Interracial Justice

Conflict and Reconciliation in Post–Civil Rights America

Eric K. Yamamoto

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9780814729458
• Topic: Jura
• Subtopic: Bürgerrechte

The United States in the twenty-first century will be a nation of so-called minorities. Shifts in the composition of the American populace necessitate a radical change in the ways we as a nation think about race relations, identity, and racial justice.

Once dominated by black-white relations, discussions of race are increasingly informed by an awareness of strife among nonwhite racial groups. While white influence remains important in nonwhite racial conflict, the time has come for acknowledgment of ways communities of color sometimes clash, and their struggles to heal the resulting wounds and forge strong alliances.

Melding race history, legal theory, theology, social psychology, and anecdotes, Eric K. Yamamoto offers a fresh look at race and responsibility. He tells tales of explosive conflicts and halting conciliatory efforts between African Americans and Korean and Vietnamese immigrant shop owners in Los Angeles and New Orleans. He also paints a fascinating picture of South Africa's controversial Truth and Reconciliation Commission as well as a pathbreaking Asian American apology to Native Hawaiians for complicity in their oppression. An incisive and original work by a highly respected scholar, Interracial Justice greatly advances our understanding of conflict and healing through justice in multiracial America.

Part 1
How, Then, Can We Deal with Our Grievances?

[By] candidly confronting the past, expressing genuine regret, carefully appraising the present in light of the past, agreeing to repair that which can be repaired, accepting joint responsibility for the future, and refusing to be derailed by setbacks and short-term failure.

—HARLON L DALTON,

Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear between
Blacks and Whites, p. 100

1
“Can We All Get Along?”

Justice Grievances among Communities of Color

Despite being linked to each other, we remain hostile strangers.

—JOHN POWELL,

“Talking Race,” Hungry Mind Review,

Fall 1994, p. 15

[Asian American settlers are] either ignorant of, or hostile to understanding, Hawaiian history and present-day Hawaiian claims.

—HAUNANI-KAY TRASK,

“Coalition Building between Natives and
Non-Natives,” 43 Stan. L. Rev. 1197, 1205 (1991)

Can we all get along?

—RODNEY KING

John Powell observes racial groups in the United States linked as “hostile strangers.” Haunani-Kay Trask charges immigrant racial groups with ignorance of or hostility toward indigenous peoples’ current legal and political self-determination claims. During the violent clash among African Americans, Korean Americans, and Latina/o Americans in 1992, Rodney King pleads for all to “get along.” These statements by Powell, Trask, and King raise broad concerns about conflictual relations among nonwhite racial communities, and they also pose a pointed question about reconciliatory possibilities: How, in theory and practice, can these communities address interracial grievances to enhance the prospects of living together peaceably and working together politically?

Discussion about coalition building in the 1990s has been limited. Broadly summarized, most of the discussion identifies “factors” contributing to intergroup conflict (changing racial demographics, rapid immigration, shrinking economy, cutbacks in government services) and to the formation of multiracial coalitions (ideology, interests, leadership). It then examines cultural patterns or the political and economic interests of specific racial groups and searches for “common ground.”¹ Most often, this common ground is framed generally in terms of similar histories of resistance against white oppression and continuing struggles to overcome poverty, racism, and political disenfranchisement.²

By situating cultural patterns and group interests in predominantly white-dominated social and economic structures, this discussion provides important insights.³ It also tends, however, to present whiteness as the singular agent of nonwhite conflict and to strip nonwhite racial communities of power over—and therefore responsibility for—interracial conflict and conciliation. By focusing on common goals, much of the discussion emphasizes joint political and economic undertakings and overlooks sometimes long-standing grievances among communities of color that often exacerbate immediate, face-to-face conflicts and undermine coalitional ties. In doing so, it misses the social and psychological dynamics of group wounds and healing and, I submit, the significance of those dynamics to the construction of intergroup alliances.⁴ While white influence and common ground are relevant to all interracial relations, the near void of scholarly attention to justice grievances among communities of color informing intergroup wounds and daily conflicts obscures a key aspect of coalition building—interracial justice.

Justice among communities of color is important because intergroup alliances frequently founder on the shoals of racial grievance. Relationships sometimes splinter not for lack of common goals, not from chafing cultural behaviors. Rather, they break apart because of deeply felt but often vaguely articulated grievances each group harbors against the other. These grievances are rooted in collective perceptions, or memories, of how one’s own group has been wronged by the other, either directly or with other groups. These often covertly communicated justice grievances shape, or at least exacerbate, the wary and sometimes caustic tenor of many coalitional interactions.

What kinds of conflicts and justice grievances am I talking about? And what are the contours of the near void in scholarly attention?

Interracial Conflicts and Underlying Grievances

Concerning conflicts in local electoral politics, think about the struggles for seats on city councils and school boards in Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, Miami, Dallas, and Houston, cities with substantial nonblack communities of color. One journalist described the increasing Latina/o and Asian populations in those cities as “imperiling black political power and confounding notions of a [national] rainbow coalition.”⁵ Is this comment (and other comments recited later) mere hyperbole or, more insidiously, an example of the white-controlled media creating conflict among nonwhite groups? Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Consider reported statements by those engaged in local electoral struggles. African Americans, says a recently defeated black city councilperson, have been on the forefront of struggle for multiculturalism and have welcomed other racial minorities, but these other communities “are just looking out for themselves.” Says another, “It’s our [black] community that has been devastated in order to advance the cause of environmentalists, women, Asians and Hispanics.” And even more pointedly, a leader of the Dallas NAACP reportedly depicts Latinas/os as “vultures” who “feast on the results of our efforts.”

An officer of a statewide Democratic Latina/o organization counters that “African Americans are very intimidated” by increasing numbers of Latinas/os and links Latina/o grievances against blacks to a cultural explanation of African American anxiety—the “thief judges by his own standards.” African Americans “perceive that if a Hispanic is employed as superintendent [of schools] they will be left out or not treated fairly… . There is a saying in Spanish: ‘El ladron juzga por su condicion,’ ‘The thief judges by his own standards.’ They have excluded us, and they think we will exclude them.”⁶ Feeding this interracial fire with a contorted image of southern racial apartheid, a white city councilperson representing a new, largely Asian American district in Oakland, reportedly commented, “I don’t want to overstate this,… but it’s as if African-Americans now are the ones standing in the schoolhouse door.”

Concerning conflicts surrounding state ballot initiatives, think about the passage of California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 and the nearly 50 percent support by African Americans and established Asian Americans, including many worried about Latina/o and South Asian immigrants displacing current workers and draining government resources. Was that vote connected to the substantial early Asian American support (which later turned sharply) for the anti–affirmative action California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209? And what about the lukewarm African American opposition to Arizona’s English Only initiative (which mainly affected Latinas/os)?

Concerning conflicts in university politics, think about a student’s experiences as a co-organizer of a coalition of Latina/o, African American, Native American, and Asian American groups. The coalition formed enthusiastically to combat a university administration’s plan to consolidate separate ethnic studies programs under a broad comparative studies umbrella. The plan, if implemented, would deprive each program of its unique identity and force the groups to compete for diminished funding. Despite a common goal and a common foe, the multiracial coalition was marked by dissension among its leaders. The student organizer watched the smallest disagreements escalate into sharp exchanges. She was shocked, she said, at the extent of the distrust—even though many in the coalition had never worked together previously. The distrust divided along racial group lines, and some of it also appeared gendered. “Why,” she asked, “are we so angry with each other,” and “why are we letting that anger move us off our target?” The questions resonated but yielded no clear answers.

Concerning conflicts in business, think about the complaint that Asian Americans are promoted to and kept in low management positions so they can do the firing of African Americans and Latinas/os, thereby immunizing their white employers from Title VII suits. After all, how can one racial minority illegally discriminate against another?⁷ Think also about Cuban Americans in Miami and their tensions with not only blacks but also Haitian, Nicaraguan, and El Salvadoran immigrants. These latter groups sometimes complain about being shut out of local business opportunities by financially secure, politically conservative Cuban communities.⁸ And think about Native Hawaiians’ claims to water diverted for one hundred years by white-controlled agribusiness decimating Hawaiian agricultural communities, claims of continued subordination not only by Western capitalists but also by nonwhite racial groups who ignore the historical origins of indigenous claims of self-determination and self-development.

Some of these interracial conflicts are addressed in face-to-face interactions. Others smolder, either attended to poorly or ignored entirely. And the wounds ache. Some of those aches erupt in court, with one community of color asserting claims of illegal discrimination against another.

An example is the complicated Lowell High School lawsuit in San Francisco.⁹ Chinese Americans are suing to invalidate San Francisco’s court-ordered desegregation program for public high schools. The desegregation order was entered fifteen years ago in a suit by the NAACP charging educational discrimination by whites. The Chinese American plaintiffs are now seeking to exceed their current enrollment allotment, claiming denial of equal protection of the law and arguing the educational inferiority of African Americans and Latinas/os (and, to a lesser extent, whites and other Asian Americans). Given the volatile history of discrimination against Chinese in California, the continued socioeconomic subordination of many blacks, and the rising numbers of struggling Latina/o and Asian immigrants, where and with whom do the justice claims lie?

Another example is the recent federal court suit by Latina/o and Asian American groups to invalidate Oakland’s affirmative action program in city contracting. The Hispanic Contractors Association, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the East Bay chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans claim unconstitutional favoritism of African Americans. The plaintiffs’ attorney describes the “present [black and white patronage] system” as “corrupt.” A Latino politician charges that “there has not been any attempt by this city to improve the representation of Latinos and Asian and Native Americans in top management and at every level,” and a leader of a Latina/o city employees association observes, “All the time I’ve been here I’ve had to work against discrimination, not by whites but by blacks.”¹⁰ The NAACP’s response is “we can’t have the have-nots fight the have-nots.” Other African Americans decry the suit as an ill-advised power play by Latina/o and Asian American politicians. The slashing rhetoric of this lawsuit, awkwardly cast in traditional white-black civil rights language, played out against a recent volatile suit by Latinas/ os against the Chicago Housing Authority on the grounds that the 90 percent black and 2 percent Latina/o tenant breakdown reflected impermissible discrimination.

My brief descriptions of interracial conflicts in local elections, state initiatives, university politics, business, and the courts barely scratch the surface of interracial dynamics. At first glance, the situations in which the conflicts arise appear widely varied in terms of place, groups, and claims. The intensity of many of the encounters among group members also rivets attention on the unique particulars of each controversy.

On closer inspection, however, the various conflicts bear common markings. The interracial conflicts are set within continuing white dominance in many spheres of social and economic life. Equally important, each of the specific conflicts—over discriminatory hiring, affirmative action, owner-customer interactions—appears to be undergirded by largely unacknowledged interracial justice grievances. Those grievances are often based on one group’s perceptions of the other’s exercise of power to exclude or subordinate. The grievances gain explosive strength from collective memories (the melange of observations, rumors, media images, and intergenerational stories) that link current perceptions of interracial exclusion or subjugation to the deep pain of historical memories of disenfranchisement by whites.

For some African Americans, therefore, contemporary justice grievances emerge from the perceptions of Asian Americans and many Latinas/ os as latecomers aligning themselves with whites and appropriating civil rights strategies, pioneered by African Americans at great cost, to leapfrog over blacks socially and economically without concern for continuing black subordination. These grievances intensify because they recall the agonies of African American subjugation in the American polity—in which enslavement meant nonhuman, black meant noncitizen, Jim Crow meant separate and unequal, and civil rights struggles for social and economic gains for all racial communities meant black blood on the streets.

For some Asian Americans and Latinas/os, contemporary grievances emerge from vaguely articulated perceptions of African Americans squandering moral capital (accrued as a result of slavery), relying on special privileges detrimental to other racial minorities (limited affirmative action), or scapegoating more vulnerable minorities rather than addressing the root sources of black frustration. These grievances also come from images of African Americans who, after acquiring some local political clout, use their new power to exclude Latinas/os and Asian Americans from local economic and political participation. The grievances grate because in differing ways they recall the historical exclusion of Asians and Mexicans from the polity by means of the Chinese Exclusion and Greaser Acts, naturalized citizenship prohibitions, landownership and voting restrictions; the internment of Japanese Americans; English Only; and glass ceilings in business; and the stigmatizing of all as “foreign” (or, worse, foreign and illegal).

These kinds of justice grievances, heightened and twisted by collective memories and often operating largely unacknowledged just beneath the public surface, transform specific disputes between racial group members into interracial controversies. Conflicts between individuals devolve into struggles between groups. To understand the power and complexity of this dynamic, consider again the Lowell High School lawsuit concerning public school admissions. Brian Ho, Patrick Wong, and Hilary Chen, plaintiffs in Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, represent “all [sixteen thousand] children of Chinese descent” eligible for San Francisco’s public schools.¹¹ Their high-profile suit challenges the validity of a 1983 judicial consent decree desegregating San Francisco’s schools. Approved in response to an NAACP class action charging educational discrimination by whites, the consent decree mandates racial and ethnic diversity in student bodies and sets for each “magnet” school a 40 percent cap for students from any racial or ethnic group. Early on, Chinese Americans benefited from the decree’s diversity mandate, substantially increasing their enrollments.¹²

The Chinese American plaintiffs now seek to exceed the 40 percent cap, claiming that the cap constitutes unconstitutional race preferences for those less qualified, particularly African Americans and Latinas/os. Discrimination is demonstrated, the plaintiffs allege, by not admitting some Chinese American students to magnet schools, even though their entrance test scores are higher than those of some students of other races who are admitted. The plaintiffs observe that this form of exclusion is consistent with California’s history of harsh discrimination against Chinese Americans.¹³ Using ideas refined by neoconservative race scholars, their attorneys frame the suit in terms of individual rights, advance legal arguments of “meritocracy” and “color blindness” and seek to enjoin the school district “from operating under its system of racial classifications and quotas.”¹⁴ Some Chinese American supporters express more directly their perceptions of underlying racial-cultural differences: formal racism in the system has ended; Chinese Americans have elevated themselves as a group through ability and cultural values despite hardship; and African Americans have had the benefit of the decree for ten years, “and black student perf...