Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20140201

Number one weakness. Christies biggest weaknesses hes a bully. Ridge gate is is number one asset is he did a good job of sandy and hes beloved. He doesnt care about politics and to get stuff done. These two issues are very important for him. Even if he is found not guilty so to speak as they go to the heart of his strength and his weaknesses. The number one asset is it the number one weakness. I was very mixed on his press conference. 20 minutes into it im thinking this is the best press conference in the history of politics. Why . Christie called it immediately so the scandal doesnt have legs. He was bold and tough. He answers any question directly that is what we want. Im sitting here thinking Teddy Roosevelt and truman would have done this. An hour later hes still there saying the same thing. An hour later, it was the longest press conference ever. What he showed me was that he seemed to be utterly without discipline and he probably doesnt listen anymore. If you want to end the scandal you dont stand for 108 minutes of repeating the scandal. 20 minutes to take the question, you are frank heads roll and you fire people and then you get off the stage. He needs to develop selfdiscipline. I thought it was sort of a psychologically interesting exercise. Christie is i think still the republicans best hope and i think is a legitimate candidate. Hes a centrist and a good fundraiser and he has household recognition. He is clearly a lot better candidate than rick santorum, the donald, michele bachmann, sarah palin and Governor Walker and so forth cities a much better candidate. Yes . [inaudible] [applause] i dont remind repeating that one. She said everyone would enjoy history more they had a professor like me. I will give you 20 bucks after my lecture. Its my mom. [laughter] so you know i love history. I grew up not far from gettysburg and valley forge so i suppose its genetic. I dont know. And i love the great leaders larger than life and as we learned in the war of 1812 its fascinating to read about the cowards and a lesson from the war of 1812 is a lesson in history that speaks to a solid time and that is this. If you take one or two folks out of that war you have a different outcome. Had to come sam brock lives much of what happened on the Canadian Border wouldnt have happened. If we didnt pick Paul Rensselaer and dearborn and why is everything named after these guys . [laughter] they must have donated a lot of money. If we had not picked those guys and if we would have picked Winfield Scott in zebulon pike canada would not have stayed. That is one of the remarkable twists and whats so exciting i think is every year i love the stories. Every year a story comes out that someone went to a yard sale in lincoln nebraska and they bought a painting for the frame and they get home and they tear the frame out, and tear the pending out and what did they find . A letter from ben franklin. Dont you love that . Every year this happens. We are still discovering unknown satellite camps from the holocaust. Six decades later with the worlds greatest scholars studying it, there are still secrets out there. History still has secrets. Warren hardings wife destroyed a lot of his letters. There is less we know about harding than any president of the 20th century. A year ago we found a heretofore letter from Mary Todd Lincoln a year before her husbands death. I love the letter. Even though the press tended to say its not much of a form i loved it because mary todd is writing in 1864. Shes having a big fancy white tie blacktie kind of gal at the white house and shes worried about a babysitter. Shes trying to find a babysitter for the youngest, the fourth boy tad. So in the middle of the civil war and the white house she needs to find a babysitter. I think thats the perfect duality. I love it and heres the person she is requesting to be her babysitter. A guy named Charles Forbes. One year later when lincoln is hit in fords theater Charles Forbes was the guard at the door tell me thats not freaky. So history, we dont know much about the war of 1812 by 450 pages down the first draft was probably 650 and im sure im scratching the surface of it. There is just so much out there but thanks for the kind words. One or two quick ones. [applause] tecumseh was shawnee but among many other tribes as well. Tecumseh had a rough upbringing. His tribe was sacked by another and he was raised by a chief from another tribe. His mother leaves him when he is young and moves away with another tribe. He is raised by an older brother he was killed by whites. Tecumseh has a rough upbringing. You might say he was schlepped around. He picks up skills from many different indians all of which would help him to later to be a great president. With that, i will hang out up here if you want to pick up a book or if you want to talk i will hang out up here so thank you everyone. [applause] if you listen to hiphop you are reminded they are 2. 5 Million People locked up. You can watch all these reality shows about real housewives and all these movies about vampires and the hobbits but you will never know that we lock up more people in the United States than any other country in the history of the world. In this encore booknotes presentation from 2002, law professor journalist and author frank wu discusses his book yellow. Or fester wu provides an overview of the official and unofficial policies that have shaped asianamerican history and identity in the United States. He also addresses asianamerican stereotypes like the model minority and illustrates how these concepts and others have damaged relations between communities. This is about an hour. Cspan frank wu, what is yellow all about . Guest thats a good question. Its well, its a book of questions, not answers. Im a law professor, so im much better at asking questions than i am at answering them. I wrote this book to try to provoke people to think for themselves, not to persuade them to think as i do. I wrote it to try to start dialogue about race and diversity and civil rights, and a dialogue thats different. Im trying to move us beyond black and white in two different ways. First, in a very literal way. Sometimes we talk about race as if everyone is either black or white, and thats it. And when you talk about race that way, you leave out, well, not just asianamericans. You leave out hispanics. You leave out thousands of people, millions of people of mixedrace background. Its as if they dont exist. And im suggesting it doesnt matter who you are, what your identity is, what your politics are, what sort of policies you think we should have, if you cant see yellow and brown and red and all the different shades, well, you leave out a huge proportion of the population in california, on college campuses, and in the future of our nation because its changing incredibly rapidly. But im also trying to move us beyond black and white in a different sense, in a figurative sense. Sometimes we talk about race as if, well, youve got villains on the one hand, sort of hardcore bigots, you know, who are doing bad things. And then youve got, you know, victims on the other hand. Now, we still do have villains. The kkk is out there. You see skinhead groups using web sites, you know, to try to bring the young to their hateful cause. So there are still villains out there. But sometimes its not just villains and victims. Sometimes we all have a responsibility, even if well, my family wasnt here when there were slaves. My family wasnt even here when there was jim crow. I grew up knowing that the n word was bad and, you know, i would certainly never use it, but i recognize that i have a greater responsibility, that its not just about am i someone who has malice in my heart toward people of other racial backgrounds, but rather, there are these tensions and problems that we have to address cooperatively and constructively, recognizing sometimes were all to blame. Sometimes none of us is to blame. You just have these situations where the people to be blamed well, theyre long dead and gone. Nonetheless, we still have this mess that we have to muddle through. So thats what its about. Cspan where does this title, yellow, come from . Guest well, i wanted to have a provocative title, and and you know, its a great dust jacket, i think. I owe a lot to basic books for having done it. Really, i joked the title should have been gray. It should have a dull, drab cover because its about how complex all these issues are. But yellow comes from the idea of taking something that was pejorative, you know, a name that was attached, a label, part of a stereotype, part of these images of the exotic oriental, something with not so nice connotations, and saying, you know, i can be proud of this. Im going to take yellow and claim it for myself. I you know, if other people are going to call me yellow, im going to say, hey, sure. I am yellow. And not only am i yellow, im proud of it, and im going to put it on the cover of my book. Cspan but where does that come from in history . Guest well, it comes from the idea that every person could be fit into this neat racial classification scheme. You know, now most biologists recognize race is, well, sort of a fiction. Its the kind of thing we make up. There arent clean, neat lines. A whole lot of people out there who are characterized as black, in fact, are more white than black. And there are a lot of people who are white, who we treat as white, who, in fact, have some black ancestry. And then these lines blur, and most of us share more genes than we know, and the differences are tiny. And the differences within racial groups are every bit as big as between racial groups. But there was a time not too long ago, 75 years ago, youd find the most respected scientists at Ivy League Schools had these elaborate tables. You know, they you know, there were these huge debates, academic debates, serious ones, over are there 19 groups or 73 groups . You know, and which you know, where do we put south asians . Where do we put, you know, this group or that group . Where are are they on top or on the bottom . There were hierarchies. And yellow was just one of those categories. Mongoloid was, you know, another category another one of those groups that they created. And thats gone by the wayside, in part because nazis had tables like that. They tried to look at the shape of your forehead or the slope of your nose and fit you in. And i think its important to recognize that we may be past these formal tables, but we still socially and culturally construct them. So that even if race is fictional, it has a social reality. It affects peoples lives. Cspan as you know, somebody who reads this book would be a little bit intimidated to ask you questions like, where are you from . Guest well, i would hope not. Where are you from . Is something we all ask everyone. Theres nothing wrong with. Cspan where are you where are you really from . Guest well, thats the question that causes the problem. Let me explain why. And i try and make it clear this is a book where im trying to explain things, and im not trying to complain about things im trying to explain whats wrong with where are you really from . You know, when strangers meet it could be at a dinner party or you youre a freshman in college, doesnt matter, or you start a new job everyone says, where are you from . Well, place people in a context people ask me that, and i say, well, i was born in cleveland, ohio, grew up in detroit, michigan, used to live in san francisco. Then i moved to washington, d. C. , about seven years ago, give a very detailed answer. Sometimes ill tell people every place ive lived in the past 10 years. They shake their heads and say, no, no, no. Thats not what i mean. I mean where are you really from . And that one word speaks volumes. Why . Well, we dont go around asking everyone that. I know. Ive asked the people who ask me this question right back, where are you really from . And they look at me all puzzled and say, what do you mean, where am i really from . I just told you im from iowa. Im an american. Thats exactly the point. They theyre just assured of their own identity, even as they assume well, what am i . Im a tourist, right . Must be a visiting student. Im a guest. Im eventually leaving. And so this where are you really from . Says im not a real american. Im not really who i say i am. Now, when i explain this, im always very careful to say theres nothing wrong. There there are people who recently arrived here from asia, not born in the u. S. , as i am, who want to be proud of that, want to say im from china. Let me tell you about it. Theres nothing wrong with that whats wrong is when we do this selectively and against someones will and we pigeonhole them that way. And it shows that were not colorblind because we dont ask everyone this. We ask people who are asian, people who are hispanic, people who are a little foreignlooking, a little funnylooking. And its not just this question it leads to more. Sometimes people say to me, oh, how do you like it in our country . And this is true. They say it less and less often now, but im still asked that. Or people say to me its as if theyre wondering, well, what province of chinas cleveland . They say, oh, when are you going home . Or ill give a speech, and someone whos very nice see, whats interesting about this, and im always careful to explain this its not mean people. Its not evil people. Sometimes very nice people. Someone very nice will come up to me this happens maybe only once a year these days. It used to happen all the time. Theyll come up to me, and theyll say, you know, i just want to tell you something. You speak english really well. I always wanted to say, gee, thanks. So do you because they dont expect that. They dont expect when someone who looks the way i do opens my mouth that out will come articulate, fullyformed english sentences without an accent. Theres nothing wrong with an accent. My parents have them. But they theyve attached a stereotype to me, a script. They expect me to talk a certain way and behave a certain way. And sometimes it gets ugly. I will bet you because this is true almost every time im on any tv show if you want to say anything meaningful, eventually you Say Something controversial. And people will will say, i disagree. I welcome that. I welcome people saying, i disagree. Let me tell you my my view and i want to start this robust dialogue. Whats interesting, though sometimes people dont disagree with what i have to say, they dont like who i am. I will wager you that i will get an email or phone call or letter that says something along the following lines. If you dont like it here, well, you can just go back to where you came from. And what does that say . It says i cant really be an equal american. I can never be critical of the United States, of its government or its culture or its policies. I should make clear i think this is a great nation. Its different. This is a nation where we say we believe anyone can come here and become an equal and become a full participant in this great dialogue. And i want to be a participant in that dialogue. I want to make us live up to our ideals. Its because im proud to be here, proud to be an american, that i want to do this. Cspan you were born in cleveland. Guest thats right. Cspan how did your parents get there . Guest well, my parents were students. They came from china. They grew up in taiwan. And then my. Cspan they came from mainland china. Guest yeah. Thats right. They were born there, and when mao took over, like a lot of others, they fled. They grew up in taiwan. Then they came here. They were very lucky. They came in the 50s. They got scholarships. My dad, in fact, went to college in iowa and went to graduate school in cleveland. And thats where my mother was in school. So they met. So you know, asianamericans are all over the place. You can find asianamericans in, well, fargo, or in the deep south. Its amazing how diverse these stories are. Cspan you say that there are 10 million asianamericans. Guest roughly. Cspan explain first what would you classify as an asianamerican . Guest yeah. Thats thats an interesting, tough question. Its a harder question than it seems. I wouldnt classify anyone. You know, i would allow people to declare for themselves. An asianamerican is well, its a strange concept. There arent asianamericans in asia. You know, for one thing, the people in asia well, theyre there. Theyre not here. And for another thing, there isnt a panasian identity, except for sort of a bad one, you know, when one nation wants to conquer another nation. So the people who are asianamericans well, their people whose grandfathers or greatgrandfathers would have hated one another, would have been at war with one another. But here, we recognize we have a common cause. Sometimes people say, well, why why do you have to be asianamericans . Balkanizing . Arent you breaking up into little groups . Actually, asianamerican is a coalition identity. It brings together people from about two dozen Different National origins. Youve got pakistani, indian, hmong, vietnamese, cambodian, thai, korean, japanese, chinese, all sorts of different ethnicities, languages, faiths, walks of life, class backgrounds, different stories as to how they got to the United States. And what theyve recognized is that being asianamerican can be empowering, that even though our forefathers may have hated one another, here weve got a common cause. When i grew up, on the playgrounds in school, i used to get picked on. Kids pick on other kids for all sorts of reasons. Some of its just a childhood sort of thing you grow out of. But sometimes its racial. And i think when its racial, its different. I used to get called chink and jap and gook and kids would, you know, pull back their eyes. And they had that chant, chinese, japanese, dirty knees, what are these . And whats interesting is theyd call me jap and gook every bit as often as theyd call me chink. And if someone said to me, hey, you jap, and i said, oh, excuse me. Im actually a chink, you know, thats not going to do much good. So i realized because i was told i well, you all look alike, anyway, right, that i had better reach out. And even though, growing up, i didnt know very much about koreans or thais or pakistanis, i realized, well, in the United States, we have this shared identity and a set of experiences, even though were incredibly diverse different politics and different cultures there is a common thread. Its that when are you going home, where are you really from thread of being a perpetual foreigner. And we can turn that into something empowering and positive. Cspan you say and correct me if i give these figures wrong that the census shows 2. 4 million chinese americans, about 1. 9 million filipino americans, about 1. 1 vietnamese americans, about a million koreans in the country . Guest right. Cspan whats happening to that figure . Guest well, its changing daily. Cspan why . Guest well, because people are coming here, people are intermarrying. There are all sorts of changes. And its certainly no easier for me to keep up with than someone whos white. Im sometimes shocked you know, i go back to places where i grew up, and i suddenly see all these asian restaurants, all these asian stores, all these asian people, where i was used to being the only person who ever when i walked into the classroom or anywhere, who looked like me. Or maybe there was one other person, you know, but that was it. And now youve got 2 percent, 3 percent. Doesnt sound like much, but from half a percent to 2 or 3 percent, thats a huge jump. And you go some places, youve got 10, 20 you know, on some college campuses, youre going to find 30, 40 percent of the freshman class is of asian descent, so that these changes are happening faster than any changes to a nation have ever happened. And they present us with a tremendous challenge. They present us with the challenge of how are we going to adjust to this . You know, you cant just keep people out. You cant eject the people who are already here. So what do you do when and its not just in stereotypical places. You know, there have always been asians around in, say, san francisco. You know, there it has always been a third or more asian, even since california was a state. But youve got people in wisconsin. Youve got people in atlanta. Youve got people in north dakota of asian descent whose parents well, maybe they got a job as a doctor at the hospital, and so the family moves in. And maybe they tell their friends. You know, a cousin moves in. Pretty soon, you got a community. Cspan youre the first asian to american to teach at Howard Law School . That is that thats is thats right . Guest thats right. Cspan and youre married to a japanese american. Guest thats right. And she is also someone who teaches law. Were one of these households, you know, twolawprofessor households. She teaches someplace else. She teaches at a school thats predominantly white. And this. Cspan here in town. Guest thats right. And its made me realize some things. Im tremendously privileged to teach at howard. I wanted to do civil rights work. I wanted to do bridgebuilding work. And its changed my life. You know, i grew up in a predominantly white setting. The high school i went to was about 4,000 students. There were. Cspan detroit. Guest yeah. Thats right. Cspan actual detroit city or. Guest no, no. Outlying suburbs, about 45 minutes from downtown. Cspan which whats the name of it . Guest its called canton. Canton. It was the plymouthsalemcanton high school, two high schools on a shared set of buildings and campus. Out of 4,000 students, there were maybe, oh, a half dozen or so people who look like me, maybe one or two hispanics, and there was, as i recall, one lone africanamerican. Now, i may be wrong, but if it wasnt one, it couldnt have been more than two. Thats about as white as you can get. Now im in an environment where not just my students but my peers, my boss, my bosss boss and my bosss bosss boss is africanamerican. And ive learned as much as ive taught. This has really changed my life and although yellow is a book well, by an asianamerican, includes asianamericans, its not just about asianamericans and not just for asianamericans. For one thing, my publisher wants to sell books, you know . And its meant to talk about race more generally. Many of the examples are about africanamericans. And theyre about africanamericans because i realized i face prejudice. I face stereotypes. Sometimes thats not recognized sometimes i im annoyed. And sometimes, in some instances, asianamericans can face serious hate crimes and bias. But by and large, what i face doesnt compare with what africanamericans face. So i realized if im going to be serious about this work, civil rights work, i have to stand up and speak out not just when its someone who happens to look like me but when its others, when its africanamericans. Their cause is my cause. If i only stood up when it was, say, the wen ho lee case, and said, theres racial profiling, in that case, that wouldnt be standing up for principle. That would be standing up for selfinterest. I have to stand up when its driving while black, when its a different face on the same problem, if im really going to be principled about these matters. Cspan what is the difference in what you see when youre standing in front of a classroom full of africanamericans and in that environment, compared to what its like in an allwhite environment . Guest it. Cspan as they react to you, is what im getting at. Guest sure. Yeah. Its different in that the well, the students are are incredibly diverse. You know, probably before i taught at howard, i had the same misconception that many people who arent black have, which is to think of africanamericans as sort of a monolithic mass. Well, thats not true. They come from different geographic origins, different class backgrounds. Ive got folks who are the first people not just in their immediate family but of all their cousins to go to college, much less law school. And then ive got other folks that are the fourth generation to go to howard or to howards law school. They come from backgrounds of wealth, you know, greater privilege than i ever saw growing up. And then there are people who are africanamerican. There are people who are black, but not africanamerican. Either they recently arrived here or their parents just did, and they dont think of themselves as africanamerican. Maybe theyre canadian and black. And so theres this tremendous set of differences, and different politics and different views. And its wonderful to see that. Whats different, though, about being at howard is this is a safe space. Its safe for africanamericans in the following sense. If you took one of my students, really talented student, and put them in a predominantly white setting, and the teacher and they raised their hand and the teacher ignored them, didnt call on them, that student would always wonder, and i think rightly so, why is that professor not calling on me . Is it because of race, or is it because they didnt see me because im sitting, you know, off to the side and they cant see me . Is it because theyre busy . They want to, you know, cover the next set of readings . At howard, its different. If someone is dissed that way, they know its not because of race, its for some other reason, or maybe im just generally rude. And they know that theres a common set of experiences, that no ones going to look at them and think, you are intellectually inferior. Youre stupid. You dont belong, or you got in and took someone elses space who was more deserving. And theres also even though some of my students do come from fairly welltodo backgrounds, theres a common set of experiences that people have because of racial prejudice. Not because theyre the same, but because the forces acting on them are similar. Let me explain what i mean. Almost all of my male students, if they personally havent been stopped by the cops and frisked for no good reason, their brother was or their cousin was or their father was. That resonates in a way that that it wouldnt in a predominantly white setting. So it race is not symmetrical. You sometimes cant just flip things around and say, would it be different if it if you turned everyone from all black to all white . Because institutions like howard exist because there was a time when, well, it was crime to teach someone who was black how to read and write. So that you cant look and say its a mirror image. Cspan youre on the board of Gallaudet College . Guest yes. Yes. Im very proud. Cspan what is it . Guest its the only university in the world thats predominantly for the deaf and hard of hearing. Its here in washington, d. C. Ive been doing that for about two years. Im starting to learn sign language, asl. Im a very slow learner. And im pleased to be there because its introduced me to a whole new culture. Its made me realize that the deaf can do anything i can do. In fact, they can do many things better than i can do. The only thing they cant do is hear. But other than that, its mainly stereotypes and misconceptions that hold them back. And im pleased to be there as someone whos hearing because my goal is to work on these causes as a matter of principle, recognizing that its not just charity work. Im learning tremendously from this about deaf culture, about sign language. Its making me think about issues in a completely definitely way. Its really just opened my eyes and i think thats what we all have to do a little more of, put ourselves in those places where were the one and only, where people dont expect us to be. But this is a way that race and these issues, that its not a mirror image. Let me explain what i mean. Imagine two similar people, equally talented. Lets say theyre new lawyers. They dont have to be lawyers. They could be bankers. They could be people climbing the corporate ladder in any setting. They could be, you know, teachers. Imagine one white and one black lets say theyre both talented, both bright, both go to a downtown law firm, both want to succeed. What happens to the person whos white . They become increasingly insulated among others who are like them look like them, have the same experiences of race, tend to come from the same backgrounds, because we know even though law firms are making laudable efforts, by and large, most major elite downtown law firms have maybe one africanamerican partner, usually someone pretty junior, or maybe two. And theres still plenty where theres not a single africanamerican whos ever been a partner or a senior partner. So as this white attorney climbs the ranks, theyre less and less likely to interact with africanamericans as equals. Well, maybe therell be a janitor or someone cleaning their office, but the likelihood that when they go to a meeting with their client, their corporate client who can afford their 250 billing rate, that that room is going to include africanamericans slim to none. Theyre invited to join a country club. They go to that country club, almost no chance theres going to be an africanamerican member of their and so on and so forth. So for this person whos white, they dont have to think about race. Sometimes my white friends say to me, very nice, sincere people, they say, well, get over it . Why dont you lighten up . Why are you upset . Why did you write a book . They say, i dont really think about race very often at all. And theyre right. Thats just the point. They dont have to unless theyre lost downtown and feel a little nervous. They see people standing on the Street Corner who dont look like them. Better lock my doors. They dont have to think about race. They can disregard africanamerican culture. They dont have to know anything about jazz if they dont want to. They dont have to eat grits or greens. They they dont have to learn anything about black. Contrast that to the africanamerican. The irony here is the more successful that africanamerican young lawyer is, the more they have to integrate themselves into white culture. They have to walk like whites. They have to talk like whites. They have to shake hands like whites. They have to learn the right fork to pick up when theyre invited to their bosss house. They have to mimic whites in every way and leave behind africanamericans. Theyre going to be isolated, more and more likely to be the only one who looks like them. So theres this asymmetry. And asianamericans fit sort of halfway in the scheme. There are asianamericans who live in white neighborhoods or go to school at schools that are predominantly white, with a few asianamericans sprinkled in there. So we can say we understand a little bit of what that life is like. We can also say to africanamericans, we understand what its like to be a person of color, to face bias, to have people judge you when you show up on the basis of nothing other than your physical appearance. So theres this asymmetry. And what im always trying to do is put myself in new places to get new experiences. I dont suggest that theres one solution or one answer. But if i had any advice for people, it would be put yourself in that new place. If youre white, go someplace not just to look around but to join. Go to a black church and join and say, i will come to this church. I will break bread and with people who dont look like me, whose cultural backgrounds are different. And i will become part of that community. And all it takes is a few experiences like that, if youre the only white person in the room and youre not the one in charge but youre just one other person in the room, and youre not even talking about. Youre doing something else. Youre in a classroom, all black, and youre the only white person. Youll very quickly get a little glimpse. Its not the same as walking in someone elses shoes, but you at least get a glimpse. And being on the gallaudet board, doing things like that thats all part of my personal journey that im trying to share of understanding what its like to be somebody else, to and what its like to to transcend my own identity. Cspan from detroit high school, where did you go to school . Guest i went to college at Johns Hopkins in baltimore, and then i went back to ann arbor, michigan, to. Cspan studied what did you study . Guest i studied writing, so you know, my parents thought i was doomed, you know . They wanted me to be a doctor or a scientist. Theyre very much asian parents you know, when i got into law school, my mother said, oh, youll probably make a lot of money, but you still wont be a doctor, you know . And i talk a little bit about some of the bad advice my parents gave me when i was growing up. Cspan bad in what sense . Guest well, bad in the sense that it didnt prepare me for the diverse world that we live in. You know, i id go home and id say, well, i was being picked on at school, and it was racial, and the teachers didnt do anything. Id tell my parents this. And you know what theyd say . Theyd admonish me. Theyd say, you should try harder. Fit in more. Dont make a fuss. And i was pretty angry about that for a long time. And im ashamed to admit this now, but i was grown up sort of embarrassed of my parents. I was embarrassed of that because they had accents. They didnt laugh at the right time, you know, when they watched tv sitcoms, and they were just sort of awkward. Even as a kid, if they needed to write a letter to the phone company you know, maybe there was a dispute about something theyd have me write it because they knew my english was better, even, you know, when i was 9 or 10. And i knew that my friends parents wouldnt be my parents friends. What i didnt realize is that my parents werent blaming me, they were blaming themselves because what i didnt know, because i was naive as a kid i thought, well, you know, adults dont use these words. They dont go around doing these things. I didnt realize my parents faced this every day at work, and its even more severe because they have to put up with it. Its coming from their boss. You know, they got to bring home a paycheck, and theyve got a family to raise and feed. So my parents, when they encountered this, you know what they did . They blamed themselves. They thought it was because they had accents, because they laughed at the wrong times when watching tv sitcoms because they didnt quite get things. They thought it was entirely their fault. So now that im older, i appreciate that. My parents did something i could never do. They put down new roots. They learned a new language. They learned a new culture. They succeeded. They raised me and my brothers well enough that, well, were doing ok. You know, i could never do that id have to, you know, move to australia. And actually, that wouldnt even be enough. Id have to move someplace where i dont know the language. Id have to move to france and do fantastically well to match the triumph of my parents. But they had all sorts of advice for me, such as fit in, you know . Dont be controversial. I sometimes if im on tv doing Something Like this and ill send the tape to my mother, shell call me up and after she tells me that i need a better haircut, shell say, you know, frank, stop being so controversial. Bad for your career. And i dont have the heart to tell her ive made a career out of being controversial. Her advice is very much the advice of asians, and its very much the advice of any newcomer because theyre concerned with things other than civil rights and protesting. And that strategy worked for them. What im trying to suggest, though, is sometimes we asianamericans and i spend a good amount of my time taking asianamericans to task. There are asianamericans who have terrible racial attitudes, who think that theyre better than whites and blacks, who behind closed doors say awful things about blacks and sound no different than someone whos white whos in the kkk. Its really appalling. But aside from that, asianamericans sometimes dont even stand up and speak out for themselves. Theres no asianamerican Jesse Jackson or al sharpton. And you might not like the strategies or styles of those two leaders, but you can bet anywhere in the United States, someone does something thats bad, that shows bias or prejudice toward africanamericans, one of those two or someone else whos local will be boycotting, marching, will be on tv, will be given the opportunity to be on tv, will raise a fuss until something is done about that. Asianamericans, what is our response . We just kind of smile and laugh nervously and blame ourselves and consent to it. And part of my message is, look, if if we just smile at people who are abusing us, theyre going to think its ok and just continue to do it. You know, wake up, stand up for yourself. Cspan where are your parents now . Guest my parents did something that that surprised me. I had no idea this would happen it sort of fits a stereotype, i suppose. My parents moved to taiwan about a yearandahalf ago. My father worked for his entire life at ford, and he had a great opportunity to do some consulting in taiwan. And hes, you know, the proverbial, you know, big fish in a small pond. So they went back to check it out. And its funny because my mother realized that she doesnt really fit into taiwan because its been 40 years since shes lived there, and 40 years in a developing nation like that its amazing. You know, the taiwan she left as a girl is not like the one that shes gone back to. Shes very much an american now you know, she not as much as i am, but shes louder, brasher, doesnt, you know, know quite how to defer and do the thing that they would do there. And all of her friends are here in the United States. This is where her life is. So theyre not sure. Theyre undecided, are they going to stay or are they no going to stay . But you know, im always a little wary, im a little nervous about telling strangers that because its just going to confirm this image of, wow, the asians, they come here for a little while, then they go back. You know, its this idea that that we ultimately go back to where we came from, and thats where we we belong. But you know, whats interesting is that has been true for all of u. S. History. If you actually study the numbers, white immigrants 80, 90 percent of white immigrants from certain nations, from certain villages, went back. It was perfectly common to spend 40 years here and then go back to ireland, to the same village that you left as a kid in the 1910s or 20s. Cspan do you happen do you happen to know, of the 10 million asianamericans, how many of those folks were born here in this country . Guest yes. A minority. Cspan a minority . Guest yeah. Most asianamericans today, about two thirds of asianamericans, were born overseas, are foreignborn. And sometimes people say to me, well, you know, thats why its ok that we think youre foreign because, well, its more true than not. And part of my book is about stereotypes that have that germ of truth to them. A lot of stereotypes have that germ of truth to them. A lot of them are reasonable. And if were really going to be colorblind, we have to overcome not just the irrational, crazy stereotypes you know, the idea that jews are born with horns or tails, you know, things that are just just absurd but even the stereotypes that are sometimes rational. Sometimes ill talk about these issues, and people will say to me, but isnt it reasonable, though, if you see someone whos black and male whos a stranger, its late at night, youre downtown, youre walking by yourself isnt it reasonable, sensible, common sense to cross the street because we know we know more africanamericans have criminal records than whites. The likelihood that your average africanamerican male in washington, d. C. , has has been behind bars is tremendously high. The problem with this is its all too easy to rationalize. Its all too easy for us to say, especially when the rationalization when what seems reasonable coincides neatly with the stereotype, for us to say, wow, its reasonable. And you get this selffulfilling prophecy. What i always ask is, imagine what it would be like if you were on the receiving end of this stereotype. If everyones going to think youre a thug, everyone, you know, avoids you because they think you. Person wont sit next to you on the bus and i say this half jokingly, but i mean this. Well, it makes sense. If i were africanamerican, you know, id be furious. I would be a thug. Id be a thug because if im going to suffer the disadvantages, not every day but often enough, that people stigmatize me and look at me and security guards follow me and i get pulled over by cops and frisked and these things happen, i may as well get the benefits of being a thug. See, if we choose to just do what seems rational and reasonable in the short term, the subjects of stereotyping well, we cant complain if they do exactly that, as well, do what seems to be reasonable to them in the short term. And pretty soon, you get this vicious cycle. Its a downward spiral, and we need to break out of that. And the way to do that is to say, even when stereotypes appear superficially plausible, we have to say no to them. And the reason the asianamerican stereotype is easier to talk about its not as inflammatory. Its easier for whites and blacks to talk because it seems kind of abstract, asianamericans as mostly foreignborn, but thats really the same thing as africanamericans and crime. If youre going to talk about numbers, logically its all the same. Cspan what would you say made you the angriest or maybe thats not the best way to ask it. Your parents, you said, kept saying to you, you know, cool it. Well, what was it in your upbringing that you think got you to this point . Guest yeah. Its interesting. I actually almost never get angry about any of this stuff. I wrote a book instead, you know, a way of coping when people say these things. Cspan but where did you get your interest . Guest yeah. Yeah. You know, people will say things like, oh, you asians, you got nothing to complain about. Youre all doing so well. Or sometimes people will say, you asians, youre all so polite. I immediately want to do something very rude to that person. I got this interest because i cant help but being interested you know, care about these issues. I dont walk down the street thinking, here i go, an asianamerican walking down the street. Other people think about race for me. Heres an example of something. As it happens, i ride a motorcycle. Im very happy to do that. And in fact, id rather spend my time riding my motorcycle, polishing it, thinking about motorcycles than thinking about race. Ten years ago, when i bought my first bike, i took a Safety Training class. I went to the class. The teacher was, you know, a real nice guy, fantastic rider. I was amazed. He he could do things with such ease. You know, were in the parking lot. Hed show us how to how to turn these really tight corners, weave in and out of cones. And he was trying to help all of us a real nice guy. And he saw that i was riding a honda, came over to me, and he says, thats a nice jap bike. And for the entire twoday course, hes talking to me in a very nice way about them jap bikes, theyre getting much better. They used to, you know, not be very good, but now there are some there are some nice jap bikes out there. I was thinking of buying a jap bike. And hed just go on, jap this, jap that. And i didnt know what to say. You know, hes talking to me he probably doesnt realize jap is a racial slur. And its not that its offensive, its hurtful. Its demeaning. Cspan why . Guest why . Because its the talk that i heard as a kid. It maybe isnt as bad as the n word, but its a word like that its explosive. It packs this force. It says im not ordinary. Im not normal. I dont belong. I dont fit in. Now, thats not what he meant, but he may not realize it links up to all this. And the other thing he did and mind you, this is a nice guy. I appreciated what he was doing he was trying to help me learn how not to kill myself when im out there riding. This class was about 20 people. And this other guy, who was asianamerican i didnt know him, and i just signed up for this class when i took it, and lo and behold, another guy whos asianamerican, probably not too much older than me. You know, maybe he was 5, 10 years older than me. We had no contact with each other, didnt sit with each other, not because we were trying to avoid each other. Its just you know, it was a bunch of strangers in this class. The instructor just assumed we were pals, we were buddies, we came together. And thats this funny thing that happens, you know . Doesnt happen every day, but it happens maybe once every couple months. Ill be standing in line at the dry cleaners or to buy a movie ticket, or i do a lot of traveling, ill be at the airport. Ill be standing in front of, behind or five feet away from some random asianlooking people. They could be vietnamese. They could be korean. Doesnt matter what they are. Could be a family, old, young. My turn will come to buy my ticket or check in or what have you, and half the time not all, half the time, a third of the time the clerk will assume im the father, the brother, the son, im related to these random asian people. And sometimes theyre not even behind me, theyre just sort of back there somewhere. And so it made me realize i think of myself as an american. I think of myself as as me, but other people automatically link me. They associate me with others who are asian. So i think about these issues because i dont have a choice, because our society is obsessed with them. I can be just interested in motorcycles, and i have to deal with, well, what do i say when someone says jap bike . Recently, i was thinking about buying a new bike. And there are these web sites now that you can go to with chat rooms. You talk about things. I went to one and said, what kind of bike should i get . And i in the back of my mind, because i dont want to be thinking about race constantly, but in the back of my mind, i thought, i wonder if anyones going to say anything about jap bikes. and i got about 20 answers, nice people helping me out, saying, well, here are the pros and cons of this model versus that model. And sure enough, within a day, someone started talking about jap bikes. And you know, it makes me think, wow. What am i supposed to do about this . And i suggest in the book there are different strategies. You dont want to be angry all the time. Im not angry all the time. Sometimes you tell a joke. Sometimes you ask people, im sorry. What was that you said . And they come to their senses. Sometimes its appropriate to get a little angry. Well, i posted something on this web site. I was very careful. And i said, im not saying anyones a racist. Youve all been incredibly helpful. I dont know you. You dont know me. Were all strangers. But i do want to point out something. jap is a racial slur and, you know, you might want to think about it. I was i tried to couch it in the nicest terms because i was afraid of backlash. Well, i immediately got two dozen answers, and boy, were they nasty you know, it was people well, some people made fun of my name some people said, well, i dont see whats wrong with calling it a jap bike. you know, we we call other bikes, you know, by names. We say brit bike for triumphs. Of course, thats not a racial slur the way jap is. And 90 percent of the answers were incredibly hostile. Eventually, the moderator of this Bulletin Board pulled my posting, censored it, just wiped it off. And what this shows is its incredibly hard to talk about these issues because, after all, whos the one who brought up race . Half of these posts said, whats wrong with you . We just want to talk about motorcycles. Why do you have to, you know, be talking about race . Well, who was it who used the term jap bike . All im doing is observing something and trying to do it as gently as i can. And even that doesnt quite do it. So i think about these issues partly because theres a certain irony here. I am about as american as you can be. You know, i dont speak chinese im really bad with chopsticks. I held up my end of the deal. When i went to school as a 5yearold, 30 years ago, teacher said to me and the kids said to me and if they didnt say it, they made it clear that if i assimilated the deal was, if i assimilated, theyd accept me. But if i didnt assimilate, they wouldnt. If i continued to eat funnylooking foods, if if my english wasnt good, well, then, their view was it was right for them to pick on me because then i would be different. But if i if i became like them, theyd accept me. So i did. I learned how to shoot marbles. I collected baseball cards. I built model airplanes. I know nothing about chinese culture. I went to college, i was told you have to study the western canon. So i did. I know shakespeare. Im a huge shakespeare fan. I can recite for you the opening 45 lines of richard iii from memory. And i have no accent. I can pick up the telephone, i could pass as a smith. I could tell you my names frank smith, and until i showed up and you look at me and say, smith . How did you get to be a smith . I could, for all practical purposes, if i were invisible, be a frank smith. So that the irony here is the more i fit in, the more i realize theres a dichotomy. Im not bitter about it, but i realize others they reneged on the deal. The deal was id fit in, youd accept me. And yet sometimes im still treated as if im fresh off the boat. And then heres the most galling thing. This happens to me every now and then. People say to me, oh, you know they take pity on me. They say, thats such a shame youve lost your culture. I want to say, ive lost my culture . Who do you think took it away from me . You know . I can understand my parents are upset because i cant speak chinese, but who are you to admonish me for not speaking chinese, you know . I dont see you learning how to speak french or german. And its as if, on the one hand, people expect me to assimilate and be no different, never complain and not talk about these issues, but on the other hand, sometimes be exotically ethnic when they expect me to. And theyre disappointed if you know, sometimes i have people come up to me, very nice people again, whats interesting here is sometimes its people who they want to be considerate, but race is just on their minds. Theyll come up to me, and instead of shaking my hand, theyll bow. Theyll sort of give me this inept bow. And you know, im not going to bow back. I know how to shake hands. I dont know the ritual of bowing, you know . My parents probably dont even know the proper you know, theres a depth, how deep you bow, who you bow to, how many times you bow. We dont know that, and theres no reason should react to me differently. Thats what this book is about, trying to create a situation where we each define ourselves. Cspan at the end of the book, you talk about a place called deep spring college. Why did you write about it . Where is it . And what impact did it have on you . Guest it was a terrific place. I was just out there for a week ill be teaching there again this year, and i hope to teach there for as long as theyll keep having me back. Its a fantastic experiment. The great thing about the United States is were always trying different things. Sometimes it doesnt work, but sometimes there are bold, novel ideas that will work. This is a college thats at the edge of death valley. Its all male. Its only 26 students. Its two years. Its full scholarship. Its on a working cattle ranch. Students who go there are kids who turned down harvard, stanford, you name it. They could go anywhere they want. Theyve got top grades and test scores. And they go for two years, then they transfer back out usually someplace like the places they were thinking of. Whats unique about this, in the morning they take classes. These are classes amazing as freshmen, theyre taking classes that seniors at other schools. Topnotch seminars. And all afternoon, they run the ranch. Its completely studentrun student government. Students select who the new students will be. They hire the faculty. They make all the choices. You know, they got 300 head of cattle. They herd them. They learn all these skills. And the idea is to make the complete person. Theres no alcohol, no tv, no leaving campus. So it is a unique place. And what i realized going there the reason i i talk about people. Well, what in the world is actually with yellow race in america beyond black and white . I realized heres a community. Its a community that people have made. It didnt just spring up overnight. It took someone with a vision. It took people committed to making this community work. Its a democratic community. Its a diverse community. People are equals there. But its frustrating. It takes a lot of toil and constant effort. It doesnt maintain itself. It doesnt just run itself. Thats what the United States is like. Its a community that takes constant effort. These issues of diversity, theyre like our nation itself. They take constant effort. And thats what im suggesting. Its a process, not an outcome, where if we participate as equals and all come together, recognizing theres no magic bullet, theres no solution we dont get to a racial nirvana overnight. Even if we all pledge to be people of good will and not judge people on the basis of their race, sometimes we just cant help it. We get racial consequences, racial patterns and practices. And so i talk about deep springs because its it shows how hard it is to build and sustain a community, yet that its possible to build and sustain truly unique communities. Cspan how long has it been there, by the way . Guest it was founded in 1917. Cspan who founded it . Guest a guy named l. L. Nunn. He was the first person to bring power lines to niagara falls. Cspan how did you find yourself there . Guest i had always known about it. Its one of these quirky colleges that i guess you hear about. They send out their their catalogue to i think the High School Juniors who score on the top, i dont know, 1 percent or 2 percent of the psat. So id heard of them, you know, 20 years ago, when that was me. And always in the back of my head, i thought, you know, i should go check it out. Im always trying to check out these unique places. And whats unique about deep springs is everyone there is an individual and everyone is unique. But at the same time, in a funny way, theyre all shaped by this experience, so they have a common bond. And thats whats true of people who are members of racial minority groups, as well. Individuals and unique, yet they share a common bond because of the set of experiences they have. Cspan of the 26 students, what was the makeup of the student body . Guest yeah, its interesting. You know, theyve been trying to become more mixed, more mixed in racial terms. When i was there, i think it was 22 were white and 4 were asian or asianamerican. So theyve got a ways to go. Cspan no africanamericans . Guest yeah, no africanamericans, for complicated reasons. I can see why because first of all, theyre going after a very unique group of students. You know, these are students who are performing fantastically well. And theyre the ones who are, well, all a little crazy. Theyre the ones who will go out to the desert for two years and commit to helping run a cattle ranch. You know, not many people of any racial background want to do this. And so its very hard to get someone whos africanamerican and male who got into harvard. You know, theres a lot of pressure if youre the first in your family to go to college, you know, harvards offering you a big scholarship, to say, hey, im going to go to the desert for two years instead. So theyre working on it, but this shows how even when youre working on these issues in good faith, you cant always just fix them. You cant wish them so. Let me give you a very quick example of these racial patterns because i always try to make this concrete when i talk about race. I dont want people to think this is all abstract, im just some, you know, egghead, you know, ivory tower type. Here in washington, d. C. , you know, in the nations capital, people who live here know were majority minority. Most of d. C. Is africanamerican, more than 70 percent. Yet everyone whos been here for any time at all whos not a tourist knows there are some neighborhoods of d. C. That arent just predominantly white, theyre almost exclusively white upper northwest you know, fancy, very exclusive neighborhoods. Theres color coding as they theres no sign there that says, blacks stay out. There are no laws that say only white people can buy real estate here. In fact, there are laws that prohibit that sort of racial bias. And ill make you a bet. If you survey 1,000 people in ward 3 or 4 of d. C. Chevy chase, d. C. , the most exclusive neighborhoods, big, wellmanicured lawns, fancy houses, luxury cars parked out front. If you knocked on the doors or rang the doorbells and said to each of the people who came to the doors and there are whole blocks where i assure you, from the census data and just from walking around, you know youre not going to see a Single Person of color. Maybe youll see one asianamerican, but you could go 20, 30, 40 houses and its going to be all white. You survey 1,000 of those home owners, maybe one of them will Say Something racial. There rest are going to say if you say why do you live here . Im taking a poll, theyre going to say nice neighborhood i grew up here. Close to the metro. Good shopping. Good schools. Safe. My realtor suggested it. Ive got friends who theyll tell you all sorts of things. Not one of them is going to say, i live here because black folks dont live next door. And id like to believe these people. Id like to give them the benefit of the doubt, trust them that every one of them made and of course, you know, they made conscious decisions. They didnt just drop in from the sky into their houses. They spent a half Million Dollars or a Million Dollars to buy this house. It was a purposeful choice. A lot of other houses. Im willing to take them at their word that race was not for a moment on their minds. Well, that this is the paradox that we have, right . All these individuals make decisions, each one of them individually innocent, except for maybe one extremist. Yet you have an unmistakable racial pattern. Its unmistakable. Its as strongly racial as if you put up a sign. Well, what do we do about that . And thats what im trying to address in yellow. What do we do about these problems . We do have the serious ones, the extremists, the egregious cases i dont doubt that. I talk about that, too. But what do we do about these ones where its nice people . Theyre wellmeaning people. There are just these intractable problems. Theyre a legacy of our history that are part of the stereotyping we all absorb as part of our culture . Thats the tough question. Cspan what about the reverse of it . You could have gone over here to another neighborhood where its all black. Guest youll find some neighborhoods like that, but whats interesting is the black neighborhoods fancy houses those houses are worth 50,000, 100,000 less than in the white neighborhoods, even if you match up all the same features. Everyone knows that one side of rock creek park, the park that divides d. C. , is well, has higher housing values than the other side of rock creek park. And any realtor will tell you, if you buy on one side, your house isnt going to rise in value quite as quickly. I think sometimes people say,