July 2, 2000 America, Seen Through the Filter of Race The New York Times series "How Race Is Lived in America" has explored the effects of racial differences on people's lives in schools, workplaces, the military, churches and other institutions. Today's Op-Ed page is given over to readers' thoughts prompted by the series. They were selected from submissions to the page, some of which were solicited by the editors. Robert L. Johnson is chairman of Black Entertainment Television. I own a farm in Middleburg, Va., where I have a stable with about 16 horses. One morning, I called down to the grooms to say that I wanted to ride that day, and I walked down from the house to the stables, wearing jeans, boots and a polo shirt. That morning, a plumber was working on the water system for the stables. He was a white man who I would estimate was in his 40's. Next to the plumber was a yellow bucket and a mop, of the sort you might see in an office building when the janitors are cleaning up after hours. The plumber saw me coming, gestured to the bucket and said, "If you're here to mop the stables, you'd better get moving now before I have to shut off the water." The groom saw all this happening, and he looked at me and I looked at him, and it dawned on the plumber that he had mistaken the owner of the place for a stable hand. He was mortified. That's the racial divide to me: Here is a white American who never could have imagined that a black man could own this property. It just didn't compute in his mind. He wasn't trying to be racist; he was trying to be helpful, as if to say, "You've got a job to do, and I've got a job to do, and I don't want my work to get in the way of yours." I could have gotten mad at him, could have called him a racist and chased him off my property, but that wouldn't have accomplished anything. This sort of thing happens to African-American professionals often. I was once leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt and gray slacks. My Jaguar had been brought up from the garage. As I walked out to it, an elderly white woman followed me, and as I opened the front door, she opened the back door, thinking that I was her chauffeur! She had probably asked the front desk to call for a car and then saw me and thought: black man, blue jacket, gray pants -- must be my driver. Like the plumber, she didn't mean to be racist, but the assumptions were just there. What came out in these people -- the plumber, the elderly white woman -- was a latent definition of what a black person is, a definition that bubbles up and overtakes everything else. It doesn't matter how much a black American achieves; to many white Americans you will only be seen for your skin color. This is a racial divide that a white American will never see and one that I don't think you can ever close. Beverly Daniel Tatum is dean of Mount Holyoke College and author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" Many white people think of racism as a problem of individual bigotry and hatred, while people of color often understand it as an intricate web of individual attitudes, cultural messages and institutional practices that systematically advantage whites and disadvantage people of color. If you believe that individual acts of meanness are the problem, then the solution is individual acts of kindness -- polite, respectful behavior, maybe even friendly outreach. White students often use that strategy to connect with black classmates. In a study of undergraduates at the University of California at Berkeley, sociologist Troy Duster found that white students wanted more opportunities to just "hang out" with black classmates, having lunch or going for pizza. But if your understanding is that a system is operating to reinforce cultural stereotypes, limit opportunities and foster a climate in which bigotry can be expressed, then the solution is a concerted daily effort to interrupt that system. It means objecting to jokes, challenging policies, advocating for greater inclusion. It requires more than being nice, and the black students were not so interested in sharing pizza, but in engaging white classmates in a structured dialogue about race relations. Cassandra Garbus is a teacher in New York City. As a white woman teaching Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" this past year in an Upper East Side private high school, I found that a number of my white students believed racism no longer existed. "We've talked about this so many times before," a girl in black Prada pants said as we began to discuss the book. "Slavery was over a hundred years ago." "Now it's white people who are discriminated against," said a boy with bleached hair. "Who has an easier time getting into college?" Other whites feared race as a touchy subject. "I'm always afraid something I say might be taken the wrong way," one girl admitted. Recalling times they felt invisible with their parents or at school gave them a point of entry into the book. We pressed on, dissecting the symbolically loaded dream in which the narrator receives a document that says, "Keep This Nigger Boy Running," and the grandfather's advice on how to deal with white people: "Overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction." There were two people of color in that class. One kept silent and the other spoke up only once. "I'm the one who's invisible," she said. "You all don't know anything about this." There was silence, then a couple of kids joshed her: "Ahhhh." When she laughed, the tension broke. "Maybe none of us has a right to talk about this book," the white girl who had made the first confession of discomfort said. "Maybe we've all been too sheltered." At least, they were admitting how little they knew. Ward Connerly is the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute and author of "Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences." On St. Patrick's Day three years ago, I addressed a group of predominantly white supporters. I told them that California Gov. Pete Wilson had wished me a "Happy St. Patrick's Day, as one Irishman to another." There was a burst of laughter. I had anticipated that reaction, and my response was immediate: "Why did you laugh?" I sensed that my question caused some discomfort, so I quickly took them out of their misery by telling them: "You laughed because it seems odd that a brown-skinned man acknowledges his Irish ancestry. Although we say that America is a melting pot, we still conduct ourselves according to the 'one-drop' rule. One drop of black blood and you are 'black.' Everything else is blotted out, erased from your ancestry." Sometimes, the reaction to this acknowledgment of coming from the melting pot is innocent laughter. The reaction can be racist and mean, and the source is not white racists, but "people of color." After Tiger Woods identified himself as "Cablinasian" (a mixture of Caucasian, black, Asian and Indian), some black comedians mocked him in their routines. In what passes for comedy, I have heard some say, "If Tiger thinks he's a 'Cablinasian,' wait until the police pull him over because he's black." Other, more racist comments have been directed at Mr. Woods's Asian background. Despite these frequent skirmishes about "racial" identity, I am optimistic. After I completed my St. Patrick's Day address, a white man approached and said: "I am glad you said what you did. I laughed along with the others, but your point was an excellent one. I'm part Irish and part Italian. No one would laugh if I mentioned that. And I somehow felt a closer connection to you once I became aware of our mutual Irish background, which I probably share with many people we call 'black.' " Patricia Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University. When Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, was murdered in Los Angeles a few years ago, I recall that lots of people, from taxi drivers to talk show hosts, initially assumed that the murder had to have been drug-related. Even the son of the beloved Bill Cosby, a doctoral student who had simply stopped by the side of the road to fix a flat tire, wasn't safe from stereotyping. When his murderer was identified as Mikail Markhasev, a sullen-faced young Russian man with a criminal record, some in the press reacted as if it were impossible for a young Russian immigrant to be anything other than a rocket scientist. Blacks challenge the cultural imagination when they overcome the presumption of suspect profile; whites challenge it when they fall from the grace of presumed innocence. But, of course, as with all prejudicial conceptions, the big difference is one of consequence. Racism is prejudice, or prejudgment, and thus has much in common with the coded way in which all bias is transacted: Children bully the little kid or taunt the large one. The hearing do not tolerate the deaf. We are blind to Asian-Americans on welfare. Spanish is not as high status a language as French. But there are few social attributes but color in the United States that invoke such immediate, complete and often unbreachable expectations about socioeconomic status, criminal disposition, intelligence, credibility, health, political and mental status. The violently patrolled historical boundary between black and white in America is so powerful that every immigrant group since slavery has found itself assimilated as one or the other, despite the enormous ethnic and global diversity we Americans actually represent. This past is so influential that even today the color line rises almost to the level of taboo. And overcoming taboo is a harder job than just overcoming a mistaken perception of another. Jack Kemp was the 1996 Republican vice-presidential candidate and is co-director of Empower America. Today, when I speak to people of color, I am excited to see their positive reaction to the ideas of reforming education through school choice, building real wealth by cutting tax rates, creating personal retirement accounts, reducing entrepreneurial barriers, expanding property ownership, and increasing access to credit and capital to get their shot at the American Dream. These are all ideas that bubbled up from Abraham Lincoln, and they can be winning ideas for the G.O.P. with the black community. Ownership, entrepreneurship, individualism and upward mobility -- the heart of Lincoln's vision -- can be Republican principles and ideas that are as timeless in America as the ideals within the Declaration of Independence itself. As a lifelong Republican, I believe with all my heart in the message that all Americans, regardless of race, should have an equal opportunity to climb the ladder of success in search of the American dream. If my party can reclaim that theme, it can reclaim the black votes it lost two generations ago. In my opinion, we have no choice because I believe the Republican Party will never be whole again until people of color come home to the Party of Lincoln. Alvin F. Poussaint is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In the late 1940's I attended junior high school in East Harlem, where most kids, and most of my friends, were black and Puerto Rican. Then I went to high school downtown, at Stuyvesant High School, where most students (all boys then) were white. But my closest friends -- the kids with whom I felt socially and culturally connected -- came from the handful of black students. My modest friendships with white students, limited by cultural and physical distance, did not extend beyond the school day. After school, I took the subway back to my segregated East Harlem neighborhood. There is certainly less racism now, but most city neighborhoods are still segregated, making after-school integration difficult. And children living in the ethnic enclaves are still learning from parents and neighbors that there are limits to socializing with schoolmates from other groups. This is particularly true for adolescents; just as in my day, many parents (and students, too) fear the ramifications of interracial dating. When teenagers apply peer pressure to socialize along ethnic lines, their attitude is partly attributable to patterns of social separation ingrained in their communities and supported by many parents. Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat, is a congresswoman from California. It began the morning after I won my election to Congress in 1996. The incumbent I had beaten, Bob Dornan, charged that Mexican citizens had cast votes for me. He said that the only way I could have won was through fraud. What was wrenching was that the House Republican leaders believed him and investigated me and my community for 15 months. They subpoenaed anyone in Orange County who worked with immigrants, including Catholic Charities and a community college. They tried to reject ballots cast from households with more than six voters, charging that bad votes were cast even by 28 nuns in a convent and 37 marines in a barracks. They put 3,000 Hispanic voters on a "bad vote" list to try to undo my 984-vote margin. My campaign had to go door-to-door to find these voters and get affidavits and proof of their citizenship. The burden of proof was on me. I received hate letters and calls telling me to "go back to Mexico." I was born in the United States and am proud to represent my community and my country. But when my opponents tried to use their power to undo the choice of the people by attacking Hispanics, I felt prejudice as I never had before. Barbara Smith owns B. Smith's restaurants in Manhattan; Sag Harbor, N.Y.; and Washington. I cannot count how many times when I was traveling first class on an airplane that someone white sitting next to me asked, "Do you work for the airline?" Or you tell someone you own a restaurant, and it is assumed that it has to be a soul-food establishment, never a white-tablecloth, upscale eatery. When you are not recognized in an upper-end establishment, you are overlooked until someone recognizes you. Then the entire staff falls over itself trying to undo the indifferent or wary attitude that came from assuming you were incapable of affording the items in this store. These injustices or preconceived attitudes are magnified exponentially if you are a large, dark-skinned, assertive black man like my husband. But I also see a growing group of enlightened people who are beyond the stereotypical racial attitudes, and they give me a renewed sense of hope. Linda Chavez is the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity and the author of "Out of the Barrio." I am Hispanic by choice. My father's family came to what is now New Mexico from Spain via Mexico in the early 1600's. But my mother's family came to America from England and Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. Because I have my father's dark hair and eyes, the choice to be Hispanic was not entirely voluntary in my early years. Certainly the prejudices of the 1950's would have made it difficult for me to be accepted as just another Irish- or Anglo-American kid. I thought of myself simply as Spanish, not English or Irish or even of mixed background. When I married in 1967, I could have adopted my Jewish husband's name and become just another vaguely ethnic American. But I didn't. I was -- am -- a Chavez. But my three sons bear their father's surname. Ethnically, they are only one-quarter Hispanic and think of themselves simply as American. My oldest married a Southerner, whose roots in America are so deep as to have obscured their origin. Their daughter has her father's dark eyes, but her mother's fair skin and chestnut hair. My middle son married a woman whose father came from Cuba and whose mother came from Ecuador. Their daughter is likely to be far more immersed in Latin culture than her own father was. Yet to those who talk and write about Hispanics in America, my two granddaughters, my three sons and I are more or less equally Hispanic. It makes little sense. With one of every three young Hispanics marrying outside the group, intermarriage has become so pervasive that in a generation or two the very notion of Hispanic ethnicity should have no more meaning than Irish or German or Italian ethnicity does now.
	Shared Prayers, Mixed Blessings by Kevin Sack Best of Friends, Worlds Apart by Mirta Ojito Which Man's Army by Steven A. Holmes Who Gets to Tell a Black Story? by Janny Scott A Limited Partnership by Amy Harmon At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die by Charlie LeDuff When to Campaign With Color by Timothy Egan Reaping What Was Sown on the Old Plantation by Ginger Thompson Growing Up, Growing Apart by Tamar Lewin The Hurt Between the Lines by Dana Canedy The Minority Quarterback by Ira Berkow Guarding the Borders of the Hip-Hop Nation by N.R. Kleinfield Why Harlem Drug Cops Don't Discuss Race by Michael Winerip
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