An Eye For Poor Taste
by Lee Cheng

Two weeks ago, the cover of Time magazine featured an Asiatic-looking eye embedded in a Chinese Red Star next to the caption: “The Next Cold War?” I immediately thought of last year's controversial National Review cover, which drew heated and outraged protests from Asian American civil rights leaders for putting slanty eyes on a caricature of President Bill Clinton to call attention to the influence China was allegedly purchasing in the Clinton-Gore administration through campaign ontributions.

Now, as then, I strongly believe that certain editors could have exercised somewhat better judgment and taste and showed more sensitivity than they apparently did. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least half a dozen ways to depict actual and potential conflict with China that would have been at least as powerful and gripping as the use of a stereotype-prone physiological feature.

I suppose that those looking for racism under every rock can point to the fact that media outlets never used physiological stereotypes of Israelis or Frenchmen when spies from those countries were caught red-handed stealing vital American military and industrial secrets. Perhaps the magazine editors couldn't readily come up with identifiable stereotypes. Perhaps Israel and France are for the most part American allies. Perhaps the Israel and French lobbies were just more powerful than the Chinese lobby. I guess no one but those editors will ever really know for sure why they chose not to use a physical stereotype to symbolize with China and not with Israel or France.

For my part, I would tend to doubt that those editors were motivated by conscious ethnic or racial animus in selecting their cover art. However, that doesn't alleviate my concerns that the artwork may end up misdirecting hostile feelings arising from very serious threats to America's national interest and security.

In using Asian features in their illustrations, Time and the National Review made the conflict between American and Chinese national interests appear racial or ethnic, rather than a conflict between nations and their underlying values. If anything, China is the allegedly hostile power that has been spying on the United States, not people with Asiatic eyes. Time’s cover made the Asiatic eye, and by extension, those who have such eyes, a symbol of something alien and threatening to America. Unless they were trying to make a rather sinister point about Asian American spies, the editors of Time seem to have forgotten that millions of loyal American citizens also have eyes of that shape.

But more than any present misdirected hostility or ill will, I am actually far more concerned about what I believe is the kernel of truth at the heart of the alarmist magazine covers and the implications for Asian Americans.

For a number of years now, certain academics and policy analysts have predicted China's development and inevitable rise to world power status. With the fall of the Soviet empire, China quite clearly offered the most realistic threat to America's economic and military pre-eminence. With China increasingly becoming the source and target of trade and political conflict, Asian Americans, and particularly Chinese Americans, are faced with the prospect of having our loyalties questioned and certain opportunities denied. Already, there are anecdotal reports of office whispers and innuendoes, and tighter security checks for workers of Asian descent at research labs and facilities. I dread what might happen in the event, God forbid, of an actual military confrontation with China.

Perhaps I am thinking too far ahead, and voicing fear for a possibility that will hopefully only remain exactly that. Still, I believe that Asian Americans need to be aware of and to prepare for the potential problems that may arise due to nationalistic competition between the United States and countries in Asia. Even as the world becomes a smaller place through improvements in communications and transportation, nationalism is a deep-rooted, often irrational feeling that can surface with slight provocation to wipe out in an instant the gains from years of diplomacy and cooperation.

As a permanent numerical minority in the United States, Asian Americans have always been and likely will always been particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of misdirected nationalism. Asians in American have been subjected to numerous indignities and persecutions from being viewed as alien and different, from massacres of Chinese workers in the Gold Rush/railroad-building era to the World-War II internment of Japanese Americans. Until recently in San Francisco, individual Asian American children have been denied equal protection under the law because as a group, they tended to perform well academically. Each child was not seen as a separate person with different needs and interests, or as an American citizen with equal rights, but as a member of an artificially defined group with presumed similarities.

So what can Asian Americans do to minimize or head off the negative impacts of strained relations between the United States and Asia? I can see four courses of action:

First, we can bury our heads in the sand and continue to focus only on acquiring economic power. We can hope that all controversies will just blow over. That model didnít work for Jews who stayed in Germany or for ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Second, we can try to emigrate at the first sign of real trouble. The problem is, I can’t really think of a safer place to go in the event of Sino-U.S. conflict.

Third, we can try to mobilize Asian Americans into a distinct political force, with an appeal to ethnic solidarity and emphasis on having a (relatively) common culture. We can work with other minority ethnic groups with similar ethnic-based agendas to pass legislation recognizing and promoting cultural distinctiveness. We can strive to get a “proportionate” share of political appointments and in a few locations, actually get Asian Americans into elective office.

Unfortunately, there will always be a limit on the amount of protection ethnic politicking can offer because of the relatively small size of the Asian American population. Plus, ethnic politicking actually increases the potential for group persecution by emphasizing the distinctness and difference of race and ethnic and cultural background rather than the commonality of American values and citizenship.

Finally, Asian Americans can focus their efforts on supporting the continuing de-emphasis of race under the law and in making public policy. Despite the many sad chapters in American history involving racial discrimination and ethnic violence, there has been an undeniable vector of progress with respect to the recognition that fundamental rights under the Constitution lie with individuals rather than groups.

No one can deny that traditional, garden-variety racial discrimination still rears its ugly head from time to time, and that extant anti-discrimination laws should be strictly enforced. At the same time, use of racial preferences -- however well intentioned to remedy the effects of past discrimination and to promote cross-cultural respect -- should be opposed, because such efforts constitute state recognition of group rather than individual rights. In giving any preference based on race or color, the government inherently projects the message that the preferred trait is more desirable than the non-preferred.

In the long run, race neutrality under the law offers the only real safe haven. Fortunately, we live in a country where race neutrality is actually possible. More important, we can help bring it about.