Writing about Race (Without Fear)

By John Streamas






More than a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the greatest issue facing the United States in the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. I think most people of color would agree that the color line remains the greatest issue in the current century. So when the time comes to discuss it, what can we as writers say?



Aside from urging writers not to be racist, I won’t presume to dictate an answer. But I can suggest an important guideline: Be careful to know the difference between race and racism. Writing about race shouldn’t be difficult. I teach ethnic studies, and one of the first lessons in the field teaches that race is a social construct. It has no biological meaning.



Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould said that two Italians living a few miles apart may be more genetically different than a northern European and an Asian or African. We invent differences through our cultural prejudices. I am half Asian, but I can donate blood to anyone of any race. The prejudiced among us may want race to mean something, but it simply doesn’t. It isn’t, or it shouldn’t be, controversial. We should write about race without fear.



It’s racism that’s controversial. If I write that Asians are superior to other races, I’m expressing my racial bias. If you claim that whites are superior, you’re expressing yours. For centuries, laws and policies have assumed one race’s superiority. It’s an assumption that has justified slavery, colonization, and other injustices. All Americans need to reckon with that history.



So, let’s say that in writing your life story, you discuss moving into your first apartment as a student and meeting your neighbor, who is Asian (and you are not). You become casual friends who, during spring break, drive together through upstate New York. Midway between Syracuse and Buffalo, just off the interstate, is a small diner where, in past years, you’ve had the best chow mein of your life, yet you hesitate to suggest stopping there for fear of upsetting your friend. It’s important because at the exit ramp you have an accident that changes your lives, and you know that your hesitation is partly responsible for that moment of bad driving. But you can’t bring yourself to write about it.



You insist you’re not a racist, but worry that if you write about that withheld idea, you may seem like one. For the same reason, you haven’t even mentioned in the essay you are writing that your friend is Asian. You think that if you don’t mention it, no one will know or care.



Yet your friend probably identifies as Asian—or more particularly as Chinese American or Laotian American. In an unequal world, people of color embrace our racial identities.



As a writer, your problem may well be that you also haven’t learned about yourself. You identify as a writer, not a white writer. I identify as a Japanese American writer. Your hesitation should be the very subject of your work. Write about your fears and hesitations. Write about race even if you don’t want to write about racism. We people of color will applaud your honesty.   ___



John Streamas is a shin-issei (0.5-generation) Japanese American who directs the graduate program in American Studies and Culture at Washington State University. He has published many scholarly critical essays in ethnic studies as well as fiction and poetry, and has just completed a book on race and nuclear war.