Racism and Resentment

In response to “Living Under ‘a Veil of Denial,’ ” by Alfee Enciso, Voices, Dec. 28:

Alfee Enciso’s diatribe about racism, especially about the images in advertising that oppress him, raises some interesting questions. Japanese advertising, in Japan, is full of blonds, and department store mannequins that are not Caucasian are rare to nonexistent. Clearly the image of success in Japan, to a great extent, has been “Eurocentric.” Has this resulted in Japan being left behind in poverty, ignorance, oppression and lack of self-worth? Hardly. Indeed, there is a whole ring of Asian countries that hope Japan never regains the kind of “self-worth” it had before World War II.

What has happened in Japan contrasts sharply with the reaction and fate of other non-European countries. When China was defeated by Britain in the Opium Wars, its response was a futile and passive resentment very much like Enciso’s. When Japan was similarly defeated, it exploded into powerful and self-driven development that already by 1905 placed it in the ranks of the great powers.

Enciso’s paradigm is that others must change in order for him to do better. Indeed, he attacks the freedom of others, e.g., the advertisers, because he doesn’t see how to take advantage of his own freedom. This amounts to a long-term lease on poverty, bitterness and sterile political ideology. China, after all, eventually decided to adopt a Eurocentric political theory: Leninism. That was not much help--even while overseas Chinese, free of both mandarins and commissars, seemed to thrive wherever they went, despite living in places where they were strongly discriminated against, e.g., here in America but also in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc. They created resentment with their success, but resentment does not improve one iota the condition of the people doing the resenting. In Los Angeles, Koreans have achieved success with their small businesses. Advertising is not full of successful Koreans, nevertheless they bore the brunt of the resentment, hostility and looting during the riots.

It is time to stop “jousting at the windmills of racism,” as William Raspberry puts it, and pay attention to what produces economic success and what doesn’t. Enciso’s “truth” doesn’t. The hard work of Los Angeles’ Koreans does.

KELLEY L. ROSS

Philosophy Department

Los Angeles Valley College