My intent in this post is not to review the novel, but rather to quote liberally from it in order to illustrate why, given my previous post on critical race theory (CRT), I was so struck by a particular passage in the novel.
The passage I‘m referring to quotes a speech being given by “John Kwang,” a rising Korean-American politician serving the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., as councilman. Kwang is standing on the steps of a church speaking to a throng of mostly working-class supporters standing half in the street. He’s talking about unrest between Koreans and blacks in the multi-ethnic cauldron that makes up Flushing.
“Let us think that for the moment it is not a Korean problem. That it is not a black problem or a brown and yellow problem, that it is not a problem of our peoples, that it is not even ultimately a problem of our mistrust or our ignorance. Let us think it is the problem of a self-hate.”
“Yes, let us think that. Think of this my friends: when a Korean merchant haunts an old black gentleman strolling through the aisles of his grocery store, does he hold even the smallest hope that the man will not steal from him? Or when a group of black girls takes turns spitting in the face and hair of the new student from Korea, as happened to my friends daughter, whose muck of hate do they muck up on their tongues? Who is the girl the girls are seeing? Who is the man who appears to be stealing? Who are they, those who know no justice, no fairness; do you know them? Are they familiar?”
Then Kwang says the problems is “what we loath and fear in ourselves.” He tells the crowd that the people who drives the buses, clean the streets, do their laundry, are like them, are them, and, “They want to live with dignity and respect! They want a fair day of work. They want a chance to own something for themselves, be it a store or a cart. They want to show compassion to the less fortunate. They want happiness for their children. They want enough heat in the winter so they can sleep, they want a clean park in the summer so they can play. They want to love like sweet life, this city in which they live, not just to exist, not just to get by, not just to survive this day and go home tonight and tend fresh wounds.”
He goes on to tell them that those who are a “different dark color,” who may seem strange, or who can’t yet speak their language, are not so different than who they are or used to be.
“If you are listening to me now and you are Korean, and you pridefully own your own store… that you have built up from nothing, know these facts. Know that the blacks who spend money in your store and help put food on your table and send your children to college cannot open their own stores. Why? Why can’t they? Why don’t they even try? Because banks will not lend to them because they are black. Because these neighborhoods are troubled, high risk.Because if they did open stores, no one would insure them.”
Kwang also speaks to how the blacks do not benefit from the same strong bonds that the Korean community does, because their people were, “broken and dissolved through history.”
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| The African Diaspora |
Chang-rae Lee published this novel in 1995, so he was creating the character of John Kwang, and his speech to the constituents of his Flushing district, well before critical race theory (CRT) became more than an academic subject for law school students to ponder. Lee wrote his novel as his thesis while studying for his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Oregon. He was 28.
Jacqueline Jones, PhD, teaches History at the University of Texas at Austin. Jones received her Doctorate in History from the University of Wisconsin in 1976. She was 28.
Separated in time by some twenty years, and following very different personal and academic paths, Chang-rae Lee and Jacqueline Jones were discovering a common truth; racial bias in America is rooted in the institutions and structures of America, and persists whether individuals are biased or not — personal bias is, if not irrelevant, then certainly secondary.
As Janel George of the American Bar Association has written, “CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation.”
Last October, in a short talk in eastern Washington State in the predominantly conservative Tri-Cities, Dr. Jones summarized some of the ways the legacy of America’s slave era and lingering suspicion of minority populations, especially those relatively new to the “land of the free and home of the brave,” have marginalized those demographics. She spoke to, “the many ways that governmental entities and private interests have put racial ideologies into practice in the form of laws, taxation policies, public works projects, regulatory guidelines, profit-making schemes, hiring preferences, and more.” Examples of such policies and practices are both irrefutable and eye-opening, from the government’s “redlining” of predominately Black neighborhoods, to the predatory lending practices of high-cost lenders targeted at Blacks and minorities, to the mass incarceration of Blacks based on discriminatory drug laws, to the employment of prison labor as punishment. It is a shameful and complex interweaving of social injustice difficult to fathom, let alone accept.
And a large segment of the conservative, largely White sensibility from the U.K. to the U.S. to Australia isn’t accepting it. They say it pits, “white against black,” peddles damaging notions of "white privilege" and "white supremacy" and makes “a virtue of victimhood.”
Here in the U.S., Donald Trump — still leader of the Party he co-opted — called critical race theory, “toxic propaganda,” and called for “patriotic education.” His Republican Party, sensing an opportunity to further inflame prejudices and energize their base has taken up critical race theory as a cause célèbre, charging adherents of CRT with attempting to brainwash their children, who are being taught to be ashamed that they’re white, and to reinvent America as a Marxist state.
The more inflamed critics of CRT refer to its adherents in especially colorful language as, “proto-fascists and black shirts masquerading as progressives,” and as a “counter-culture lynch mob,” that will attack those who may have the audacity to criticize CRT.
The Republican Party’s post-modern treatment of critical race theory has produced political successes across the nation, including here in the Tri-Cities, where in an off-year election for city council and school board positions, candidates espousing their opposition to CRT won election against opponents who seemed nonplussed by its seemingly sudden appearance on the heretofore largely ignored stage of a local election for “non-partisan” seats.
There’s no question that given their success, Republicans will continue and amplify their message surrounding critical race theory, purposely conflating it with “political correctness,” “cancel culture,” socialism, Marxism, communism, and the end of Western Civilization. As Nicole Gaudiano has said in her 11/19/2021 article for Business Insider, “Democrats are way behind in countering GOP messages about critical race theory.” So, how to catch up?
First, Democrats must familiarize themselves with the basic tenets of CRT. There are many versions and they are proliferating, but I have boiled them down to these:
- Race is a social construct, not a biological reality (as demonstrated by the Human Genome Project); as such it arises out of a need to oppress “others.”
- Identity within society is determined by a multiplicity of factors besides “race,” including gender, sexual preference, ‘abledness,’ etc., all of which subject people to varying degrees of inequality.
- Racism is a regularized feature of society, embedded within systems, organizations, and institutions, such as the legal system, that perpetuate and extends racial inequality.
- Embracing the lived experience of people of color and people considered “different” can inform research and add to and make richer scholarship.
Second, forget the basic tenets of CRT and focus on communicating positive messages about how Democrats hope to see our children educated in our K-12 public schools, i.e.; equally, truthfully, safely, and always with kindness and understanding.
