INSIDE:
NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online
Paper (PDF)
NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections
Upcoming
The Asian Reporter Eleventh
Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet -
April 2009
May, 2009
Asian Reporter Info
AR
Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues
ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones
Copyright © 2000 - 2008
AR Home
|
Talking Story |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #11 (March 13, 2007), page 7.
When there’s a BAAM
There’s an old riddle.
It’s a funny thing — this same joke was told me by Arabs and African Americans, by Yiu Mien and Mejicanos, by Kenyans, Khmer, Koreans. Every one of those guapos, each out of his own barrio, earnestly believed that his telling was totally original. I’ve done my best to laugh every time.
Guys have pulled this one on me with startling regularity. I’ve heard it about three times per year, over the 30 years since college, since America’s best social engineering, since affirmatively admitted young people of color started talking outside our own tight little neighborhoods.
It’s about running. The riddle is.
The joke goes: What’s the difference between how white folks and (fill-in your raza) run?
No, it’s not about the relative density of our respective gluteus maximus. And it’s got nothing to do with hundred dollar Nikes.
So, what’s the difference? How do we run?
A: When there’s a BAAM outside, white folks run to have a look — we run away from our windows.
Get it?
Our guys know all about the ear-splitting crack of gunfire, the dumbing thump of a bomb blast, the numbing brutality of angry strangers in their helpless homeland. White guys have the luxury of curiosity, an appetite for novelty, a license for carelessness.
Flying glass is ferocious. Ask anyone. Shards don’t stop until they hit the back wall of your skull.
Why our riddle persists
For a long time this little riddle made a certain kind of sense. It worked so good so long for the same reason all ethnic humor works — efficacy is measured by the alleviation of subordinated minority male tension. We duck humiliation with humor. It’s always been so.
But these days that old joke is taking on a different truth. A deeper reality that may just keep it up and running for another three decades. A couple of recent news headlines are illustrative of our riddle’s new legs. Both are getting a lot of national media. Both come out of strong law schools. Maybe that’s natural; probably it’s telling.
First example: A partner of the big Houston-based law firm, Fulbright & Jaworski, evidently used the N word in a law-student training at Duke University’s Law School. He said it in telling a tale about a legal giant, Leon Jaworski. Ironically, or not, American lawyers like to call these teaching tools "war stories."
When things got tense, the firm’s Executive Committee chairman got on a plane, apologized, and made amends. "There is no excuse for what happened on this campus," Steven Pfeiffer told students. "There is no context for which that is permissible conduct." Cool.
Mr. Pfeiffer is a big guy, he took charge. He talked to folks affected by people in his shop, on his watch. He muscled around his rather massive institution (offices in Washington, D.C., London, Beijing, Saudi Arabia) making as sure as he could that this was the last time.
Our second example arose out of a classroom at the University of Wisconsin (at Madison) Law School. This one also made national conversation. It began during a lecture on troublesome conflicts between Anglo-American law and ethno- culturally marginalized communities. It caught fire when discussion included American Hmong examples of these contrary interests and avenues. Heated discussion continues. Folks running in every direction.
A pause and a riddle
Before another smart academic or struggling student jumps up, before another savvy elected leader joins in, or calculatedly, does not — does not lead, does not lead in our time of need — silahkan, give me a second to square away a couple pre-brawl concerns.
One: Most of us commentators were not there. None of us know the hearts of those speaking or of those hurting. We just heard the BAAM, and did what each of us, each of our surviving families, all of our knowing ancestors, are wont to do.
Two: Our analysis thus removed is risky. We impose facts. We dehumanize the room. We build a narrative on an ultimately presumed and people-less reality. It’s what we do. It’s what Anglos and Maya and Hmong do. It’s how Italianos and Indos and Navajo are. People are wired like that.
Once we can agree on this, on our hasty inclinations, we can start our inevitable kidding. And maybe begin deconstructing the joke. How do we run?
It’s not easy. It’s not even fun. Getting a better grip on America’s near-pathological anxiety over race will require giving up some position. More to the point, it means giving up some power.
Power. Power is the present ability to tell America what that BAAM is. What happened at that Duke session, what happened in that University of Wisconsin classroom. Power is who defines it. How it is addressed. This is enormous. Those with the power to tell us — it is a case of academic freedom, it is a matter of over-sensitive students, or it is an IED — have an enormous capacity to do good. Or not.
That’s the power. That’s our riddle.
Let me tell you true: When I read the esteemed, even adored, Professor Ann Althouse’s take on what startled folks at Duke and at Wisconsin U, it broke my heart. It ached my bones in every one of those places they’ve been broken by beatings first, by that riddle second. It appeared in The New York Times, the nation’s most influential newspaper.
When we place our bright boys and our brave young women, in trust, in our educators’ hands, we expect more. Without more care, our joke endures. And the naked power differential giving life to that joke will dog us and define us. Us with access to power, us without.
Without more compassion, our riddle will continue determining relationships among us edgy Americans. And, we will continue making bad blood between us and our aching planet’s developing world. That’s the power of our riddle.
Notas:
barrio (from colonial Spanish; Tagalog; Indo patois): neighborhood. Village.
guapo (Spanish adjective): handsome.
gwapo (Tagalog and Indo patois noun): cool guys.
raza (Span): race.
silahkan (Bahasa Indonesia): if I may. If you please.
Polo’s essay based on conversations with Madison Hmong and on articles published in:
The New York Times, UWM Professor Althouse opinion, <www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/opinion/03althouse.html>;
Texas Lawyer, article on Duke University issue, <www.law.com/jsp/tx/PubArticleTX.jsp?id=1172138593811>.