacks oversized shirts and baseball caps decidedly cocked or worn backwards.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t have given much attention except all were of Chinese descent.  They could have been Jamaicans or from the States, San Francisco, New York even London or Beijing.

They were reminders of an incident in DC during the ’68 riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination.  In the inner city inferno a fearful Chinese laundry proprietor placed a scribbled sign in his window pleading No Burn–Me Nigger Too.  However inartful his language it was nevertheless a striking acknowledgement of our common humanity.  African and Chinese first coming to America albeit under different circumstances shared a common experience facing the same hostile forces. 

 By the 1950’s and the advent of the Civil Rights movements the Chinese had achieved a tenuous integration throughout the South.  Too few to be regarded as a threat most owned their own businesses as grocers and shopkeepers relying on black customers and accommodating white neighbors.  It wasn’t until the 1960s after more than a century of racial injustice would they find their voice challenging the system.  Two American born Chinese, Grace Lee Boggs and Fred Ho, activists and writers both in their work borrowed heavily on the African American experience demonstrating, protesting, marching, and speaking out. 

Grace Lee Boggs the daughter of Chinese immigrants educated at Barnard College receiving a Ph.D from Bryn Mawr in 1940 worked with West Indian Marxist historian C.L.R. James using the pen name Ria Stone.  In 1953, she moved to Detroit where she married James Boggs, an African-American labor activist, writer and strategist.  The two worked together in grass roots groups and projects for 40 years until Boggs’ death in July 1993.  Their book, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century was published in 1974.

American jazz baritone saxophonist, Fed Ho is also a composer, bandleader, playwright, writer and social activist though most often identified with the Asian American jazz or avant-garde jazz movements.  Many of his works fuse the melodies of indigenous and traditional Asian and African music.  The first to combine Chinese operas and African American music he is a prolific composer and writer with a third book in progress about African Americans and Asians working together in civil rights. 

 There is a common thread of oppression discrimination and violence against African and Chinese Americans throughout American history.  The word Nigger has come to symbolize that inhumanity.  As Langston Hughes declared I Too Sing America, and no doubt Americans Grace Lee Boggs and Fred Ho wouldn’t hesitate to claim Me Nigger Too.

As part of Asian Pacific American Heritage month this is the 2^nd of a four part series.

ABCs and Lessons Learned

Requiring those perceived as aliens to carry proof of citizenship is not a new phenomenon. It was a common practice required of ABCs (American Born Chinese) subjected to restrictive immigration laws beginning shortly after the Gold Rush of 1849 through the mid 20th Century. Iris Chang in her book The Chinese in America presents a compelling narrative of the Chinese American experience illustrating American racism in a different hue as profound as the contrast between black and white. California state and federal codes are replete with acts and statutes hostile to Asian Americans. The Chinese American experience is another shameful chapter in American history and particularly American jurisprudence.

No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870s and 1880s. Lynching, boycotts and mass explulsion. (John Higham, Stranger in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925) Untold numbers of Chinese were deported from 1890 to 1920, according to Chang the number of male Chinese in the United States (at the time 95% of the Chinese population dropped from 103,620 to 85,341). Men were awakened and dragged from their homes under cover of night. During the raids, inspectors often demanded to see residence certificates needed by Chinese to stay in the United States. Inspectors often confiscated the documents without providing receipts, causing the owners months of agony, knowing they could not prove their legitimate right to reside in the United States. If the Chinese could not produce the certificate, they were expected to explain how they had lost them, which was impossible for many to do. Some immigrants exhausted their entire life savings paying legal bills and hiring detectives to locate witnesses to testify on their behalf.

The deportation process was horrendous. According to a 1913 report compiled by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Chinese American League of Justice of Los Angeles, the Chinese deportees were packed into railroad cars “unfit for the transportation of cattle,” poorly fed, and then herded into the holds of ships, where there endured “real torture, especially in the summertime,” when the ship sailed to the equator. With constant danger of such deportation hanging over their heads the Chinese were vulnerable to legally sanctioned blackmail and could be fleeced mercilessly by officials and hoodlums alike. (Chang) The Supreme Court conferred jurisdiction to the secretary of commerce and labor to hear immigration matters with determinations decidedly final and without judicial review. U.S. citizenship was commonly stripped from Americans of Chinese descent. The law and actions proved to be embarrassing when China and the United States became allies during World War II.

During economic downturn the defenseless become scapegoats. Americans should not repeat the lessons of the past. The Constitution and its protections of due process and equal protection cannot be lightly tossed aside. Respecting rights of all men native or foreign born is fundamental to our constitution and core values.

Incognizant Racism

Washingtonian magazine annually surveys DC’s top doctors, lawyers, and dentists. I was puzzled when its list of top dentists failed to include a single African American in a city 60% Black most of whom patronize Black dentists. Washingtonian is a monthly magazine distributed in the DC area since 1965 described as the magazine Washington lives by, focusing on local feature journalism, guidebook style articles, and real estate advice. It tends to give short shrift to communities of color and particularly the well educated upper middle class African American. An explanation can be found in Don Heider’s book White News: Why Local Programs Don’t Cover People of Color.

Heider studied two news broadcast markets in Honolulu and Albuquerque. African Americans are not the dominant minority but included communities substantially populated with other people of color: Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. The study was conducted 10 years ago when the white population of Albuquerque was 51% while Honolulu had no racial majority. Heider’s thesis was “to understand how and why certain content does or does not end up on the air in a particular local station’s newscasts” and to understand the process and structure that govern news decisions.  He concluded the dominant influences on this process are hegemony and ownership.

The study focused on a newsroom in each market and made the expected observations that top news managers were white males verifying a consistent contention by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that white males are the gatekeepers of the U.S. media. As a consequence little importannce and coverage are attached to issues involving non-white communities such as, gentrification, affordable housing and displacement, environmental racism, development and education. Workplace diversity was superficial with minority anchors and coverage limited to crime and festivals.

Incognizant Racism, a theory advanced by Philomena Essed in Understanding Everday Racism supports the proposition that hidden under the surface of diversity there is a strong tendency among Whites in the United States to assume superiority of Euro-American values. Hidden also is the expectation that in due time Blacks must accept the norms and values of the Euro-American tradition as superior and that adaptation is the only way to progress in American society. As Heider argues, ownership and day to day practices work together to systematically exclude certain groups thus marginalizing issues important to their communities.

In explaining the process of incognizant racism within the newsroom Heider found some reporters tried to cover relevant issues, some realized more needed to be done, and still others did not even have a level of awareness, yet all worked together to produce a product that consistently excluded stories about entire segments of the viewing audience. The practice results in racist coverage that is a distinctly different kind of coverage of people of color than exists for the White population.

Washingtonian’s claim of presenting the best while excluding significant others lacks credibility. How about calling it what it is: a list of DC’s best white dentists. One solution is certain, minority communities need to own and control their own media outlets and not sell out to corporate conglomerates.

Sanford Roan’s First Round for Diversity

In 1939 Sanford Roan made several attempts to integrate the Ohio Highway Patrol. The first African-American applicant brought superior credentials, a graduate of North Carolina A&T with a business degree. He was a star athlete and later a trained pilot with military service. John Bricker an ambitious Ohio gubernatorial candidate urged Roan’s application suggesting the State was eager for an African American patrolman. In a ploy to capture the Black vote Roan unwittingly became a political pawn in Bricker’s election bid.

Ostracized throughout cadet training Roan coped with the humiliating and hostile environment as he would later express to President Roosevelt: “The boys when they would talk to me would make sure no one else was around to see them. Generally, they expressed their sympathy at the conditions, but said there was nothing they could do. I began to realize then that a business or an organization could only be as good as the person or persons controlling them.”

A popular athlete Roan attended a racially mixed high school. Graduating from college into the world of work his race made him a social outcast. Fed up with the treatment he quit the academy. Bricker promptly summoned him and with promises of support and assurances of being in his corner, Roan was persuaded to return. But thing’s grew worse, and again he quit. By then Roan’s difficulties became front page fodder closely followed by Ohio voters. Again in his persuasion this time Bricker promised a political appointment if Roan would only return until after the election. All the while Bricker’s cohort, the Ohio Highway Patrol department’s founder Colonel Lynn Black was determined to keep the force all white and set out to block Roan’s appointment. With a wink and nod from Colonel Black the “Jim Crow” treatment grew more intense. In what was to be routine sparring Roan stepped into a boxing ring surprised in the opposite corner as five white cadets filed in.

Bandaged and brutally beaten Roan submitted his final resignation. The sitting democratic Governor Martin L. Davey promised if re-elected to fire Colonel Black. Bricker promised an investigation. Both candidates only intended to energize the Black vote. Bricker won but his promise for change, an investigation, and a political appointment were quickly forgotten. Roan’s ambition of being a highway patrolman faded.

Bricker too in his ambition would also suffer defeat. The Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1944 shared the unsuccessful ticket with Presidential nominee Thomas Dewey losing to Franklin Roosevelt. Roan might have found some solace in Bricker’s defeat but then Bricker served out his public life in the U.S. Senate. Sanford Roan, the father of Kay and Gary, went on to become a successful businessman in Columbus Ohio.

Sanford Roan was one of those rare men, a courageous pioneer who cleared a path for others. Because of men like Roan who stepped up to a challenge the struggle is no longer about fisticuffs, but continues in the greater goal for diversity. Local Human Rights Commissions now work side-by-side with police departments to overcome past wounds and to open new dialogue towards an inclusive future for all our citizens. Police forces now actively recruit from HBCUs. Sanford Roan’s story clearly illustrates the difficulties of getting to this point.