MULTICULTURAL MANNERS : The Risk of Judging on Looks

When Sen. Alphonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) put on a fake Japanese accent to criticize O. J. Simpson case Judge Lance Ito last week, what he did was rude but not rare. For instance, D’Amato’s Congressional colleague Rep. Norman Mineta (D-San Jose) tells this story:

Mineta, a second-generation Japanese American and former mayor of San Jose, was invited to speak at a trade meeting in San Francisco. When Mineta finished addressing the crowd, one American executive congratulated him, saying, “Gee, Congressman, you speak excellent English. How long have you been in our country?”

What went wrong? The executive assumed by looking at Mineta that he was foreign-born. More than 50 years ago those same assumptions existed and, during World War II, Japanese Americans were treated as enemy aliens on the basis of their ethnic origin. In spite of being loyal Americans, two-thirds of them native-born U.S. citizens, they were considered risks to national security and sent to relocation camps.

Mineta, a sponsor of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to redress Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in the 1940s was re-experiencing that same irrationality. Asian Americans often report strangers asking where they are from and when the answer is “Texas” or “Michigan,” the questioners will add, “I mean originally?”

Rule: Don’t use physical appearance to judge “American-ness.”