Wednesday, 4/16/97 A Menacing Cloud Shadows Humanity Eliminate
negative biases reigning over society, embrace the differences of
one human race
Hate. Odd how some words possess so much meaning. Hate bears the
burden of causing bitterness, resentment, pain and fear. It
manipulates entire nations and fosters an unfathomable amount of
distrust. Hate embodies racism, homophobia and discrimination,
which clings to humanity like a leech. This parasite managed to
attach onto a small group of children in a neighborhood near my
Orange County home. These kids taunted and threw dirt clods at my
grandfather, ruining the calm of his daily walk. How dare my
grandfather be born a Korean? An Oriental? How dare he take a
stroll in the middle of a white, suburban neighborhood? These kids
decided that my grandfather, a man in his late 70s at the time,
didn’t belong in their neighborhood. Was he a threat? What nurtures
this madness? Why does hate thrive in this world? What possessed
the Nazis to commit genocide? What caused the United States to
intern Japanese Americans? Are the Native Americans really the
savages the media portrays? What started the Jim Crow Laws? What
brought the rise of white supremacy groups? Life possesses many
complicated questions. (I am hardly qualified to even pretend I
know the answers. I am not some guru sitting on top of a mountain,
pondering life. Although I wish I could be because it would be
safer there.) So many factors affect what causes a person to loathe
another individual, group, or even, themselves. Perhaps, the origin
of the problem begins with an unequal distribution of wealth, power
and/or opportunities. Or perhaps, hate is just inherent to human
nature, like love or sadness and happiness. (Who needs a reason?
Let’s just blame human nature. Who can disprove something as
abstract as that?) Often, hate manifests itself in the form of
racism. Whether you are a Jew or a Chinese American or an African
American or a black or any of the hyphenated labels (we, the
politically correct people of the United States have created), the
experience of discrimination arises in everyday life. It can be so
obvious you want to scream and so hidden that you only feel a vague
disquiet. Sometimes it is expected and sometimes it is not. Imagine
my surprise when a group of mislead, ignorant individuals walking
past me in Sunset Village quad began to mimic some pseudo-Asian
language while guffawing like buffoons. I was born and raised as an
American. My first language was English and these people only saw
that I had black hair, almond-shaped eyes and wasn’t American. In
an institution of higher learning, one would think that such
behavior would be less prevalent. (I was so naive or so
idealistic.) Why would anything be different? Unfortunately, the
backlash of racism came in the form of reverse discrimination.
Reverse discrimination occurs when the members of a dominant group
feel cheated as a result of policies (such as affirmative action)
created to redress discrimination against other groups. (Yes,
please take away those programs because, as we all know, a few
decades of a program makes up for thousands of years of oppression.
We all also seem to agree that people are rational individuals with
no bias.) An interesting trend, as of late, is a tendency to blame
one’s race to excuse one’s lot in life. This holds true to a
certain extent because, like my grandfather, we are born into a
position in this world that we don’t control. But it becomes
suspect when it seems to be the first reason why some grave
misfortune has befallen a person. (Perhaps, the almighty media had
duped me into believing this. Hmmm … What separates a person from
the person that they are bias towards? The color of their skin?
Their weight? Their gender? Their wealth? A past wrong?) Homophobia
represents hate in yet another interesting form. I often wonder how
a gay man or a lesbian feels when they hear such words as "fag" or
"queer" used so carelessly in everyday conversation. Perhaps, the
same heaviness I felt when a 4-year-old boy called me a "nip."
Homophobia oozes into our everyday lives without notice. Why is it
that people joke about others because of a "suspicious" way of
speaking or interests? (Because of my "tomboyishness," people in
the past informed me that they thought I was a lesbian.) What
causes normally rational people to want to go beat up a gay or
lesbian? Misunderstanding? Fear? God? Within the very fabric of
what it means to co-exist with other human beings, hatred thrives.
Even in places that seem quite adverse to active hatred (how
ironic), there exists hate in all its glory. I found it humorous
that religion, usually something that advocates love, causes so
much conflict. Protestants vs. Catholics. Christians vs. Muslim.
Why? (My bias creeps out in the order of the examples.) In a recent
article in the Los Angeles Times bearing the headline, "Barriers
are Buried and Legend Born," a columnist regurgitated the
significance of Tiger Wood’s (the 21-year-old is part Asian, part
African, part Chinese, part American Indian and part European)
amazing feat at becoming the Masters tournament champion. (For
those of you whose experience with golf is putting at the local
miniature golfing range like me, winning the Masters is the
ultimate honor in professional golf.) Woods set precedent for race
in the upper echelons of the golfing world. Imagine the year 1997
and here is a young man breaking yet another racial barrier. I
marveled at golfer Jim Dent, one of the few blacks in professional
golfing for a number of years, and his statement "All black humans
should be proud of this." (Rightly, so, but what of Asians?
American Indians?) So many unanswered questions. Something can be
done. First, realize that restricting speech does not solve the
problem. Just because people can’t talk about racism or use certain
words doesn’t erase their beliefs nor their sentiment. My eighth
grade literature and U.S. history teacher once said that he would
die for a Neo-Nazis’ right to hand out anti-Jew propaganda. (This
remarkable man was Jewish and taught me about the Holocaust.)
Exercise your freedom to speak. (It is a powerful "right.")
Question other people as to why they believe what they do. One must
realize that there is a problem before anything can be done. (How
can anyone know what to solve if they don’t know the problem?) So
the next time someone says that some person is a "fag" or a
"nigger," say something. If you sit back and do nothing, you allow
people to remain ensconced within their prejudice. Each of us
carries bias. It is the basis for opinions and favoritism. But in
order to actualize that we hold such views, we must be aware of
them. Hope for the future. Realize that we must educate each other
and understand that differences do exist, but we are all of one
race, the human one. Sohn is a third-year anthropology and
political science student whose dream is to sit on top of an
isolated mountain pondering life.