Twenty-five years or so ago, a friend and neighbor was visiting China - he entered from Hong Kong, and went into the interior, where he was apparently quite the spectacle. People walked up to this 6'2" Chicago white guy in groups, talking among themselves and pointing at him.

Different - and "never before seen" - is the same all over, I guess.

I was reading this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/08/fox-news-host-americans-k_n_228209.html

Just before I found your post, Flower. I just don't get people...but I respect that you're trying so hard.

Hello, Flower. Well, we've got a pretty subject here, don't we?

Um, I deal with Russians and their ethnic cohorts each day and I have to tell ya, yes.

(By the way, I could go in some loopy happy-talk direction and say here, "I don't think that's true of Russians at *all!!*," but I'm not like that.)

Black people is kind of a problem for many or most of them. It's disturbing. I was interviewed on TV (happened to be in Kazakhstan) the day of Obama's election (they're mostly very Asian-looking, roughly in the orbit of Chinese, though lingua franca is Russian) and I had to address this. They're views are not too dissimilar to Russian views despite their own ethnicity.

I will say this: There were a *lot* of people who walked up to me on the street after the interview and said stuff like, "Hey great interview! We're with you on this Obama guy, he's smart and he's great! Can't stand that awful McCain! Congratulations."

Anyhow, raw subject...

Flower -- I keep coming back to the link Moat gave us about "otherness" (I thought I had bookmarked it but can't find it so maybe Moat will link it.)
Why we persist in focusing on our differences rather than the qualities we share is anathema to me. Particularly when that focus is on the physical person rather than the person within. (If we all manifested, externally, the otherness within it's hard to predict what human kind would look like.)
My comfort with physical otherness evolved in stages: living in and then leaving the south, living in Washington, then in New York, then in San Francisco, etc.. Those sequential experiences allowed me to appreciate the physical and cultural characteristics of readily identifiable groups who were ostensibly "other" to my own (whether they were African American, Hispanic or Asian). But a pivotal experience for me, and one that filled my heart with gladness, was time I spent in Brazil. I was immediately enchanted by the mix of ethnicity I saw in everyone, everywhere because: a) it made exotic variety the norm; and b) it showed me what the world can not only look like but also how it can act when otherness barriers are broken down and variations on multiple themes are regarded as completely natural.
I'm sorry that you are still confronted by rude questions like those cite. This, too, will pass -- but probably not in our lifetimes. If it's any small comfort to you, at least for a good laugh, the persistence in identifying otherness is so strong that I have been accused of otherness my whole life simply by being (like my aunt) brunette with hazel eyes when most of my family is blonde and blue-eyed as I have questioned and quizzed repeatedly about my accent which is, at this point, apparently "unplaceable" as it is too soft to be Yankee and too clipped for southern ears, etc.)

Flower, I face a lot of similar questions wherever I go. I'm an odd mix of south- and north-asian and caucasian, and so hard to place, as is my accent. I've had Turks think I'm turkish, Koreans think I'm Korean, Peruvians think I'm Peruvian. Mostly the questions have no trace of racism, and I don't take them as such. At other times there is an undertone of 'where are you from (and what do you think you're doing here?)' which is a bit annoying. Sometimes the annoyance comes from a certain sensitivity I can have, as in 'who are You to ask me what I'm doing here?!' At other times I happily accept the 'otherness' with which I'm tagged. It depends to some extent on the way people approach the 'other'. Sometimes the felt threat takes precedent over the pleased curiosity. And I can't quite get my head around the threat they sense. Hence the annoyance. Racism is something I'm afraid I'll never 'get'.

Thanks for this piece.

It seems odd to me that people are still surprised by this. Remember, fully just a smidgen under half of the people that you will ever meet will be below average, won't they? Working toward decency has always been a struggle. I think 10% of the people drag the other 90% along with them in almost every endeavor that does any good.

Frustrating as it is, in many ways, the states are in the forefront of tolerance compared to some other nations such as Russia. I have found in my experience that the fewer minorities in a given locale or region and the more isolated that place is, the more easily racism and intolerance is able to settle in and grow strong. It is the otherness, the lack of familiarity, the belief that these unfamiliar people are somehow innately different, threatening, hostile, dangerous, etc... that allows this irrational, racist thinking to take hold and grow.

With respect particularly to Native Americans, I think most typical white Americans and perhaps most typical Americans generally are simply amazed when they see "a real Indian" because they have only seen them on tv. It is becoming harder and harder in our nation not to be exposed to African and Asian Americans, but among the most rare of all people one is likely to run into in an American city is a Native American. Unless one lives in a state or city with a sizable population of Native Americans, it is simply extraordinary to run into a person with that ethnicity. I have found that most Americans of all sorts have a real respect for the Native people, though little consciousness of what their life is like, what it means to be a "real Indian" in modern America. Thus, there is a curiosity very unlike that which might accompany seeing someone of other, more commonly seen ethnicities.

People are funny and often act in inappropriate ways when confronted with something new or different, but thankfully they are teachable. I remain hopeful that one day ethnic and racial differences will be seen as no more important than hair color or whether one is left or right handed.

During the week of 9.11 my friend from Dallas was stuck here in Portland. She had been presenting the Indian Child Welfare Act at a conference in southern Oregon. We drove back to Portland, stunned under the stress of all that was happening. There were no flights out during that week or so, so we hung out under that quiet 9.11 sky. She is a lawyer and is Cherokee and African-American and White.

When she finally got to go home to her husband and 6 year old son, she was treated like a terrorist by the airlines and the people. She looks Cherokee, and is brown, which had become a crime without trial. She was repeatedly searched, detained and harassed. It was a very dangerous time to be brown in America. I don’t think things have gotten that much better since then, not really - President Obama, or not. It isn’t curious potential liberals I’m concerned with, but it is the frightened people who are also racists under their own skins. They’re still here. They still define our “otherness.”

I have strong suspicions that in most situations in the U.S. that most adults who ask one "What are you?, "Are you X?", "Where are you from?" are NOT engaging in idle curiosity. They are trying to figure out what "category" you fit into.

Race is tremendously important in the U.S. and there is a raft of information in those stereotypes, and the resulting questions that people ask. It is similar to asking if someone is male or female - they are uncomfortable not knowing because they can't "automatically" respond. Race is important enough that not knowing increases a sense of discomfort that all too many people have.

It is different within the context of more extended interactions where people might be trying to find connection. When strangers do it there is just no excuse. At best, they assume that their "curiosity" supersedes your right to respect and privacy.

I do not think that acknowledging and understanding our "differences" is a bad thing. I believe that there is tremendous richness in those differences. When the differences divide us it is because we live in a society where culturally and structurally those differences have disparate meanings.

Certainly we have our commonalities and they are important and should be built upon. However, in my experience, much of the time when people complain about focusing on differences (meaning social inequality) it is because they do not want to acknowledge the inequality is real and that they may be intimately involved in it. Therefore they might have to DO something. I have heard things similar to "I don't see race - I see people" so many times, and all too often it is these same people who think that racism is someone else's problem, and that it ONLY resides in people's attitudes. While it DOES reside in "people's heads" (and is embedded in cultural values and norms) it also is blatantly present in the social structuring of advantage and disadvantage.

For example a recent report "U.N. Revisits U.S. Policies on Racial Profiling:"

"Racial profiling remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the U.S," said Chandra Bhatnagar of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), lead author of a new report sent to a U.N. rights body this week.

The report submitted to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) describes past U.S. government policies as "a major cause of the disproportionate stopping and searching" of racial minorities by law enforcement agencies.

"Racial profiling is impacting the lives of millions of people in the African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities," Bhatnagar, an attorney who specialises in human rights law, added in a statement.

And from CERD in the same article:

CERD, an independent panel of experts who are responsible for monitoring global compliance with the 1969 convention, examined the U.S. case, and after considering the written and oral response from the U.S., ruled that Washington was failing to meet its treaty obligations.

In explaining its findings, the 18-member CERD panel said there were "stark racial disparities in U.S. institutions, including its criminal justice system."

Stupid people asking innocuous questions? I think not.

Mmmm, goulash. Are you Hungarian?

I find myself running short of time and cannot respond to each comment as I would like. Thank you, Maggie, brantlamb, Ramona, oleeb, matyra, stratofrog, Rowan Wolf and those I miss, for leaving a comment. I read all of them and this discussion could go on at length. It's a big subject, racism.

'Otherness'. That's an extension of the subject that also deserves attention.

Any other comments beyond this one, I will read upon my return in a couple of weeks. If I can beg the use of a PC while I'm away I will try to send a virtual postcard.

In the end, I still ask the same question as Rodney King.

"Why can't we all just get along?"

Yeah. I know. But, it's worth a shot, ain't it?

Hi folks:

Very interesting discussion. Let me fill in some information from the neuroscience community which has inspired a few thoughts on my part.

A few years ago, I read (in an essay by Robert Sapolsky) about a study in which people had MRI scans done of their brains while pictures of people were flashed before them. The result: pictures of people who were a different race from the subjects caused centers associated with alarm to light up in the subjects' brains -- provided the pictures were of strangers. So flashing a picture of an unidentified black person in front of a white person caused the alarm to go off...but flashing a picture of Bill Cosby didn't. It seems that we "de-racialize" someone we know as an individual (either personally or through the media).

I thought of that study when I encountered a woman who had lost a foot. I struggled against the impulse to stare at her leg, with a cap where an ankle and foot should have been. I think I succeeded, but I sure recognized the draw, even as my brain had to tell itself, "No, her foot's not jammed into that cap; it's missing".

I've come up with a theory about all this: very early in life, we create an internal template of what a human being is supposed to look like, and we do so based on the humans we encounter first, usually our parents. So my template of "human" has white skin, and slightly big noses don't register attention because my parents both had them. The template also includes the shape of a human body -- two hands, two feet, a face, etc..

So when we see an unknown person who doesn't fit the template, internal alarm bells go off -- something's wrong with this creature, it doesn't fit the template of "human". Its skin is the wrong shade, there's a limb missing, etc.. BEWARE -- it may be dangerous. KEEP AN EYE ON IT.

The alarm bells get turned off if we actually know the person, and have verified that, despite shape or color, it really is a human being. But the mechanism is there, and is probably pretty deep-seated, since almost everybody seems to have it. (I'd be *very* interested in knowing what happened when people of mixed racial parentage go into the MRI machine. What would set off the alarm centers in Pres. Obama, growing up in the racial mixture of Hawai'i, and with skin a different color than that of his family?)

Anyway, my thought is that the template model explains the persistence of fear/alarm reactions when we see someone of the "wrong" color or shape. The down side is that, if it's really that deeply embedded in our mental hardware, it's not going to go away. The up side -- if you get to know somebody as a person, they don't (usually) alarm you anymore. Which means, incidentally, that there actually is some point in racial desegregation, particularly among young children. It may broaden the template a bit.

Rambling thoughts on a Thursday.

Peace,
Paul

Flower, I'm way late to yet another post, and I know you won't see this for awhile, but I wanted you to know how much I enjoyed it. Thank you.