My friend has a knack for getting into trouble.
By William Wetherall
Last year about this time he was shopping at an upscale Tokyo market. The place is patronized mostly by locals with higher incomes -- boutique owners, foreign diplomats, corporate elites and the like. My friend, a freelance nutritionist, is not rich, and the store is a bit out of his way, but he has a weakness for imported oatmeal.
Outside the store one day, sitting on the sidewalk, was a man in his 20s, waiting for his girlfriend or wife, who was inside shopping, my friend surmised. The man was wearing sunglasses and gripping a red leash, to which was tethered a restless ball of white fluff that strutted an unbroken line of descent from Jinmu's fondest lapdog.
In front of the man, on a Pierre Cardin hankie, was a stainless steel dish of water the dog lapped between yaps at passersby. My friend, not yet having done anything kind that day, dug a one-yen coin out of his pocket, tossed it into the water, smiled at the mutt and his master, and disappeared down the gullet of a nearby subway.
The dog lapped up the coin before the man could pluck it out of the dish. A patrolman who had just emerged from the mouth of the subway, seeing the dog trembling, called the fire department, and an ambulance took the dog to the nearest animal hospital.
While the dog was dying from acute aluminum poisoning aggravated by cooties, the man described the suspect to the police, who immediately recognized him as the notorious cell-phone hater who had recently been released on bail for snatching and destroying people's mobiles. A police artist's sketch of my friend's face had been posted on koban bulletin boards throughout the Tokyo area, and the weeklies were still running "Grinning cell-basher" stories.
My friend was caught off guard the next morning by a knock on the door. Charged with both harassment of the rich and tip and run, he told the police he had just made a wish.
Unable to recall what he had wished for, he confessed he had spared a yen for what he took to be a panhandler. His smile had been without malice, he insisted, and he had walked, not run, to the subway.
"What was I supposed to think, your honor?" he told the court. "The dude was wearing shades and squatting on the pavement beside a bowl. And when I came out of the store he had moved to the other side of the entrance."
My friend was tried before a jury of peers who found him charming and full of good intentions. Nonetheless, they agreed with the prosecutor that he was guilty of destroying a family's happiness.
In lieu of a prison term, he was was ordered to pay the veterinarian fees, the cremation and funeral costs, and the bill for a crypt in a pet columbarium with sixty years of maintenance and morning -- arfs, woofs, and bow wows every death anniversary, punctuated with howls and growls in Years of the Dog.
The court also awarded emotional damages to the canine victim's bereaved human companions -- the man, his wife who indeed was shopping, and the daughter who was with her. On top of which my friend had to pay his own and the family's attorney fees, and buy the daughter a new pedigreed puppy and a lifetime supply of her favorite dog food. Last week she was hauled into juvenile hall for chasing cars.
My friend, yen-less by judgment day, opted for a year in prison, where he got lots of fan mail. "God bless you for the wonderful work you're doing with Tokyo's street people," one wrote in a long letter, enclosing a picture of herself, on the back of which she had jotted her name and cell number. A less charitable writer scribbled "Cheapskate!" across the back of a postcard.
The last time I visited my friend he appeared to be enjoying his stay. He feels safer in prison, where the TV crews can't hound him, paparazzi can't snap at his heels, and muckrakers can't get a leg up on his private affairs. He is also grateful the prison prohibits cells, though he misses chocolate bars. "They're afraid someone will break out," he winked.
With nothing better to do, he is busy on a book about his life. A major publisher has shown interest and movie rights are on the table. The working title is "Stepping in it: The confessions of a public nuisance".
Until he gets out, I'm feeding his mongrel, Machiko, who whines most of the day and deep into the night.
27 September 2009
2009-09-27
2009-09-18
Racial math
Every human born becomes a member of ir^(hr-1) races -- in which
ir = imaginary races -- all the races a person thinks he or she is, and
hr = human races = 1 -- the number of human races.
By William Wetherall
Racialist countries have laws that classify people according to one or another official "race" -- usually for the purpose of treating people of one putative race differently from those of other races. The United States was such a country until fairly recently -- and is still, today, a "race box" state in which "race" matters in law and politics.
Even in countries with raceless laws, like Japan, most people socially view themselves and others "racially" -- and such racialism can result in discriminatory behavior. And in Japan, like the United States and most countries, people speak of being "half" this or "a quarter" or "an eighth" that -- and "mixed" are common and controversial.
Everywhere in the world, there are discussions of whether children of "mixed" or "interracial" marriages are "half" one parent and "half" the other parent -- or whether they are "whole" as humans or "double" in terms of parental "heritage" or "culture". Never mind that the parents themselves could be "mixed" in various ways that may or may not be reflected as "heritage" or "culture".
Nibun-no-ni
In Tokyo, on 19 September 2009, there is an event called "Nibun-no-ni" -- meaning "2/2". The two halves reduce to one. This is progress -- but only to a point.
The event features two speakers. One is described as "a kuota ('quarter American') and transgender" writer. The other is called "a fellow hafu with British and Japanese lineage". The last time I read my elementary school primer on fractions, 1/4 was only half of 1/2 -- though they could be said to share a certain fellowship as ratios.
The Japanese words are actually "haafu" and "kuootaa" -- and, strictly speaking, they describe quanta of putatively "non-Japanese blood" in which "Japanese" is taken to be a standard of purity. "Hachibun no ichi" means "one-eighth".
Sounds familiar.
Infinite series
Mathematically, "half" and "quarter" and "one-eighth" and "one-sixteenth" are evaluations of 2^-g at g=1, g=2, g=3, and g=4 -- where "g" is a person's generational distance from the g=0 progenitor of impure genes. The progenitor of impurity is a "full" (2^-0 = 1) alien, and a child of a "full Japanese" and the alien is one generation removed from the alien -- hence "half" (2^-1 = 1/2). The Japanese progression is comparable with mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, and quintroon (hexadecaroon = 1/16) in English measures of "black" impurity in "white" blood.
Akihito -- Japan's present "emperor" -- is not pure by Yamatoist standards of purity. As he himself publicly stated in 2001, the mother of Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806) was a descendant of Prince Sunta, a son of the Paekche King Muryong (501-523).
Many people had migrated from the Korean peninsula and amalgamated with the mainstream -- as did all manner of non-Yamato people already in early Japan. So Akihito's veins undoubtedly contain several kinds of blood, all of them red.
Even if his lineal descendants were able to find and marry only "pure Japanese", it would take an infinite number of generations for the imperial family gene pool to purify. But there is not a single "pure Japanese" on the islands.
All Japanese are to some degree blends of the people who -- over the millennia, centuries, and decades -- have migrated from various parts of the world to what is today Japan. "Culturally", too, Japan is "homogeneous" only if one ignores regional, communal, familial, and personal variations.
"Hafu Japanese"
The "Nibun-no-ni" event is organized by the same people behind the "Hafu Japanese" project -- a photographic and social "exploration" of "hafu or half Japanese". Check out their website, in English or Japanese, at www.hafujapanese.org. It is full of things to ponder.
The website does not equate "mixed heritage" with "mixed race" -- but the visuals suggest that "race" is perhaps the "defining" part of its "race, culture and nationality" concern. "Heritage" -- like "culture" and "nationality" in the minds of some people -- is a slippery word that is very fashionably used today with nuances of "race" and "racioethnicity".
The idea of "'nibun-no-ni' (2/2)" is, however, a good start toward achieving the goal expressed by one of the "Hafu Japanese" project organizers. According to a 28 February 2009 review of the project in The Japan Times -- titled "'Hafu' focuses on whole individual" -- the project is predicated on "the need to discuss and analyze it [the word "hafu"] as a classification before it can be removed from society."
I wonder about this -- because social history teaches that, in the process of classifying anything for publicity or research purposes, labels tend to spread and gather momentum. The momentum of an object increases if either its mass or velocity increases. Changing the direction of movement requires force. Stopping or reversing the spread of a label requires as much or more force than was expended to create and apply it.
Racial labels have the habit of becoming indelible and multiplying. The momentous continuation and proliferation of legally-mandated "race boxes" in the United States is a case in point. Japan has no race boxes, but labels abound. "Zainichi" -- of fairly recent invention -- is increasingly used in mass media and academia as a racioethnic epithet for anyone in Japan who claims to have -- or is thought to have -- a drop of "Korean" blood.
Bipolarism
One reason I demur at "2/2" is because it implies "1/2 + 1/2" -- which implies a "mixture" of "one half" of each of "two worlds". Despite the "multi-" this and "multi-" that rhetoric which crops up in discussions of "haafu" -- and of "hapa", a popular tag in the United States for "multiracial Asian Americans" -- the "two-halves=one" formula reinforces the stereotype that offspring of racially or otherwise "mixed" unions are somehow bipolar.
Both my mother and father were products of "multiple worlds" -- yet I, as their offspring, had to contend more with their distinct, different, and complex personalities than with their multiple, and equally complex, familial and social heritages. My father and mother are both called "white" on my San Francisco birth certificate. Maybe they were. Who knows. Certainly I had nothing to do with it. I don't believe they did either.
n imaginary races to the zero power
"In-ichi ga ichi" in Japanese -- which mean "1x1=1" -- might be a truer statement, since the product of one parent's whole gene pool and another parent's whole gene pool is one child -- leaving aside identical and fraternal twins and other multiple births.
Yet 1x1=1 -- though not as elegant in its simplicity as 2/2 -- shares with 2/2 the flaw that it does not accommodate the freedom all individuals should have to "identify" in any manner they like. Both formulae work fine for nondescript mongrels like myself -- who constitute the vast majority of the population in any country you name, including Japan -- and for self-styled bipolar mixtures. But people like Tiger Woods -- who once called himself "Cablinasian", a portmanteau of caucasian, black, american indian, and asian -- might like to arrive at the conclusion that they are at once both "one" and "whole" through a different formulation.
Hence I prefer to compute raciality as the value of n imaginary races to the zero power or n^0. No matter how many races or ethnicities or cultures or heritages or nationalities an individual might choose -- or not -- to string out, ad infinitum, with or without hyphens -- this equation will always evaluate as exactly one. No more, no less. For no individual can be more or less than one human being -- leaving aside those with multiple or fractional personalities.
In any event, "mixture" is a fundamentally shared quality of being human. Anyone who claims not to be a mixture of various human ingredients is delusional.
18 September 2009
ir = imaginary races -- all the races a person thinks he or she is, and
hr = human races = 1 -- the number of human races.
By William Wetherall
Racialist countries have laws that classify people according to one or another official "race" -- usually for the purpose of treating people of one putative race differently from those of other races. The United States was such a country until fairly recently -- and is still, today, a "race box" state in which "race" matters in law and politics.
Even in countries with raceless laws, like Japan, most people socially view themselves and others "racially" -- and such racialism can result in discriminatory behavior. And in Japan, like the United States and most countries, people speak of being "half" this or "a quarter" or "an eighth" that -- and "mixed" are common and controversial.
Everywhere in the world, there are discussions of whether children of "mixed" or "interracial" marriages are "half" one parent and "half" the other parent -- or whether they are "whole" as humans or "double" in terms of parental "heritage" or "culture". Never mind that the parents themselves could be "mixed" in various ways that may or may not be reflected as "heritage" or "culture".
Nibun-no-ni
In Tokyo, on 19 September 2009, there is an event called "Nibun-no-ni" -- meaning "2/2". The two halves reduce to one. This is progress -- but only to a point.
The event features two speakers. One is described as "a kuota ('quarter American') and transgender" writer. The other is called "a fellow hafu with British and Japanese lineage". The last time I read my elementary school primer on fractions, 1/4 was only half of 1/2 -- though they could be said to share a certain fellowship as ratios.
The Japanese words are actually "haafu" and "kuootaa" -- and, strictly speaking, they describe quanta of putatively "non-Japanese blood" in which "Japanese" is taken to be a standard of purity. "Hachibun no ichi" means "one-eighth".
Sounds familiar.
Infinite series
Mathematically, "half" and "quarter" and "one-eighth" and "one-sixteenth" are evaluations of 2^-g at g=1, g=2, g=3, and g=4 -- where "g" is a person's generational distance from the g=0 progenitor of impure genes. The progenitor of impurity is a "full" (2^-0 = 1) alien, and a child of a "full Japanese" and the alien is one generation removed from the alien -- hence "half" (2^-1 = 1/2). The Japanese progression is comparable with mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, and quintroon (hexadecaroon = 1/16) in English measures of "black" impurity in "white" blood.
Akihito -- Japan's present "emperor" -- is not pure by Yamatoist standards of purity. As he himself publicly stated in 2001, the mother of Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806) was a descendant of Prince Sunta, a son of the Paekche King Muryong (501-523).
Many people had migrated from the Korean peninsula and amalgamated with the mainstream -- as did all manner of non-Yamato people already in early Japan. So Akihito's veins undoubtedly contain several kinds of blood, all of them red.
Even if his lineal descendants were able to find and marry only "pure Japanese", it would take an infinite number of generations for the imperial family gene pool to purify. But there is not a single "pure Japanese" on the islands.
All Japanese are to some degree blends of the people who -- over the millennia, centuries, and decades -- have migrated from various parts of the world to what is today Japan. "Culturally", too, Japan is "homogeneous" only if one ignores regional, communal, familial, and personal variations.
"Hafu Japanese"
The "Nibun-no-ni" event is organized by the same people behind the "Hafu Japanese" project -- a photographic and social "exploration" of "hafu or half Japanese". Check out their website, in English or Japanese, at www.hafujapanese.org. It is full of things to ponder.
The website does not equate "mixed heritage" with "mixed race" -- but the visuals suggest that "race" is perhaps the "defining" part of its "race, culture and nationality" concern. "Heritage" -- like "culture" and "nationality" in the minds of some people -- is a slippery word that is very fashionably used today with nuances of "race" and "racioethnicity".
The idea of "'nibun-no-ni' (2/2)" is, however, a good start toward achieving the goal expressed by one of the "Hafu Japanese" project organizers. According to a 28 February 2009 review of the project in The Japan Times -- titled "'Hafu' focuses on whole individual" -- the project is predicated on "the need to discuss and analyze it [the word "hafu"] as a classification before it can be removed from society."
I wonder about this -- because social history teaches that, in the process of classifying anything for publicity or research purposes, labels tend to spread and gather momentum. The momentum of an object increases if either its mass or velocity increases. Changing the direction of movement requires force. Stopping or reversing the spread of a label requires as much or more force than was expended to create and apply it.
Racial labels have the habit of becoming indelible and multiplying. The momentous continuation and proliferation of legally-mandated "race boxes" in the United States is a case in point. Japan has no race boxes, but labels abound. "Zainichi" -- of fairly recent invention -- is increasingly used in mass media and academia as a racioethnic epithet for anyone in Japan who claims to have -- or is thought to have -- a drop of "Korean" blood.
Bipolarism
One reason I demur at "2/2" is because it implies "1/2 + 1/2" -- which implies a "mixture" of "one half" of each of "two worlds". Despite the "multi-" this and "multi-" that rhetoric which crops up in discussions of "haafu" -- and of "hapa", a popular tag in the United States for "multiracial Asian Americans" -- the "two-halves=one" formula reinforces the stereotype that offspring of racially or otherwise "mixed" unions are somehow bipolar.
Both my mother and father were products of "multiple worlds" -- yet I, as their offspring, had to contend more with their distinct, different, and complex personalities than with their multiple, and equally complex, familial and social heritages. My father and mother are both called "white" on my San Francisco birth certificate. Maybe they were. Who knows. Certainly I had nothing to do with it. I don't believe they did either.
n imaginary races to the zero power
"In-ichi ga ichi" in Japanese -- which mean "1x1=1" -- might be a truer statement, since the product of one parent's whole gene pool and another parent's whole gene pool is one child -- leaving aside identical and fraternal twins and other multiple births.
Yet 1x1=1 -- though not as elegant in its simplicity as 2/2 -- shares with 2/2 the flaw that it does not accommodate the freedom all individuals should have to "identify" in any manner they like. Both formulae work fine for nondescript mongrels like myself -- who constitute the vast majority of the population in any country you name, including Japan -- and for self-styled bipolar mixtures. But people like Tiger Woods -- who once called himself "Cablinasian", a portmanteau of caucasian, black, american indian, and asian -- might like to arrive at the conclusion that they are at once both "one" and "whole" through a different formulation.
Hence I prefer to compute raciality as the value of n imaginary races to the zero power or n^0. No matter how many races or ethnicities or cultures or heritages or nationalities an individual might choose -- or not -- to string out, ad infinitum, with or without hyphens -- this equation will always evaluate as exactly one. No more, no less. For no individual can be more or less than one human being -- leaving aside those with multiple or fractional personalities.
In any event, "mixture" is a fundamentally shared quality of being human. Anyone who claims not to be a mixture of various human ingredients is delusional.
18 September 2009
2009-09-10
Racial stigmas
They begin with reflections in social and personal mirrors.
They end somewhere between chips on shoulders and narcissism.
By William Wetherall
Some of my stigmas caused me considerable anxiety. In time my social shoulders became strong enough to bear the burden of humoring people who seemed concerned about who they thought I was merely by seeing my eyes or nose, or hearing the way I spoke.
It took a few years, but eventually I realized that it was unfair of me to blame others for having the same fault I had -- a normal mix of natural human curiosity, with passively acquired attitudes and behaviors toward people according to how I reflexively attached ready-made labels to their being.
Beautiful, ugly, tall, short, black, white, coordinated, awkward, able, crippled, bright, dumb -- and countless other boxes I had built in my mind as I learned -- at home, in school, from media, and by ample example -- to differentiate foods I liked and didn't, good snakes from bad, friends from foes.
Childhood stigmas
Most people want to be noticed -- but not necessarily for the reasons that other people may notice them.
My shortness and cuteness, before adolescence turned me into a male chauvinist pig of average height, got my toothless grin front-and-center in more than one elementary school class picture -- usually between the cutest girls. Had I stayed that short -- would I now be wearing elevated shoes, and daring the guy on the next bar stool to call me Shorty?
I went through a spell of wondering why some of my mother's friends made such a fuss over me. Did they really see her beautiful eyes in mine? Hopefully the genes I got from her drew everyone's attention away from those I inherited from my father's nose, nostrils, and upper lip. In time, though, pimples commanded my share of the mirror time I had to divide with my brother and sister.
I also had to wonder why some kids giggled or snickered. Because they understood why, after gym classes began from the 7th grade, the boys who had seen my developing inguinal hernia in the locker room had started calling me Balls? In the halls? In front of the girls? I left that nickname, along with part of my heart, in San Francisco when moving to Grass Valley near the end of the 8th grade.
Or because I stammered? When I was in college half a century ago, someone etched "The Talking Seal" under my name on the leather case of my sliderule. Then, because I could not hide the sliderule, I hid my feelings by joining the laughter of those who noticed the remark.
Much later, in Japan, I found myself somewhat self-conspicuous because of my putative race. People looked at me in ways I had never been looked at in the United States. Only then did I begin to wonder how some people must feel about my probing eyes.
Until then I had grown accustomed to all manner of official forms, in the United States, which called for me to write or check "Caucasian" or "White" in a race box. The racial classifications in my own mind were habits acquired purely through social osmosis. I had never before then given much thought to racialism.
Military race boxes
My DA FORM 214 "Report of Transfer or Discharge" -- which honorably released me, in 1966, from my 3-year enlistment in the United States Army in 1963 -- has a race box called "7a. RACE". On the form, "RACE" has been replaced by a black bar and "NA" is typed in the box. "b. SEX" says "MALE" and c, d, e, and f are COLOR HAIR, COLOR EYES, HEIGHT, and WEIGHT. Race, in other words, had been the highest order of physical trait on this form.
The standalone box called "7. RACE" on my DA FORM 20 "Enlisted Qualification Record" says "CAU" -- as contemporary Army regulations required that one "Enter the first three letters of one of the following: Caucasian, Negroid, Mongolian, Indian (American), or Malayan. Example: Caucasian will be entered as Cau."
An American friend has a 1965 "U.S. Forces Permit For Civilian Vehicle" with "C" in the race box. I asked him what it meant. He said "Chutzpah". I thought it meant "Clown". For me, at birth, it could have meant "Clubfoot" -- because I had one.
By the time I was old enough to look at old baby pictures and ask about the cast on my foot, the deformity had been corrected. One of my earliest memories is of my mother taking me to the store on Irving Street where she always bought my shoes. I clearly remember the time the man said I no longer needed a wedge on one of my heels.
Hawaiian dreams
In 2008, an American woman who had served in the Women's Army Corps between 1958 and 1960 applied to the Army Board for Correction of Military Record to change the racial classification on her military records from "Malayan" to Hawaiian". She argued that she was "Hawaiian-born" and her family was "all Hawaiian" -- and alleged that the recruiter had probably changed her classification.
The board reviewed the woman's request despite the decades which had passed since the lapse of the 3-year statute of limitation that usually applies to corrections of military records. It found that "Malayan" had consistently appeared on a long list of forms, from enlistment to discharge, which the woman had partly completed and/or signed. Moreover, she was unable to document her claim that she was "Hawaiian".
The board determined that "The evidence presented does not demonstrate the existence of a probable error or injustice." It therefore declined to accept her request.
NOYB
Governments that have legalized race boxes are bound by their own bureaucratic obsessions with racial classifications -- as well as by legal procedures related to changing information in old records. The board was not free to say -- "You want to be Hawaiian? No problem. You're Hawaiian." Nor, apparently, was it free to say -- "The only thing we can do is strike out 'Race' and change the entry to 'NA'."
"NA" means "not applicable". I would prefer "NOYB" -- "none of your business". Army regs would have reduced this to "NOY" or "NON" -- and not "N", which had long been reserved for something else.
Had I been the board, I would have amended the woman's record as she had requested. And I would have told her -- "If you want to be something else next week or next year, just make another request."
Despite my cynicism about racial classification, I believe that people should be free to be what they want. If someone wants to be "Hawaiian" rather than "Malayan" -- or just "human" or "animal" -- or "Martian" or "Nothing" -- that's fine with me.
My crayon box will accept any pigment of the imaginary racial rainbow, visible or invisible. But anyone who shoves a race box in my face -- today -- will get a smile and a polite "No thanks."
I cannot control what other people think I am. My only choices are to get upset or not care. I have found all manner of ways to parry sticks and dodge stones -- but names now hurt only if I choose to feel offended. And I choose not to be defensive.
Ends of the spectrum
The pathologies of racialism -- to return to the underlying cause of a truly global and worrisome stigma -- are everywhere. I see the extremes of racial stigma, both in the United States, where race boxes are proliferating like superweeds -- and in Japan, where some people want to import American-style race boxes.
At one end of the stigma spectrum are people who are doomed to suffer delusions of reference in public until they die. They feel glances that are not there. They become upset by glances they take to be stares. Glances that linger long enough to be stares, linger in their thoughts all day and the next.
Not everyone at this extreme becomes clinically sociophobic. Many, though, suffer anxiety just thinking about stepping out the door, and have difficulty truly relaxing in public. And those who have trouble containing anger risk venting their hostility on others.
At the other end of the stigma spectrum in Japan -- which has no race boxes -- are some people who dream of having a race box all their own. "Zainichi" t-shirts. "Hapa Power!" buttons. "Naturalized Citizen" bumper stickers.
Some publicists for such "communities" claim their intention is to destroy racial boundaries. In my view, though, they merely define new political territories that end up being defended with the same sort of prideful narcissism that created race boxes in the first place.
10 September 2009
Postscript 1 I no longer worry about my nostrils. Their main disadvantage is their capacity for collecting pollen. Much bigger, for me, is the pleasure they bring the babies I now and then cuddle, whose fingers find them utterly irresistible.
Postscript 2 My clubfoot never had a chance to nurture a stigma. Now and then I recall it -- either in nostalgic thoughts about my mother, and how anxious she must have felt about my foot and stammer -- or when wondering what my life would have been like had I been born where people had no idea how to straighten a foot that got twisted in a womb.
Postscript 3 I still have the sliderule, and now and then I take it from a drawer to make sure it, and my brain, still work. Today, though, the remark on the case draws a smile -- at the thought that someone went to the trouble to notice that, despite my stammer, which has all but entirely vanished, I liked to talk. And still do.
They end somewhere between chips on shoulders and narcissism.
By William Wetherall
Some of my stigmas caused me considerable anxiety. In time my social shoulders became strong enough to bear the burden of humoring people who seemed concerned about who they thought I was merely by seeing my eyes or nose, or hearing the way I spoke.
It took a few years, but eventually I realized that it was unfair of me to blame others for having the same fault I had -- a normal mix of natural human curiosity, with passively acquired attitudes and behaviors toward people according to how I reflexively attached ready-made labels to their being.
Beautiful, ugly, tall, short, black, white, coordinated, awkward, able, crippled, bright, dumb -- and countless other boxes I had built in my mind as I learned -- at home, in school, from media, and by ample example -- to differentiate foods I liked and didn't, good snakes from bad, friends from foes.
Childhood stigmas
Most people want to be noticed -- but not necessarily for the reasons that other people may notice them.
My shortness and cuteness, before adolescence turned me into a male chauvinist pig of average height, got my toothless grin front-and-center in more than one elementary school class picture -- usually between the cutest girls. Had I stayed that short -- would I now be wearing elevated shoes, and daring the guy on the next bar stool to call me Shorty?
I went through a spell of wondering why some of my mother's friends made such a fuss over me. Did they really see her beautiful eyes in mine? Hopefully the genes I got from her drew everyone's attention away from those I inherited from my father's nose, nostrils, and upper lip. In time, though, pimples commanded my share of the mirror time I had to divide with my brother and sister.
I also had to wonder why some kids giggled or snickered. Because they understood why, after gym classes began from the 7th grade, the boys who had seen my developing inguinal hernia in the locker room had started calling me Balls? In the halls? In front of the girls? I left that nickname, along with part of my heart, in San Francisco when moving to Grass Valley near the end of the 8th grade.
Or because I stammered? When I was in college half a century ago, someone etched "The Talking Seal" under my name on the leather case of my sliderule. Then, because I could not hide the sliderule, I hid my feelings by joining the laughter of those who noticed the remark.
Much later, in Japan, I found myself somewhat self-conspicuous because of my putative race. People looked at me in ways I had never been looked at in the United States. Only then did I begin to wonder how some people must feel about my probing eyes.
Until then I had grown accustomed to all manner of official forms, in the United States, which called for me to write or check "Caucasian" or "White" in a race box. The racial classifications in my own mind were habits acquired purely through social osmosis. I had never before then given much thought to racialism.
Military race boxes
My DA FORM 214 "Report of Transfer or Discharge" -- which honorably released me, in 1966, from my 3-year enlistment in the United States Army in 1963 -- has a race box called "7a. RACE". On the form, "RACE" has been replaced by a black bar and "NA" is typed in the box. "b. SEX" says "MALE" and c, d, e, and f are COLOR HAIR, COLOR EYES, HEIGHT, and WEIGHT. Race, in other words, had been the highest order of physical trait on this form.
The standalone box called "7. RACE" on my DA FORM 20 "Enlisted Qualification Record" says "CAU" -- as contemporary Army regulations required that one "Enter the first three letters of one of the following: Caucasian, Negroid, Mongolian, Indian (American), or Malayan. Example: Caucasian will be entered as Cau."
An American friend has a 1965 "U.S. Forces Permit For Civilian Vehicle" with "C" in the race box. I asked him what it meant. He said "Chutzpah". I thought it meant "Clown". For me, at birth, it could have meant "Clubfoot" -- because I had one.
By the time I was old enough to look at old baby pictures and ask about the cast on my foot, the deformity had been corrected. One of my earliest memories is of my mother taking me to the store on Irving Street where she always bought my shoes. I clearly remember the time the man said I no longer needed a wedge on one of my heels.
Hawaiian dreams
In 2008, an American woman who had served in the Women's Army Corps between 1958 and 1960 applied to the Army Board for Correction of Military Record to change the racial classification on her military records from "Malayan" to Hawaiian". She argued that she was "Hawaiian-born" and her family was "all Hawaiian" -- and alleged that the recruiter had probably changed her classification.
The board reviewed the woman's request despite the decades which had passed since the lapse of the 3-year statute of limitation that usually applies to corrections of military records. It found that "Malayan" had consistently appeared on a long list of forms, from enlistment to discharge, which the woman had partly completed and/or signed. Moreover, she was unable to document her claim that she was "Hawaiian".
The board determined that "The evidence presented does not demonstrate the existence of a probable error or injustice." It therefore declined to accept her request.
NOYB
Governments that have legalized race boxes are bound by their own bureaucratic obsessions with racial classifications -- as well as by legal procedures related to changing information in old records. The board was not free to say -- "You want to be Hawaiian? No problem. You're Hawaiian." Nor, apparently, was it free to say -- "The only thing we can do is strike out 'Race' and change the entry to 'NA'."
"NA" means "not applicable". I would prefer "NOYB" -- "none of your business". Army regs would have reduced this to "NOY" or "NON" -- and not "N", which had long been reserved for something else.
Had I been the board, I would have amended the woman's record as she had requested. And I would have told her -- "If you want to be something else next week or next year, just make another request."
Despite my cynicism about racial classification, I believe that people should be free to be what they want. If someone wants to be "Hawaiian" rather than "Malayan" -- or just "human" or "animal" -- or "Martian" or "Nothing" -- that's fine with me.
My crayon box will accept any pigment of the imaginary racial rainbow, visible or invisible. But anyone who shoves a race box in my face -- today -- will get a smile and a polite "No thanks."
I cannot control what other people think I am. My only choices are to get upset or not care. I have found all manner of ways to parry sticks and dodge stones -- but names now hurt only if I choose to feel offended. And I choose not to be defensive.
Ends of the spectrum
The pathologies of racialism -- to return to the underlying cause of a truly global and worrisome stigma -- are everywhere. I see the extremes of racial stigma, both in the United States, where race boxes are proliferating like superweeds -- and in Japan, where some people want to import American-style race boxes.
At one end of the stigma spectrum are people who are doomed to suffer delusions of reference in public until they die. They feel glances that are not there. They become upset by glances they take to be stares. Glances that linger long enough to be stares, linger in their thoughts all day and the next.
Not everyone at this extreme becomes clinically sociophobic. Many, though, suffer anxiety just thinking about stepping out the door, and have difficulty truly relaxing in public. And those who have trouble containing anger risk venting their hostility on others.
At the other end of the stigma spectrum in Japan -- which has no race boxes -- are some people who dream of having a race box all their own. "Zainichi" t-shirts. "Hapa Power!" buttons. "Naturalized Citizen" bumper stickers.
Some publicists for such "communities" claim their intention is to destroy racial boundaries. In my view, though, they merely define new political territories that end up being defended with the same sort of prideful narcissism that created race boxes in the first place.
10 September 2009
Postscript 1 I no longer worry about my nostrils. Their main disadvantage is their capacity for collecting pollen. Much bigger, for me, is the pleasure they bring the babies I now and then cuddle, whose fingers find them utterly irresistible.
Postscript 2 My clubfoot never had a chance to nurture a stigma. Now and then I recall it -- either in nostalgic thoughts about my mother, and how anxious she must have felt about my foot and stammer -- or when wondering what my life would have been like had I been born where people had no idea how to straighten a foot that got twisted in a womb.
Postscript 3 I still have the sliderule, and now and then I take it from a drawer to make sure it, and my brain, still work. Today, though, the remark on the case draws a smile -- at the thought that someone went to the trouble to notice that, despite my stammer, which has all but entirely vanished, I liked to talk. And still do.
2009-09-02
The Lost Samurai
First they served their masters and themselves.
Then they served their constructors.
Now they serve their deconstructors and reconstructors.
By William Wetherall
The battles being fought in their name are supremely ideological -- which is nothing new in public exhibits of "cultural" artifacts.
Samurai are now featured in Lords of the Samurai, an exhibit running from 12 June to 20 September 2009 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
The principal exhibition publication is Lords of the Samurai: The Legacy of a Daimyo Family, by Yoko Woodson and others. The work is prefaced by Hosokawa Morikawa and features an extended essay by Thomas Cleary.
Hosokawa wrote the preface because the "family" and its "legacy" are his own. The exhibit and book feature over 160 items from Hosokawa family collections on loan from Tokyo and Kumamoto museums.
Hosokawa legacy
Hosokawa Morihiro was Japan's prime minister from August 1993 to April 1994. He began his political career as a member of the House of Councilors from Kumamoto, served two terms as governor of Kumamoto, left the Liberal Democratic Part to join a new party, returned to the Diet as a House of Representatives member from a Kumamoto constituency, and found himself the head of a coalition government. He retired from politics as a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, which is now positioned to effect a "regime change" in the country.
A succession of Hosokawa's ancestors were daimyo of the Kumamoto domain and then governors of Kumamoto prefecture. He became the head of the main branch of the family in 2005 when his father died.
Any bookstore in Japan is likely to have from one to several works by or about Hosokawa, including glossy mooks of him at work at a potter's wheel on the family estate in Kumamoto and examples of his wares. He is a study of the demeanor and manners that were expected of the nobility, which daimyo and other higher-ranking members of the buge caste became when they lost their "bu" after the start of the Meiji era in 1868 -- not so long ago.
That Hosokawa participated in the making of his family history the theme of a major exhibit by a museum like the Asian is a mark of his character as a diplomat and artist whose works have been widely exhibited in Japan and also in Europe. In the delicate world of museum politics, there is no room for ideological provocation in the telling of his family history.
Being in Japan, I have not been able to take in the real, non-virtual samurai exhibition. My impression, though, is that it is studiously low-key.
The Asian survives in a field that is strewn with high-societal and low-political landmines. While capable of being very trendy in its public presentations of art and art history, it leaves the more provocative agendas to its critics -- such as the person or people behind an underground website that is mocking the Asian.
What's in a name?
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is the name of the website that mounts the exhibit called Lord of the Samurai. The URL of its website is www.asianart.org.
Asians Art Museum of San Francisco is the name of a counter-museum which emulates the Asian while presenting an alternative exhibit called Lord It's the Samurai. The URL of its website is www.asiansart.org.
The counter-museum's slogans speak for themselves.
This is both tongue-in-cheek winking by devoted Saidists at the Asian's stately and staid Hosokawa exhibition -- and a dead serious critique of the overt and covert Orientalism they feel continues to thrive in mainstream museums.
The "asianart.org" domain was created on 10 May 2001 and expires on 1 July 2017 -- by which time the museum will renew its registration. The domain's owner and administrator are fully disclosed on the website of its registrar.
The contact name is James Horio, the Asian's Director of Information Technology. The domain's name server is affiliated with pbi.net of the Pacific Bell Internet family.
The Asian was originally in a wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park. It closed there on 7 October 2001, and reopened on 20 March 2003 at its present home -- the retrofitted and renovated building that, until then, had housed the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library -- prime real estate in the city's highly accessible Civic Center.
San Francisco acquired the Avery Brundage collection of Asian art on the condition that it build a museum to house it. The city issued a bond in 1960 and the museum was opened on 10 June 1966 as a wing of the de Young. The Center for Asian Art and Culture was renamed the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 1973.
I was last there to see the "Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China" in 1975, which opened a month before I came to Japan to begin my doctoral research, which embraced the theme of "following in death" in early Japan, Korea, China, and elsewhere. The exhibit celebrated the progress in US-PRC relations after the Nixon-Mao detente in 1972.
A few years ago, on a family visit to the city of my birth, during which we explored City Hall, I found myself in the secretarial office next to the mayor's chambers. Anyone who gets through ground floor security can walk into the room. Its windows directly overlook Civic Center Park and offer a clear view of the Asian, and the Dining Terrace outside its Cafe Asian on the sunnier south side of the building -- which faces the new public library.
I wanted to go through the Asian, but we had spent too much time in the library so I managed only to peak in its lobby. I did, however, imagine a short story that began with someone laying binoculars on the mayor's window while sipping a latte on the cafe terrace.
Cloaks and daggers
The "asiansart.org" domain is registered to an administrator with a PO box address in Cocoa, Florida. The only contact name revealed on the website of its registrar is "c/o RespectMyPrivacy, LLC" -- which means the registrant is cloaking his or her identity using the services of this third-party "limited liability company".
The domain was created on 9 August 2009 and will expire in one year if the owner decides not to renew its registration. Its name servers are affiliated with nearlyfreespeech.net (NFSN).
Asian Art Museum hopes to draw walk-in visitors who will pay the price of admission and patronize its store and cafe. Its main catchment is the larger San Francisco area. Its secondary catchments include North American metropolises from which the wealthier can jaunt into the City by the Bay for two or three days of extra-planetary experience -- and the world at large, which feeds the city a constant flow of tourists.
Asians Art Museum targets only net denizens, and pitches its content mainly to visitors who will appreciate its satirical, lampoonish, parodic, totally funky multiculturalist and postcolonial critique.
Both websites reach out to the FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube worlds in hopes of getting as many hits as possible. The gadget-savvy, wireless, un-united social-networkers of the world seem doomed to inherit the earth.
Oriental, Asian, Asians
Obama said a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Some people laughed. Others were enraged.
"Asian" is no better than "Oriental" if it represents the same mindset. "Asians" may appear to champion diversity, but a box is still a box.
The day may come when "Asians" and "Westerners" will fall by the wayside as something more fashionable comes charging down the yellow brick road.
2 September 2009
Then they served their constructors.
Now they serve their deconstructors and reconstructors.
By William Wetherall
The battles being fought in their name are supremely ideological -- which is nothing new in public exhibits of "cultural" artifacts.
Samurai are now featured in Lords of the Samurai, an exhibit running from 12 June to 20 September 2009 at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
The principal exhibition publication is Lords of the Samurai: The Legacy of a Daimyo Family, by Yoko Woodson and others. The work is prefaced by Hosokawa Morikawa and features an extended essay by Thomas Cleary.
Hosokawa wrote the preface because the "family" and its "legacy" are his own. The exhibit and book feature over 160 items from Hosokawa family collections on loan from Tokyo and Kumamoto museums.
Hosokawa legacy
Hosokawa Morihiro was Japan's prime minister from August 1993 to April 1994. He began his political career as a member of the House of Councilors from Kumamoto, served two terms as governor of Kumamoto, left the Liberal Democratic Part to join a new party, returned to the Diet as a House of Representatives member from a Kumamoto constituency, and found himself the head of a coalition government. He retired from politics as a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, which is now positioned to effect a "regime change" in the country.
A succession of Hosokawa's ancestors were daimyo of the Kumamoto domain and then governors of Kumamoto prefecture. He became the head of the main branch of the family in 2005 when his father died.
Any bookstore in Japan is likely to have from one to several works by or about Hosokawa, including glossy mooks of him at work at a potter's wheel on the family estate in Kumamoto and examples of his wares. He is a study of the demeanor and manners that were expected of the nobility, which daimyo and other higher-ranking members of the buge caste became when they lost their "bu" after the start of the Meiji era in 1868 -- not so long ago.
That Hosokawa participated in the making of his family history the theme of a major exhibit by a museum like the Asian is a mark of his character as a diplomat and artist whose works have been widely exhibited in Japan and also in Europe. In the delicate world of museum politics, there is no room for ideological provocation in the telling of his family history.
Being in Japan, I have not been able to take in the real, non-virtual samurai exhibition. My impression, though, is that it is studiously low-key.
The Asian survives in a field that is strewn with high-societal and low-political landmines. While capable of being very trendy in its public presentations of art and art history, it leaves the more provocative agendas to its critics -- such as the person or people behind an underground website that is mocking the Asian.
What's in a name?
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is the name of the website that mounts the exhibit called Lord of the Samurai. The URL of its website is www.asianart.org.
Asians Art Museum of San Francisco is the name of a counter-museum which emulates the Asian while presenting an alternative exhibit called Lord It's the Samurai. The URL of its website is www.asiansart.org.
The counter-museum's slogans speak for themselves.
Where Asian Still Means Oriental
Your Oriental Fantasies, Our Bottom Line
Orientalisms 'R Us
This is both tongue-in-cheek winking by devoted Saidists at the Asian's stately and staid Hosokawa exhibition -- and a dead serious critique of the overt and covert Orientalism they feel continues to thrive in mainstream museums.
The "asianart.org" domain was created on 10 May 2001 and expires on 1 July 2017 -- by which time the museum will renew its registration. The domain's owner and administrator are fully disclosed on the website of its registrar.
The contact name is James Horio, the Asian's Director of Information Technology. The domain's name server is affiliated with pbi.net of the Pacific Bell Internet family.
The Asian was originally in a wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park. It closed there on 7 October 2001, and reopened on 20 March 2003 at its present home -- the retrofitted and renovated building that, until then, had housed the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library -- prime real estate in the city's highly accessible Civic Center.
San Francisco acquired the Avery Brundage collection of Asian art on the condition that it build a museum to house it. The city issued a bond in 1960 and the museum was opened on 10 June 1966 as a wing of the de Young. The Center for Asian Art and Culture was renamed the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 1973.
I was last there to see the "Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China" in 1975, which opened a month before I came to Japan to begin my doctoral research, which embraced the theme of "following in death" in early Japan, Korea, China, and elsewhere. The exhibit celebrated the progress in US-PRC relations after the Nixon-Mao detente in 1972.
A few years ago, on a family visit to the city of my birth, during which we explored City Hall, I found myself in the secretarial office next to the mayor's chambers. Anyone who gets through ground floor security can walk into the room. Its windows directly overlook Civic Center Park and offer a clear view of the Asian, and the Dining Terrace outside its Cafe Asian on the sunnier south side of the building -- which faces the new public library.
I wanted to go through the Asian, but we had spent too much time in the library so I managed only to peak in its lobby. I did, however, imagine a short story that began with someone laying binoculars on the mayor's window while sipping a latte on the cafe terrace.
Cloaks and daggers
The "asiansart.org" domain is registered to an administrator with a PO box address in Cocoa, Florida. The only contact name revealed on the website of its registrar is "c/o RespectMyPrivacy, LLC" -- which means the registrant is cloaking his or her identity using the services of this third-party "limited liability company".
The domain was created on 9 August 2009 and will expire in one year if the owner decides not to renew its registration. Its name servers are affiliated with nearlyfreespeech.net (NFSN).
Asian Art Museum hopes to draw walk-in visitors who will pay the price of admission and patronize its store and cafe. Its main catchment is the larger San Francisco area. Its secondary catchments include North American metropolises from which the wealthier can jaunt into the City by the Bay for two or three days of extra-planetary experience -- and the world at large, which feeds the city a constant flow of tourists.
Asians Art Museum targets only net denizens, and pitches its content mainly to visitors who will appreciate its satirical, lampoonish, parodic, totally funky multiculturalist and postcolonial critique.
Both websites reach out to the FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube worlds in hopes of getting as many hits as possible. The gadget-savvy, wireless, un-united social-networkers of the world seem doomed to inherit the earth.
Oriental, Asian, Asians
Obama said a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Some people laughed. Others were enraged.
"Asian" is no better than "Oriental" if it represents the same mindset. "Asians" may appear to champion diversity, but a box is still a box.
The day may come when "Asians" and "Westerners" will fall by the wayside as something more fashionable comes charging down the yellow brick road.
2 September 2009
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