Not Just Black and White

Photo by Wilfredo Lee/AP

Another View: From the first meeting of the president's advisory board on race, Los Angeles attorney Angela Oh has argued for a more inclusive discussion on multiracial relations, rather than a strickly black-white dialogue. "What we need," says Oh, "is a call to dump unuseful concepts like race." The advisory board meets this week in San Jose and tours the Bay Area.

BY FRANK WU

The only Asian American member of the "One America" advisory board, Los Angeles attorney Angela Oh, has already made her mark. Advocating a "new paradigm" of race relations that encompasses all individuals and groups, Oh began by challenging conventional understandings of civil rights. When she was introduced as a presidential appointee last summer, she called for an approach that includes non-black racial minorities and immigrants. Chair John Hope Franklin, a historian, pointedly disagreed with Oh about whether including Asian Americans, Latinos, and others would advance the effort. At their televised introductory session, Oh and Franklin appeared to disagree.

Having identified herself as "represent[ing] to you a segment of this country that has been here for four generations, that has helped build this country," Oh said, "The old terms are going to be tossed. We're going to be hearing some new language because it is time for some new language to be introduced, and we're going to help find that new language."

Later, Oh articulated proposals for significant funding for government institutions devoted to working on race issues. She added, "I do not think that the concept of race is useful. It serves no useful purpose.

"What we need," she said, "[is] a call to dump unuseful concepts like race." She continued, "and as we move through this process of dialogue, I just want to be sure that we go beyond the black-white paradigm. We need to go beyond that because the world is about much more than that, and this is sort of the next horizon."

After further discussion by board members, Franklin returned to Oh's remarks. In an exchange in which the two interrupted one another, the chair of the commission said, "I've registered in my formal statement ... we've been anti-Semitic, we've been anti-Native American, we've been anti-Hispanic, we've been anti-Asian.

"What I think we ought to bear in mind is that this began at a certain time and in a certain way ... I use a term my mother used to use. She'd say if someone got started in a certain way, she said they cut their teeth on this sort of thing ... This country cut its eyeteeth on racism in the black-white sphere. They didn't do it with Native Americans, they did it on black-white relations," he added.

"And I can pinpoint it, be quite specific about it," Franklin said, identifying the introduction of chattel slavery based on race in 17th century Virginia. He said, "It's not to neglect these other areas, but it's to try to understand how it all started ... And we have to go by this."

After further discussion, Oh replied, "I definitely want to make clear that I definitely honor what happened in terms of this history. Unfortunately, by definition it's something that cannot be undone. The institution of slavery is something that we need to never forget."

At that point, Franklin corrected Oh, pointing out that he actually had been referring to free individuals, rather than slaves, and how they were subjected to slavery by government actions. Much later in the day, Oh raised two other issues she believed deserved attention. One was immigration. She noted that immigration reform "has been the subject of other task forces much like ours, and the work that's been done has produced some change." She continued, "I have to say, in my opinion, not very positive change."

Oh contended that people who "are multiracial in terms of their own background" merit consideration. She asked that they be invited to participate, observing that members of the panel probably were multiracial but did not necessarily actively identify themselves as such.

Since the initial disagreement with Franklin, Oh has explained that the two of them respect one another and are working well together. Both of them have indicated that outside perceptions of their dispute made it seem much greater than it was.

Even so, Oh's remarks have provoked more discussion than any other aspect of the official dialogue. She has single-handedly introduced many Americans, experts among them, to the notion that race relations are more than literally black and white.

Known for speaking her mind, Oh shared her views about the race panel's work as it passes the midway point. In a half-hour telephone interview, Oh shared some of her background. While she emerged as a public figure during the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict in 1992, she had been an activist since her student days.

"My first contact with civil rights was through the women's movement," she recalled. Her involvement with feminism led her to women's health issues and then on to health generally. She obtained her graduate degree in the field before working with a labor union and eventually entering law school.

It was there, at the University of California at Davis campus, that Oh "really came to the movement for the Asian American community ... The anti-Asian hate crimes came to the fore."

Oh identified a specific incident that brought her to Asian American civil-rights concerns. "At Davis, there was a young Vietnamese kid who was stabbed to death," Oh said, "and there was no question it was motivated by race."

With other leaders from throughout California, Oh worked to address that particular case and other instances of violence directed against Asian Americans. In addition to political efforts, including testifying before government agencies, Oh joined a group which "pushed for local police on new immigrant communities."

"This was a community that thought of itself as liberal, and it was on issues such as the environment, but when it came to race relations, it was clueless," she said. From that experience, she realized how much more work needed to be done to introduce Asian Americans to civil-rights causes, and vice versa.

From that beginning, Oh has stayed at the forefront of Asian American issues.

She has had an ambivalent relationship, however, with the Asian American community as a whole. Her activism has its roots in the community, but started late because "when I was a child, there was no Korean community to speak of."

"I'm an oldie," Oh revealed. "When I was growing up, there was only one Oh in the phone book--that was us. Now, there are pages after pages of Ohs."

But Oh acknowledges the difficulty of being such a visible Asian American, especially in her relationship with the immigrant generation. "It's not possible to be representative of the entire community," she admits. She also has tried to disavow any role as a spokesperson for Asian Americans in the local Los Angeles press. She makes no secret that, as she put it, "I'm a liberal. I identify with feminism. I don't believe in boxes."

As a consequence, she believes that for some first generation Asian immigrants, "it's hard for them to watch. They think, 'that's not how I feel.'" At the same time, though, she said, "some of them will say, 'it's great to see you out there.'"

Oh has been exploring Asian American studies to improve her understanding of the issues, trying to become familiar with the dozens of books and articles scholars have produced in the past decade analyzing Asian American history and contemporary experiences.

In pushing for a new paradigm to guide the dialogue with the president, Oh has chosen a difficult approach with the other six members of the initiative as well. "I'm always frustrated," she told AsianWeek.

"My colleagues have never known Asian Americans. The only Asians they've known have been foreign-born. They have no sense of what Asian Americans are about," she said.

"At a gut level, it's difficult for them to understand that it's legitimate for us as Asian Americans to say that there are unique expressions of racism we confront that neither blacks nor whites have to deal with," she continued.

"Yet," she added, "part of the process is to be there to bring that to that to them."

As an example of how she perceives the role of Asian Americans, Oh said, "to put it bluntly, to many blacks and Latinos, we're honorary whites, right? But to whites, we're more of 'those people,' you know, people of color."

To Asian Americans, she has tried to articulate principles for a multiracial society. "It means sacrifice," she said. "You can't have everything you could have, but we have a bigger goal--it's a lot more meaningful in the long-term. But it's a hard question," she said, "how far you are willing to go beyond your self-interest?"

Outside the panel, critics have complained about the project since it started. Oh laughed when asked how she responds. She asked, "Critics? Do we have critics?"

"The criticism comes from expected sources," Oh said, identifying individuals who have political differences with presidential policies. "Some of it is legitimate," she agreed. "It's not useful to have a dialogue with people who all think alike. But we don't have that," she pointed out, "even on the board."

"I haven't seen [the critics] put anything forward to advance race relations," she observed. "They are happy to tear things down, but what do you replace it with? How do you give hope to people that if they work hard, if they are honest people, that they have a fair shot?"

Enthusiastically pursuing her assignment, Oh is making two or three public appearances every week throughout the state, trying to emphasize listening to people rather than giving speeches.

As she does so, she has noted the difficulty of engaging in dialogue. She does not hesitate to criticize the commission's own work.

"The truth of the matter is," she said, "when you bring people together for the first time, you can't get to the hard issues. I've seen these federal officials fly into town, with their entourages, and ask what the people want to tell the president about race, and they leave, and you say, 'did we really just spend two and a half hours of our time doing that?'"

Nonetheless, Oh sees the race commission working aggressively throughout the remainder of its term. As for herself, she said, "this is an invitation to have input. I can't sit back and wait."

Oh has remarked that it took her months to realize she could pick up the phone and call the White House. What she and her colleagues will say to the president and, in turn, the nation, may help direct race relations toward positive change.

Back in Washington

Photo by Maureen Keating

Conversation Starters: Among the 30 staff members working on the President's Initiative on Race are David Chai, communications associate; Lin Liu, deputy director of policy and planning; and Jacinta Ma, special assistant to the executive director.

As a member of the seven-person advisory board for the President's Initiative on Race, Angela Oh has been the most visible Asian American associated with the project. But three other Asian Americans are among the 30 or so staffers working behind the scenes to facilitate the president's national conversation about race.

The three, all of whom have California ties, are Lin Liu, an immigrant who has become an expert on immigration policies and serves as deputy director of policy and planning; David Chai, a veteran of Democratic Party campaigns who works as a spokesperson; and Jacinta Ma, a lawyer formerly with the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) who serves as a special assistant to the executive director.

In interviews with AsianWeek, the trio explained the challenges of initiating a national dialogue on a highly controversial subject. They shared some of their own experiences in race relations, as well as their views on civil rights.

While the staff members, who works in the New Executive Office Building near the White House, are not public figures, their role is important. Because "One America" was started with such strong self-awareness of its potential historical significance, it has attracted star talent. The executive director of the staff, Judith Winston, was the principal competition to Bill Lann Lee for the position of assistant attorney general for civil rights. Like her, the three Asian American individuals working for her come with experience in the government.

All three of the Asian American staffers of the initiative emphasized that they had not personally suffered extreme racial discrimination, but each mentioned that they occasionally experienced prejudice and were well aware of cultural differences.

Chai said that he still remembers realizing that his family was not like other families because of an elementary school discussion about nutrition. He said, "Each kid was asked to come up to the chalkboard and fill in what you'd had for dinner the night before. There was typical American food, hamburgers, hot dogs. I didn't see any typical Asian food--stuff I had like seaweed soup."

Years later, as a college student, Chai became one of only a few racial minorities on the University of California of Berkeley varsity rowing team. With no background with or ties to the sport, he took it up as a challenge to himself, becoming captain by his senior year. Almost all of his fellow oarsmen were white, many from East Coast preparatory school backgrounds. "A theme in my life," he said, "has been finding people who are very different from me. Rowing was a sport like that."

"I felt that there's a very strong Asian American community there, that is very tight, and I felt not a part of that," he said. "I chose to find in life areas and people who were very different."

Similarly, Ma said, "I don't think anything happened to me that was particularly [out of the] ordinary--just people calling you names, 'Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees.'"

Like Ma, Liu identified name-calling as perhaps the most common form of racial discrimination she has encountered. Even as a graduate student at Harvard University, Liu remembers strangers yelling "chink" at her as she walked around Cambridge. "It's a shock to the system," she said.

Nonetheless, Liu agreed that she has not been exposed to the severe racism such as hate crimes, that others have had to bear. "The social circles I work in," she said, "there's nothing overt." She mentioned that in most work settings, she is one of the few minorities and one of few women, which caused her to "think about the implications."

Their interest in diversity issues came from different sources: family, an academic project, and immigrating to the United States.

The 29-year-old Chai, whose parents came to the United States from Korea, gained a strong sense of civil rights from his grandmother, the first female lawyer in Korea.

Chai, who helped elect the first African American School Board member in Berkeley, later joined the Clinton-Gore re-election effort. Between stints campaigning, he served as a volunteer with the Americorps program, a domestic version of the Peace Corps.

Assigned to a project focused on educating inner-city children in Philadelphia, Chai was "dealing with youths," most of whom were black, "who didn't have much contact with Asians before.

"Despite the difficulties a lot of them faced, there are similar values that are there," Chai learned. "But just very difficult life circumstances.

"It's important to show that there are Asian Americans out there working to assist helping primarily young African Americans. It goes against the perception that Asian Americans are not as involved in giving back to the African American community," Chai said.

"The fact that some students thought I really knew Bruce Lee, or that I ate rice every day," surprised Chai. "I thought very seriously about the symbolism of that question--there's a lack of communication," Chai said about the stereotypical perception, joking that he didn't know any of the movies made by the late martial arts star.

Appropriately for a project with both academic and political facets, Ma came to consider civil rights through a homework assignment. More than a decade ago, "as a high school student, I was assigned to write a term paper. I was groping for a subject, as all students do, and one of the places I turned to was the newspaper. I came across a story about a Christian Scientist family that was struggling because the parents had decided they didn't believe in taking their child to a traditional doctor; they believed in faith healing. What happened was that the child died, and the state prosecuted the parents. I found that to be an interesting dilemma," Ma said.

Even though Ma herself does not have strong religious beliefs, the Christian Scientist case made her wonder, "If you are person of faith, and you feel very strongly that taking your child to a medical doctor would be a problem, [that] puts you in a dilemma. Yet the state has an interest in protecting the child who doesn't have rights. Whose rights triumphs? These intricacies, finding the delicate balance, interested me. How can we live together? In a society, you have to modulate your rights. That's where I started."

In college, Ma was involved with a minority pre-law student group, through which she formed close relationships with her African American peers. She recalled that "There were points of friction. It made me realize how hard it is to build coalitions and make them work."

What made Ma reflect on her identity, though, was a post-college visit to Taiwan for intensive Mandarin training. Studying in Taipei in 1990, she found herself with "all these people of European nationalities learning Chinese."

"They spoke it better than me," Ma remarked. "This French woman spoke Chinese with a French accent.

"I always had this view that I was Chinese, I was different, I was foreign," she explained, "so I had internalized this stereotype."

By visiting Taiwan, Ma said, "I realized I was an American."

With her law degree, Ma pursued a career in public policy. She was an attorney with the Department of Education, before joining NAPALC as a fellow. At the race initiative, she is responsible for many administrative aspects of the public events hosted by the panelists. She has been busy planning the San Francisco Bay Area meetings.

The most senior of the Asian Americans assigned to the race initiative as a deputy director of the initiative staff, Liu came from Taiwan via the Philippines.

Traveling to San Jose to prepare for the race panel events there the following week, Liu spoke with AsianWeek while attending a conference on immigrants.

Arriving in California for undergraduate studies, "my first reaction with race in California was that it was something that people did not talk about. I went to international school most of my life with people from all over the place, and people appreciated and celebrated the cultures. Being international was the norm, not different."

In that setting--an international school in the Philippines--"If you are an Asian, you blend in. We had people from United States, blacks and whites, and people from European countries."

In contrast, Liu believes, in this country and even California, "people ... differentiate[d] themselves by race and ethnicity, and you are a lot more conscious of other people's race."

Paradoxically, she said, "People think about it, but they don't talk about it."

On leave from the Justice Department, where she worked to develop immigration regulations, Liu's assignments are concerned with substance; what the race panel will consider for its suggestions to the White House.

Liu believes that the race initiative is already making progress. The idea for strong civil-rights law enforcement, she said, came from the race initiative staff members. After the advisory board adopted the idea, they recommended it to the Clinton administration.

Speaking on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, Vice President Al Gore announced a major funding increase for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). According to Liu, some of the credit for the proposal--which must be approved by Congress--belongs to the race initiative.

As one of only two staffers handling publicity for the project, Chai has become accustomed to answering questions about its goals. He outlined three of the hopes for the project: "to build a bridge, take it to the local community level highlighting promising practices, and recruiting business and education leaders, as well as youth."

Like many of the staffers, Chai travels around the country to explain the race project. Last weekend, he said, "I went to speak at a Korean American church in Philadelphia. They're doing Habitat for Humanity, and they had a groundbreaking for their third house. These are primarily for African Americans." Chai attended the ceremonies to present a letter of praise from the president and deliver a few remarks about the importance of coalition-building efforts.

Because of criticism of the race panel--ranging from controversy over Oh's calls for thinking about race relations as more than literally black and white to objections that the "dialogue" excluded conservatives who oppose affirmative action--Chai was careful to point out that the race initiative was accomplishing concrete tasks. The identification of practices being used throughout the country, which promote racial understanding, he cited as one of the most important aspects of the project.

Ma, who sometimes gives speeches to student groups on college campuses about the work of the race commission, said she thought targeting the younger generation was especially important.

As they pursue racial reconciliation, the staffers are realistic about their work. Chai concluded, "I don't for one minute want to say that all the problems will go away in this time frame or that racism will no longer exist, but I do feel very encouraged that a president, without a major racial crisis, brought this to the forefront. And with our efforts to lay the foundation, [the race initiative] will have an impact."

As for Asian Americans, Liu said, "we're an integral part of this. We are a component of race in America."

She said that Asian Americans were "bringing a whole new dimension to race relations," but she added that "just because we are Asian Americans doesn't mean we are homogenous."

About the Initiative

President Clinton's vision of One America in the 21st Century is to have a diverse, democratic community in which we respect, even celebrate, our differences while embracing the shared values that unite us. To reach that goal, the president has asked all Americans to join him in a national effort to deal openly and honestly with our racial differences. The year-long effort combines thoughtful study, constructive dialogue, and positive action to address the continuing challenge of how to live and work more productively as One America in the 21st century.

The president has convened an advisory board of seven distinguished Americans to assist him with the initiative. The advisory board will work with the president to engage the many diverse groups, communities, regions, and various industries in this country. The president has asked the advisory board to join him in reaching out to local communities and listen to Americans from all different races and backgrounds, so that we can better understand the causes of racial tension. The advisory board will help foster and participate in constructive dialogues on race that the president has called for in this initiative. Finally, President Clinton believes that, while thoughtful dialogue will be an enormous benefit, no real progress can be made without specific actions aimed at breaking down the walls that surround the issue of race relations. The advisory board will study critical substantive areas in which racial disparities are significant, including education, economic opportunity, housing, health care, and the administration of justice.

Based on the findings from the dialogue, study, and action of the initiative, the president will present his Report to the American People. This will be his blueprint for improving race relations in the 21st century.

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