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Fear and Loathing? A report on first impressions of race and ethnicity in America

Herman Wasserman

41 shots ...and we’ ll take that ride
’ Cross this bloody river
To the other side
41 shots ...cut through the night
You’ re kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life

Is it a gun, is it a knife
Is it a wallet, this is your life
It ain’ t no secret
It ain’ t no secret
No secret my friend
You can get killed just for living
In your American skin

    From Bruce Springsteen: American Skin (41 Shots)

One should acknowledge from the outset that first impressions may be lasting, but they are not always correct (in so far as impressions, by their very nature, are subject to distinctions such as truth or falsehood). And although these impressions might seem to be first and foremost one’ s own, they are not completely independent and personal. The world is always seen through some lens, through a glass darkly, if you wish. As citizens of the global village we are constantly provided with lenses. The newspapers we read, the films we watch, the books we study, the websites we visit — they all mediate what we see. They shape the way we make sense of what we see. They even determine what we look at. Most of the time we wear these lenses, these spectacles, without giving them much thought, without noticing the cracks in the glass that limit our view. But one should try, where one can, to speak provisionally, to preserve the right to alter one’ s views. The other way is the way of absolutism.

I got my glasses on the plane, jetting into Memphis International Airport, from where I had to catch a shuttle to the small town of Oxford, Mississippi, where I would be attending an international conference on race, ethnicity and intercultural relations. The purpose of my visit had probably already predicted what I would look out for in America, but this point of view, the subject matter that was especially to interest me during my short stay, became more evident on board the Boeing 747.

It came in the form of “in-flight entertainment”: a news broadcast by the BBC on the unrest in Cincinnati following the shooting of Timothy Thomas by police. There was alk of a curfew, footage of members of the NAACP protesting. The facts of the case emerged: Thomas was being sought for fourteen outstanding warrants, most of them for traffic violations but two for previously fleeing from police officers. When a police patrol spotted him on the streets of Cincinatti, he allegedly tried to run away. The police, who claim they thought Thomas was reaching for a gun, shot and killed him. Thomas, however, was unarmed. And he was black. Why does the colour of his skin matter? Because the incident was immediately read as another episode in a series of reality TV that has been aired in America for years: police brutality against black people. If Thomas had had a white skin, the protesters claim, he would not have been shot.

Civil rights groups contend, reported the New York Times, that blacks are routinely singled out by police officers for minor offences far more than whites are and that officers “tend to use excessive and deadly force against African-Americans more readily than against whites.” Remember Rodney King, beaten by Los Angeles police? Remember the West-African immigrant Amadou Diallo, killed when four members of the New York Police Department fired the 41 shots to which Bruce Springsteen’ s controversial song refers? Black Americans still have a ten times greater chance of getting shot at by police, the Memphis Commercial Appeal concluded in an editorial. In this regard, the newspaper remarked, the position of black Amercans hasn’ t changed since the 1970s.

These reports more or less formed the lenses through which I viewed the Land of the Free during my short stay, and once you start looking through those tinted glasses it is astonishing what you see. Although the concept of “race” might seem to some an outdated and simplified construction to explain increasingly complex sets of cultural and ethnic difference in an era of globalisation, it apparently still dictates the formation of stereotypes, not only in America, but also in Europe.

A Dutch newspaper recently explained how Dutch authorities are now verifying the identity of immigrants by measuring their irises and other facial characteristics. Why is a passport photo no longer good enough? “Western observers cannot distinguish between negroid or Asiatic eyes,” M. Stijl, a project leader, was quoted as saying.

Could it be that in establishing nationality, the old colonial tropes of biological differences are still being employed? One is reminded of what Bell Hooks said in her 1992 essay, “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination”, in which she related how she regularly got stopped by customs officials while white travellers were let through without queries: “I think that one fantasy of whiteness is that the threatening Other is always a terrorist."

When I arrived in Mississippi another fierce debate was raging in the newspapers, on television and on the porches of the grand old Southern homes. It was related to the Timothy Thomas case in the sense that the question of race was underlying the discussion of how facts (in the case of Mississippi, historical facts) get represented: a referendum was to be held on whether the Confederate flag should still form part of the Mississippi state flag (it occupies a top corner). The changes to national symbols in South Africa were referred to in the Oxford Town newspaper, albeit aided by some oversimplification, and the flag vote was explained as a vote for or against racial reconciliation.

Although the flag debate was ostensibly couched in terms of “tradition” and “heritage”, it was precisely that tradition that was in question — would it be possible to retain the Confederate flag without also keeping the memory of slavery alive? Would it be possible to remember the past by means of a flag, without condoning the abuses that were perpetrated in its name? No, said Unita Blackwell, the keynote speaker at the conference in Oxford — the Confederate flag was the one flying when the Ku Klux Klan pelted petrol bombs at her house not so very long ago. But by the time she made her remarks on the excesses of Southern “tradition”, it had to be done on a stage where the old state flag was still hanging from a flagpole: the citizens of Mississippi had voted to keep the flag a day before.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis is housed in the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was staying the night he was shot. In the emotional extravagance one is tempted to see as typically American, our group is led through displays detailing instances of civil resistance against racial discrimination. The tour ends outside the room where King was to sleep on the fateful night, the carefully crumpled bedsheets and half a plate of food freezing the moment of his death for all to see. At this point the guide seems close to tears. Respectfully the visitors file past the display, voyeurs of victimhood. Once outside the museum, on our way back to the bus, we pass a woman urging would-be visitors rather to donate the entrance money to her cause: “Why honour the dead but keep on mistreating the living?” the banner on her table asks.

Apartheid has always been regarded by Americans as a system of discrimination found in a foreign country, Dan Hocoy from the Pacifica Graduate Institute said in his paper at the conference in Oxford. In actual fact, national statistics and personal stories indicate that Americans lead lives largely segregated by race. Although there remain few formal public policies dictating racial segregation, various forces contribute to maintaining a de facto apartheid situation in American society. These forces include economic structures, historical legacy, and political policy, he stated. “Most importantly, however, racial segregation resides in the hearts, minds and psyches of individuals,” said Hocoy.

Everything does not seem to be hunky-dory in the land of hope and glory.

According to a report in the New York Times of May 5, most black and white children in the US are living in increasingly segregated neighbourhoods, especially in major metropolitan areas in the Midwest and Northeast. Segregation levels of black and white children rose sharply in the last decade, the report went on to say, largely as a result of white flight: white families move out of integrated neighbourhoods when they have children, leaving more childless whites to live in the more integrated neighbourhoods. This means that children are increasingly growing up amongst children of their “own” group, spending their formative years without interaction with children that are “racially different”. It is not difficult to predict that this will perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice.

Upon arriving in New York City one is struck by the hybrid group of people in the city centre, relaxing in Central Park or hurrying to work, hurrying home, hurrying somewhere else. You constantly hear several different languages all around you, the faces of the people in the milling crowds all seem to look different, defeating any attempt to trace origins or attach nationality or ethnicity to physical traits. It is a stunning testimony to the crumbling of the nation state to see the people gathered on a Sunday morning in Central Park, the green heart of the enormous city that has always been a city of immigrants. And it is not only on the streets or in the bodegas along them, the shops where you can buy almost anything from a bagel to a can of beer, that you soon get used to hearing people speak in languages other than English. Some public notices, for instance, posted on the inside of buses, are also in Spanish — an indication, however tenuous it might be, that the authorities acknowledge the cultural differences within the city, and are promoting this hybridity in a positive manner rather than enforcing assimilation. Designations such as “Asian-American” and “Afro-American” might also be seen as an attempt to validate different experiences, no less by immigrants themselves, as a form of identity construction, although it could raise the question of whether and when such a person loses the hyphenated part of his or her identity.

The ostensible tolerance for internal difference in New York City, the nurturing of hybrid identities and multilingualism (the extent and success of which, however, cannot be established during a stay as short as mine) is something one would like to see South African authorities and citizens alike not underestimating either.

In other words, New York City, especially mid-town Manhattan, at first seems to be a place where racial signifiers have no place, where capitalism is the only unifying force. It is the Empire City, today’ s Rome, the global centre of commerce, arts, culture. The energy and optimism in the air is almost palpable. On the streets the people are mostly extremely friendly and helpful, almost to the point of defying belief. But it does not take long to spot some paradoxes. But although this bustling, noisy, exhilarating centre of the global empire seems to be a meeting place of innumerable traditions, heritages, origins and ethnicities, it is not only the power house of what anti-globalisationists call neo-imperialism, but apparently also operates internally according to certain rules of in- and exclusion.

Poverty in NYC still seems to correlate with “race”. Walking northwards along the Upper West Side to Harlem, one can gather from the apartment blocks and the people on the streets that the capitalist dream isn’ t shared by everyone. Why is it that the poorer areas seem to be predominantly inhabited by black people? An article in the Village Voice confirms the impression that skin colour determines social position and the distribution of power. According to the report, urban politics in NYC is historically predicated on race. Immigrants side with whites (a minority in New York accounting for 38 percent of residents in 1990, according to a US census report) to keep blacks out of power. The above-mentioned New York Times article about segregation seems to hold true for NYC as well.

Maybe this explains the confirmation of a black identity in essentialist terms, as the street preachers I saw in Times Square were doing. Apparently quoting from Song of Songs, they stand on a small platform while repeating the words from Scripture: “I am lack ...” The racial tensions in the country do not, however, often form part of the discourses which celebrate American democracy, a democracy which fashions itself as moral watchdog of the world by means of sanctions and fighter jets. Again Bell Hooks, from the essay mentioned above:

    In contemporary society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. This erasure, however mythic, diffuses the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination. It allows for assimilation and forgetfulness. The eagerness with which contemporary society does away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism and diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror, but it has also become a way to perpetuate the terror by providing a cover, a hiding place. Black people still feel the terror, still associate it with whiteness, but are rarely able to articulate the varied ways we are terrorized because it is easy to silence by accusations of reverse racism or by suggesting that black folks who talk about the ways we are terrorized by whites are merely evoking victimization to demand special treatment.

Not only race, but also ethnicity seems to be reflected in the street map of NYC. Generations of immigrants have given rise to pockets of ethnicity which are, geographically speaking, strikingly intact. Stumbling into Chinatown, a few kilometres from the Federal Court and City Hall, one would be forgiven for thinking that you have fallen through the looking-glass into another country. Almost nowhere is English to be seen or heard, and the goods being sold in the rows of shops and stalls are decidedly non-Western. Live fish and frogs in buckets on the sidewalk, rows and rows of Eastern spices, restaurants with menus in ideographic script — enough to tantalise any Western tourist’ s desire for exoticism. Tourism is not the main aim of the colourful displays, however. The Chinese (or Asian-American) population forms a strong, self-sufficient community in the city. The same ethnic clustering is to be seen elsewhere too — in Little Italy there are Mom-and-Pop stores selling prosciutto and olives, and it is said that Little Odessa, a part of Brooklyn near Coney Island where the shop windows announce their wares in Cyrillic script, is the place to go looking for Beluga caviar and good vodka.

Ethnic solidarity and identity in America, writes Lillian B Rubin in her 1994 article “Is This a White Country, or What?”, was the consequence of the shared history each group of immigrants brought with it, combined with the social and psychological experience of establishing themselves in the new land. Ethnicity, she also remarks, becomes largely a private matter once the people who created these neighbourhoods and their descendants left these areas. Ethnicity then became largely a private matter, a distant part of the family heritage that had little to do with the ongoing life of the family or community. In recent years, however, symbolic identification with ethnic heritage have again become prominent. In the melting pot which has largely been the metaphor for American national identity, the sense of belonging to some recognizable and manageable collectivity is comforting, she claims. The grouping together according to ethnicity is also further comforting in the sense that immigrants find solace in shared experiences, in a society and an economy that is not always as welcoming as Emma Lazarus’ poem about the huddled masses yearning to breathe free would suggest. Lillian indicates that immigrants often earn wages far below what most American workers are willing to accept. This depresses the wages of native Americans, and consequently gives rise to dissatisfaction among working class Americans, who feel threatened.

What is the relevance of all this for a South African? Granted, these impressions are superficial, they are souvenirs collected by someone travelling with a passport full of assumptions and not corroborated with much factual evidence. The way experiences were organised should also be probed: In what ways was I also gazing at an otherness, and with what purpose? Was I hoping to find some spectacular form of racism underlying American society in order to construct myself as a liberal, obscuring my own biases and privileges back home? What do I stand to gain from promoting the gospel of integration and non-racialism? Coming from a country where whiteness has always been the privileged signifier, am I justified now to stress the constructedness of “race” as opposed to the turning around of symbolic power?

Even so, I cannot help but attempt to compare my impressions with the South African situation, even if only to alert myself to some similarities. Such as that when inner cities are “cleaned up” as was done in New York by mayor Giuliani, humans are sometimes treated as if they were refuse. Take heed, Mayor Peter Marais, that the urban re-engineering campaign aimed at “improving” central Cape Town does not result in fear and loathing amongst its citizens. The reported ban on trading at traffic lights affecting the homeless vendors of The Big Issue might just be the first step in the wrong direction if these people are not offered constructive alternatives. Marginalising poverty can create explosive situations, the more so because of the self-perpetuating relationship between racial discrimination and poverty. If ghettoes of poverty are created on the basis of racial discrimination, stereotypes and ignorance amongst different groupings are perpetuated, resulting in further segregation, further poverty and further alienation.

Concerning the instances of police brutality: Someone living in a country where a farm worker is dragged behind a bakkie, where a black boy is allegedly shot and thrown into a dam by members of a rugby club on a team building exercise, where police unleash their dogs on defenceless immigrants, need not look at another country. The instances of brutality that would give rise to the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination such as Bell Hooks refers to, are all around us. Instead of gloating about the problems still facing the other countries, South Africans should be much more vocal in condemning acts of brutality in their own.

It is also imperative that the cultural milieu that produces instances such as the death of the black boy allegedly at the hands of aggressive white males should be rigorously analysed. Can pluralism and diversity be propagated without addressing the fear and mistrust still present in South African minds and psyches?

One can also still be killed just for living in one’s South African skin.

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