Race, Racism, & Racialism

I recently made a confession of a racist attitude to some folks at a gathering. Korean D. and Cuban R. (married couple), and Chinese C. and Filipino S. (another married couple) and I were talking about a raucous sidewalk BBQ that occurred outside D. and R.'s apartment building in a Dominican neighborhood uptown. They were pissed, because it was floor-shaking, head-banging loud (salsa music and sub-woofers) and it was clearly not a permit-ted event. R. called the PO-lice, who came and broke it up.

We were talking about racial groups, and racial-group habits. Loudness is something we often attribute, consciously or unconsciously, to certain racial groups. Of course, there are generalizations and there are specifics, and the damage is most severe when we lapse into generalizations-only thinking, which then manifests in our behavior; and depending on the context and our reach of influence (if you are, say, the Presidenet of the United States, or a Supreme Court Justice; or even a corporate executive or a community leader), these behaviors can be globally catastrophic.

(There is no talking or thinking about city and country and suburb without talking about race. The lens of race is second-nature to most people of color, I dare say; typically a more conscious effort for White folk. This is what I mean by racialism. In this country, you know that you are not White, and that White is a category of power (or at least "centrality"), before you know your ABCs.)

I had had a couple of drinks by this time in the evening, so my discretion was apparently compromised. I guess I'd been thinking about my dirty life, and I confessed that I was most bothered by people who throw their garbage around. And, I added, I am convinced that this is not a social class thing - poor does not equal dirty - this is a cultural thing.

I recently read that there are steep fines in Singapore for littering (and chewing gum).* Japan is of course known for its immaculate subway system and urban sanitation in general. I have also been very struck by my experiences in Korea over the years.

The local Korean bath house is one of my favorite outings when I visit. There are hot spring mineral baths and saunas and steam rooms and jet therapy and shower areas where men and women and children of all ages (grandparents and grandchildren together are a common sight) take the time to relax and thoroughly self-care. The shower areas include stools for sitting, abrasive washcloths, and hand-held shower heads (showering is a sit-down affair for Koreans, time to scrub and rinse and massage with care). The bath house ritual is good for the skin, the circulation, the heart, and the soul. There is also, at the end of your wet-and-moist therapy, an opportunity to visit the sleep rooms - big, dry open spaces with heated floors, pillows, and complementary cotton pajamas (the bath areas are single-sex, and all are naked).

A day at the bath house costs about six American dollars and is a once or twice weekly habit for many Koreans. The sleep rooms are open all night, and the poor and homeless will sometimes sleep here (men with night jobs, for example, will come for a few hours rest). They do not take advantage, i.e. somehow it is understood that one night of recuperation at a time is the limit. But it's also understood that everyone is entitled to be clean - deeply, thoroughly clean and rested. The old women who clean the subways and station areas do so with incredible industriousness; there is no question about whether the working-class and poor who rely on public transportation "deserve" a clean ride or not.

It's an opinion I seem to hold pretty firmly in my mind somewhere - that black and brown people have messier, dirtier cultural habits. It's a half-baked, un-evolved thought, of which I am partially ashamed and yet partially feel is a reasonable question to pose - i.e. why this seems to be the case, how the perception is formed in the first place, and how it might be corrected; because I don't think I am the only one to think it (my passionately anti-racist black pastor back in Seattle told the story of his father referring to Mexicans as Messi-kins), and perhaps current immigration controversies would look differently if these perceptions did not exist.

I think about my lack of exposure to the home countries of Latin and Central Americans, my sketchy understanding of immigration patterns and the way racism eats away at people, generation-by-generation (I think of K., an African American matriarch who keeps an immaculate household and herself complains about young black people's lack of self-respect and sense of civic duty), the overall limitations of a middle-class viewpoint. In the Philippines, poor children forage in garbage dumps regularly. In India, lack of sewage and clean water systems is a persistent national crisis. This morning, an article in The NY Times about Palestinian children trolling trash piles for items they can sell in order to eke out "a living," and an article in the Times Mag about environmental injustice, i.e. high pollution levels in poor communities: "...disproportionately high pollution levels continue to plague poor communities, and race often correlates with which populations are hit the hardest: African-Americans, for instance, are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in areas where air-pollution levels pose health risks..." These are clearly not "cultural" habits. And yet even with these bits of knowledge, my under-the-skin reaction to garbagy streets is still there, i.e. my people would never live like this.

Clean and dirty are complicated. Don't elect me to office (maybe don't even be my friend), at least until I can get my head on right about this. Ironic, isn't it, that a large portion of the house-cleaning workforce in the tidy suburbs are Latin and Central American immigrants. Maybe some cultures simply do have different standards when it comes to cleanliness, maybe they simply have different priorities, perfectly valid ones, which other people need to understand and accept. J. is Chinese American; my mother seems to think that the Chinese (among the East Asians) are kinda "dirty." J. gives me a hard time about showering every day. "Why d'ya gotta shower every day? What's wrong with smelling your own smell once in a while, letting the body's natural oils do their job. Soap is not even good for your skin, and shampoo will make your hair fall out eventually. Shower when you're actually dirty." Hmm...how European.


*an article today about Singapore reveals a complex social-economic history and environment which led to the no-littering policies. There are some cultures, or sub-cultures, which seem to embrace the notion of "look the part," i.e. if you want to be lifted out of poverty and third-class citizen status, then look like you do, clean up. Very Booker T. Washington, I guess.