Assimilation Blues

Anatomy of and Ethnic “Ass Kisser”

If you speak Japanese better than the others, you are a puxa saco.  If you have more experience in the factory, you are a puxa saco.  If you can do the job better that the others, you are a puxa saco.  If you continue working two minutes after the factory bell rings, you are a puxa saco.  This is how it is.  It is just a human tendency (p. 337).

The Japanized nikkeijin who were best able to assimilate into Japanese culture and speak Japanese, were able to improve their social class through higher level and better paying jobs.  This example illustrates Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, in which he argues that “socioeconomic mobility requires a certain amount of accumulated cultural capital, which becomes a symbolic marker for class distinctions” (p.331).  However, the author argues that while assimilating into Japanese culture may provide social capital, it comes at a personal, psychological loss.  Those nikkeijin who assimilate and embrace their “Japaneseness” face ridicule and jealousy from their Japanese Brazilian peers who see them as “puxa sacos” (ass kissers) and they become alienated from their own ethnic group.  As Franz Fanon states, “a man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language” (p 18), however if he is a part of the Japanese world, he is alienated from the Japanese Brazilian one.  The nikkeijin are in a double-bind because if they speak and act Japanese, they can improve their social status but at the loss of personal identity.  They face social sanctions from their peers who seem them as trying to become something else. 

If a nikkeijin wanted to improve their social status, and make the decision to assimilate, thereby alienating themselves from their ethnic group, many find that they must make an attempt to pass as Japanese so that they have a sense of belonging to some group.  However, passing itself brings up several problems for the nikkeijin.   Those who want to assimilate while still maintaining their Japanese Braziliam identity do so, but will never be accepted by either ethnic group.  Those who want to pass as Japanese must give “a flawless Japanese cultural performance” (p. 342) and live in a continual state of anxiety that they will be discovered.  Eventually the ethnic disguise will fail in some situation and the individual will feel a “sense of personal inadequacy” (343).  Another consequence of passing is that the nikkeijin begin to internalize negative perceptions about Japanese Brazilians.  Those passing as Japanese accept the negative and derogatory images and attitudes about their own ethnic group, which can lead to a type of “ethnic self-hate” (p. 345).

Because true passing is extremely difficult and psychologically taxing, so many individuals retain separate ethnic identities and behavior patterns through “surface assimilation” (p. 349).  These individuals act Japanese in the public sphere, but do not internalized Japanese values.  They instead develop a public and private persona, which are at times contradictory.  However, this allows them to keep their Japanese Brazilian ethnicity.

Othernization of Arab and Muslim Americans

This chapter, written by Amaney Jamal explores the state of civil liberties of Muslim and Arab Americans and the “Othernization” of Muslim and Arab Americans .  The author uses findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS), conducted in 2003, to construct a picture of the ideologies of mainstream Americans about “attitudes toward Muslims, the purported relation between Islam and violence, and toward Muslim Americans” (p. 116).  This study found that since the 9/11 attacks, the general population is willing to give up some civil liberties to curb terrorism and support policies that infringe upon personal rights, especially the rights of Muslim and Arab Americans.  The logical question that follows these findings is why is there so much support for enacting policies that clash with basic American values, freedoms and rights?

The answer to this question can be explored through the larger phenomenon of the “racialization or otherization” of Arabs and Mulsims in mainstream American culture (p. 116).  The racialization process creates a message that Arabs and Muslims are essentially different from and inferior to whites and that they are potentially violent and threatening.  What is most interesting about the racialization process of Arabs and Muslims is that this form of racism is not based on differences in appearance, from which roots of racism historically grow, but from differences in culture and religion.  According to Omi and Winant, racialization is “a matter of both social structure and cultural representation” (p. 56).   

Racialization is not static, but produced and reproduced through numerous social networks and institutions.  This is interesting when put in context of formal education within the United States.  If schools, legitimize and reproduce the  mainstream ideology, then the “othernization” of Arabs and Muslims is institutionalized. The author states that “Americans have come to know and learn about Islam and Arabs through the prisms of terrorism and barbarism” (p. 122) and I would argue that within formal curriculum, the Middle East and Islam is introduced through a lens of conflict.  The purpose of this, whether intentional, or simply a byproduct standardized curriculum, is that students are inculcated into the dominant social structure and the domestic politics are upheld, creating a nationalist sense of “us” against “them.”  This translates into the view that the United States was attacked on 9/11 because it is fundamentally ‘good,’ while the Other is fundamentally ‘evil’” (p. 122).

The Mestizo Voice

In this chapter, Rafael Pérez-Torres uses illustrations from the movie Giant and several different Chicano authors, including Villanueva, Acosta, Cervantes and Cisneros in order to present the formation of a mestizo voice.  Although the author analyzes each work individually, in this blog I will focus on Sandra Cisneros’ short story, “Woman Hollering Creek” and the formation of the mestiza voice.  As opposed to the “masculinity, misogyny, and homophobia” (p. 66) of the writings of Acosta,  Cisneros “provides a galvanizing image of how an isolated individual can gain voice through the collective efforts of mestiza women working in common cause” (p. 74).  Cisneros examines the role of Mexican women, through her lead character Cleófilas, and how social roles can leave women voiceless.  In the story there are many examples of the role of the suffering woman, from the legend of La Llorona to the telenovela Maria de Nadie to the role of wife and mother of Cleófilas herself.  Cleófilas does not find a voice amongst her neighbors, Soledad and Dolores, who accept their roles for what they, embracing the “ideology of male-focused, romanticized suffering” (p. 76).  When Cleófilas meets Graciela and Felice, she finds the solidarity necessary to leave her violent situation.  As Felice drives Cleófilas to the bus depot, which will take her back to family in Mexico, Felice lets out a “yell as loud as any mariachi” (p.76).  This point in the story is when Cleófilas “finds her own sense of voice and power” (p. 77).  Cleófilas returns home to her father and brothers, overcomes the ‘tradition of silence’ and claims her right to speak in tongues” (p. 77).  Yet it important to note, that although Cleófilas leaves her abusive husband, she is returning to her father’s home where she has “chores that never ended, six-good for nothing brothers, and one old man’s complaints” (p. 78) waiting for her.  The story leaves the outcome of Cleófilas’ return to her family to the imagination of the reader, so I take the liberty of presenting the idea that Cleófilas found her voice, which she will be able to pass on to her unborn child, who may then be able to write her own scripts.  And it is through these scripts and the solitarily of women working together that the mestiza voice finds power.  “What the story comes to represent, then, is Cleófilas’s flight away from scripts ensuring that women serve as either victim or victimizer” (p. 78)

The Word and the River: Pedagogy as Scholarship as Struggle

“What is the role of the word―the spoken word, the preached word, the whispered-in-the-night-time word, the written word, the published word―in the fight for black freedom”

Charles Lawrence begins his article with a quote from There Is a River by Vincent Harding, and then dissects the meaning of “the Word.”  Lawrence describes the role of the Word as liberation.  “If the role of the Word includes its use and value as a unifying force, a statement of protest, an expression of courage, an organizing tool, the articulation of utopian dreams or a higher law, then our methodology must inspire and advance those uses and values” (p. 337). 

Lawrence draws a parallel between Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the Word.   “By speaking and hearing the Word in our classrooms, in our offices, or in community meetings we transform our own understanding of our relationship with the world and thereby transform the world” (p. 337).  This parallels Freire’s belief that “authentic thinking does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”  Only through communication can there be liberating transformation and can we contest the notion that the “story told by those in power is a universal story” (p.337).

Lawrence writes that it is necessary for the Word to be subjective, and defines three ways in which the Word is subjective.  The first is that the Word, in contrast to the “objective observer/recorder” model embraced by most legal academics, embraces a positioned perspective and “recognized the impossibility of distance and impartiality in the observation of a play in which the observers must also be actors” (p. 338).  By writing in terms that embrace and privilege personal perspective and perceptions, voices that have been excluded from history are heard and those stories and others like them are legitimized.  The second way in which the Word is subjective is in “the sense that it makes no claim to value neutrality” (p. 339).  Lawrence argues that writings which are not “about the village, or the community or about you” are not about anything; writing must be political in order to be liberating.  The third and final way in which the Word is subjective is that authors must “endeavor to place ourselves in the linguistic position of “subject” rather than “object” because “language shapes our reality even as it describes it” (p. 340).  In using language to describe ourselves, Lawrence writes, that we are thereby defining our world and our role within it.  The symbol of language is important in discussing American racism.  For example, African slaves were “required to use the ‘Christian’ names by which their masters chose to identify them” (p. 341).  The practice of whites naming blacks and denying blacks to name themselves allowed the whites to maintain power.  This desire to name themselves, was the drive behind the NAACP campaign for the use of the word ‘Negro’ as opposed to ‘Colored,’ which was the word used by whites.

Reflections of One Black Woman Law Professor

This article, written by Taunya Lovell Banks, describes her personal experience as a law professor at Harvard Law School.  The article opens with reference to the 1990 controversy surrounding Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell, who took a leave of absence without pay until the law school appointed a tenured black woman to the faculty.  Banks argues that hiring a black woman law professor to serve as a “role model” is “particularly distressing” (p329) because the term “role model” seems “soft” and does not capture the essence of role like the word “mentor” does.  She argues that good law teachers are “intellectually challenging and aggressively involved with students” (p329) and the need for black women mentors/intellectuals is a “better justification for hiring black women as law teachers than is the  need for role models” (p329).  Banks writes that “the absence of black women from the legal landscape…impoverishes the imagination of law students and other legal academicians” (p330) because as a black woman, Banks brings multiple life experiences and diversity to the legal dialogue.  She then uses two stories of life experience to illustrate how her life experiences affect her point of view and how this diverse view can enrich the exiting legal discourse.

In the first story, Banks and some female colleagues are in an elevator of a luxury condominium in downtown Philadelphia (p331) and when the elevator doors open, there is a white woman waiting to get on.  The woman, after seeing Banks and her colleagues, who are black, decides not to get on the elevator.  After stopping at another floor, and seeing another woman who also decides not to get on, the women break into laughter, “the nervous laugh blacks often express when faced with the blatant or unconscious racism of white America, masked our shock and hurt” (p331).

In the second story, Banks is riding a train, when a black man, who appears to be mentally ill, exposes himself.  Banks reports the incident to the conductor who asks Banks what she would like them to do with the man.  Banks is a little taken aback because indecent exposure is a criminal offense and she asks herself would the situation be different if a black man had exposed himself to a white woman (p333).

In both of these stories Banks uses personal experiences to demonstrate how persons of diverse backgrounds can contribute to the body of legal scholarship.  Analysis of her life experiences could easily be transferred to the classroom and fuel discussion.  Banks raises several issues for classroom discussion (p333) and takes education further to fuel social action (p334).

 The inclusion of women of color in academic institutions is vital to developing multicultural understanding.  “It is a multiple perspective not represented in our casebooks or legal literature” (p334).  Because life experience influences point of view, it is important to have persons with different life experiences interacting with one another in order to reach mutual understanding.  Therefore it is important to include people of diverse backgrounds as both mentors and role models.

The Search for an Oppositional Voice

In this article, John O. Calmore provides a systematic description of Critical Race Theory by comparing it to Archie Shepp’s “fire music.”  In doing so, he is able to draw a parallel that helps to clarify the idea of Critical Race Theory.  “Thus like Critical Race Theory, fire music represented a distinctly African-American approach to cultural expression, heavily influenced by an experiential perspective” (p317).  The fire music of the sixties was intentionally outside the mainstream music community, in order to voice dissent and express a uniquely African-American voice.  “The idea of the Negro’s having roots and that they are a valuable possession, rather than the source of ineradicable shame, is rather than the source of ineradicable shame, is perhaps the profoundest change within the Negro consciousness since the early part of the century” (p317).  With the recognition of African-American culture and the rejection of white culture as the “paradigm against which people of color must be measured” (p326), the door was opened for the expression of a distinctive voice.

Critical Race Theory is a “way of finding meaning within legal scholarship through combining language, thought, and experience.”  By recognizing that the black experience is different from the white experience and validating the uniqueness of that experience, Critical Race Theory challenges the “universality of the white experiences and judgment as the authoritative standard” (p318). 

Critical Race Theory, in the legal context, challenges the “dominant discourses on race and racism as they relate to law” (p318).  In this way, Critical Race Theory attempts to analyze the legal system and racial subordination and to enact social change by extending the “narrow world of traditional legal scholarship” (p320).  A key theme of Critical Race Theory, is maintaining a sense of authenticity in order to, “in simplest terms, be true to ourselves” (p321).  This theory advocates personal expression that allows “experiences and lessons, learned as people of color, to convey the knowledge we possess in a way that is empowering” (p321).

Rethinking Colonial Categories

In Ch. 2 of Ann Laura Stoloer’s book Carnal Knowlege and Imperial Power, she makes the argument, consistent with Bronislaw Malinowski’s (1945) work, that “European interests and intentions were rarely unified but more often at war” (p22).  She argues that to consider the European colonizers as a single group, and to consider colonialism solely in terms of “whites” and “Other,” would be faulty and would ignore the stratification within the “white” grouping.  “The public façade was white unity, but discontent within the estate hierarchy’s lower ranks was evident early on” (p28).  However, she does agree that racism is “an inherent part of the colonial encounter, fundamental to an otherwise illegitimate access to property and power” (p24), and even if there had not been a European elite, there still would not have been unity among the poor whites and the native people.

In this chapter, Stoler draws on a case in the Deli European community in North Sumatra, to illustrate how “competing colonial agenda, based on distinct class and gender interests, shaped the politics of race and tensions of rule.” (p25).   The Deli community was different from other Dutch colonies, in that it had a “multinational European membership” and was both “distant and largely autonomous” from the Dutch heartland in Java (p26).  These differences placed the Deli planters at odds with the Dutch colonial authorities.

In the late 19^th century the major tobacco companies in Deli neither accepted married applicants nor allowed them to marry (p29). The reasoning behind the marriage ban in Deli was that European authorities were concerned new European recruits would not be able to support their families and that a class of poor Europeans would emerge.  This marriage ban encouraged a system of concubinage with local Javanese women.  “A proliferation of prostitutes and their mixed-blood progeny was viewed as a social blight, but one preferable to the worse alternative: increased numbers of white men struggling to maintain a properly appointed lifestyle fit for European women” (p30).  In Deli, interracial sex was more socially acceptable than “European destitution.”  European morality within the colonies was “elastic and relative” which presents the idea that colonial politics were based on more than race.  It was also based on upholding the image of the haute-bourgeois European.  Marriage restrictions were eventually lifted in Deli in the 1920’s at a time of “mounting resistance to estate labor conditions and Dutch rule more generally” (p33). The arrival of women and children into the colonies created stronger racial divides between the Europeans and the Asians.

Black Skin, White Mask

This week, I am summarizing the “Introduction” to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks. Since a brief summary of the “Introduction” does not allow for an in-depth discussion of the work, I have also included a summary and discussion of Chapter 1 “The Negro and Language.”

In this chapter, Fanon argues that the black men of Martinique, who had been colonized by the white men of France, attempt to gain mastery of the French language in order to become more like their colonizers.  “The problem that we confront in this chapter is this: The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter—that is, he will come close to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” (p 18)

            This makes for an interesting debate, because although it cannot be argued that the Martinique have attempted to master the French language, I will argue that it is not because they wish to become more like their white French colonizers.   Social power is often dependent upon the use of language.  Language, in any civilization and culture, controls what level of power will be afforded to an individual.   “A man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.” (p 18)  For example, in Hong Kong, which was colonized by the British, mastery of the English language is still held in high regard because it opens doors for personal advancement in the global market place.  It is not that the people of Hong Kong want to become European, they embrace their culture and mother language Cantonese, but they also realize that English is the language of international relations (Kubow, Fossum 2007). 

I agree that “to speak a language is to take on a world, a culture” (p38) and that the ability to speak multiple languages increases one’s ability to interact in multi-cultural settings, which becomes more important both as the world becomes “smaller” through globalization and as the face America continues to change.  Between 1980 and 1990 the United States saw an influx in students desiring to learn Japanese as the Japanese stock market became immensely profitable.  In parts of southern California, those who are bilingual in English and Spanish have a distinct advantage in the job market.  Even here at BGSU, in rural Ohio, Arabic language is offered at the undergraduate level, as it becomes a very marketable language to master.  People desire to learn language for different reasons—social advancement, personal gain, desire to embrace other cultures—but not solely for the reason, as Fanon argues, to become more “white”.  In learning another language, cultural is also imparted.  A good example of this can be found in the basic greetings of language.  For example, in Spanish, the language used to greet friends is different from the language used to greet elders, which is evidence of the cultural importance placed on respect for elders.

Excursion to the Heights

I headed out the Levis Commons around 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. I had not been able to make it out that way, before the class discussion on Tuesday, so my expectations for what I would find had already been somewhat shaped by what I had heard in class. However, my experience was not at all what I had envisioned.
When I pulled into the Commons, I noticed how large and beautiful the complex was. I parked my car and then proceeded to walk around the area. From discussions, I had understood the Commons to be a “high-end” shopping experience, so in my mind I was expecting to see designer fashions and high end boutiques. But this is not at all what is found at the commons. There actually aren’t that many stores, and the ones that are there cater to a very specific demographic: middle age women. The clothing stores: Talbots, Coldwater Creek, Layne Bryant, Jones New York are all “misses”women’s clothing, nothing for men or teens. There were also two home decor stores, again targeting women. The only other grouping of stores was stores for young children: StrideRite, Justice and another store that was going out of business. As far as the dining, the largest restaurant appeared to be Johnny Rockets, which is a family dining restaurant, not a place for “high-end” dining.
In class the people shopping at the mall were described as very well-dressed, which to me conjured up images of women with their designer shoes and bags walking around with their little dogs. But the people I actually saw shopping there were nicely dressed, yes, but in jeans, blouses and sandals. I didn’t see anything in their physical appearance that would have made me guess that these people were the wealthy of the area. Actually, I found, as did others in the class that the people who shop there weren’t from Perrysburg. However, I disagree with the idea that it is because they are wealthy and therefore live elsewhere. My hypothesis for why they shop the Commons is because the only other place these stores can be found is in Toledo.
After leaving the Commons a bit underwhelmed, I headed across the street to Perrysburg Heights. I was actually thankful that I had heard the class discussion about how to get there, otherwise I would have had no idea what I was looking for. I first went by the community center and there were some kids walking there with their backpacks, possibly for afterschool programs. I drove down Jefferson Street, looking at the surroundings which were mobile homes with well manicured lawns decorated with lawn ornaments. After driving down the little streets, passing children playing in their yards or riding bikes in the street, I exited the Heights down Lincoln Street. The houses here were not as well kept as the ones a street over, with some of the yards overrun with weeds, and a few of the buildings looking abandoned. What I didn’t really experience was this dramatic division on wealth that seemed to be described on others blogs and in class. I felt the difference between the mall and the mobile homes, was more a matter of new buildings and older buildings.
As far as the idea that the Heights are being hidden from view, I do agree that unless you know where you are going, the area is hard to find. However, the trees in the neighborhood are very mature suggesting that the community has been there for some time and the other building just grew up around it. I don’t think it is being hidden back as an eyesore to passing traffic or the shoppers across the street, I think that in the planning of the community it is possible that they didn’t want to put the houses right on the main street, it’s really not safe, and then other buildings have grown up around it.  I find the same thing here in Bowling Green, with many of the apartment complex properties. They are not on the main streets, but I don’t think it is because the community is trying to pretend they don’t exist.
These are simply my initial observations based on a single afternoon spent in the area. I have no knowledge of the history of the area or the demographics. I am also not from Ohio or the Midwest, so my perceptions are also shaped by my personal background.

Racial Formations: Paradigms of Race

This brief summarizes and discusses the introduction to Part I of the book Racial Formation in the United States in which the authors, Omi and Winant, explore how “ethnicity theory” has shaped American racial concepts and values.  A concise summary of the main ideas introduced in this introduction is followed by personal analysis on a single idea introduced by the authors.

The existing race relations of any given era are responsible for shaping the racial theory of that time.  The 19^th and early 20^th centuries were strongly influenced by the emergence of Social Darwinist thought, creating a “biologistic” (p.12) conception of race.  In the 1920s Robert E. Park introduced his “race relations cycle” (p. 10) which defined four stages of race relations: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation, and became the basis for ethnicity theory.  Ethnicity theory guided public policy into the mid-1960s before being challenged by class and nation based theories of race, but has reemerged as the dominant paradigm (p.12).

In contrast with most contemporary theories that attempt to understand and interpret race and racial dynamics in the United States by relying on the paradigms of ethnicity, class and nation, Omi and Winant present a racial formation theory that takes into account the “social nature of race, the absence of essential racial characteristics, the historical flexibility of racial meanings, and the political aspect of racial dynamics” (p.4).  This framework for discussing and exploring race is interesting because it presents the idea that race is not inherent nor is it socially constructed.  This approach creates a broad understanding of race and presents the idea that race is a continually evolving category of its own, which is contrary to historically accepted approaches of discussing racial dynamics, which treat race as a manifestation of social and political relationships (p.2).  Such theories attempting to reduce race to a problem of policy creates an evolutionary model suggesting that the importance of race will decline as progress is made in political and economic arenas (p. 3).  However, such theories fail to grasp the uniqueness of race and the changing nature of race relations. 

The assertion made by the authors that “race will always be at the center of the American experience” (p.5) is an interesting idea to explore.  The United States upholds the ideology of equality for all, yet will never achieve racial equality because racial identities and meanings will continually change over time.  The idea of creating a society that has “opportunities for all and guarantees success for none” (p. 1) is a utopian ideal because historically, race has been linked to access to political rights, economic status and personal identity.  Although it is tempting to believe racial oppression no longer occurs in the United States this is not the case, as race is still at the forefront of the American consciousness.  This edition of the book looks as racial formation from the 1960s to the 1990s but even today, almost two decades later, racial issues are still shaping, and are shaped by, all aspects of American life.