In This Ethnically Diverse State, One’s Smile Is Another’s Slight

Navigating our way in 21st century California can be a minefield of tender and contending sensibilities. Hurt feelings seem to leap out from our deep recesses, the unintended consequence of misused slang, innocuous questions or unspoken assumptions.

With 34 million of us representing more than 100 ethnicities and speaking as many languages, clashes between our perceptions are inevitable. They usually occur when the moment’s dominant culture tramples on another culture whose sensitivities don’t register on the radar map.

Consider what an innocent word does to USC anthropologist Eugene Cooper.

Even after decades of immersing himself in the study of Chinese culture, Cooper still gets ticked off when his Chinese friends call him guailo--a “ghost man.” Chinese don’t consider the age-old term for a white man a pejorative. But Cooper, who speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, does.

A compliment irks Paramount business executive Richard Choi Bertsch. He wishes well-meaning Americans would stop complimenting him on how good his English is. That offends him as an American of dual racial heritage.

“How are you supposed to take that?” demands Bertsch, who is half German and half Korean.

He can also do without the oft-asked question: “Where do you come from?”

“When I say I’m from L.A., inevitably, they’ll ask, ‘But, where do you really come from?’ “--implying that someone who looks like Bertsch cannot be an American.

Alhambra financial advisor Absalom Villescas Jr., a third-generation Mexican American, can’t get over people whose conversation suggests that all Latinos love soccer, work with their hands in low-status occupations and are either immigrants or illegals.

“Hockey, not soccer, is my favorite sport,” Villescas would like to tell them. “I am Mexican, but I don’t fix cars. I am also a Republican who voted against Proposition 187,” which sought to restrict benefits to illegal immigrants. And a Baptist, who attends an Asian American church on his native Eastside because he feels an affinity with Asians who have moved into his neighborhood in large numbers in the last 15 years.

These unknowing offenses occur in the classroom, marketplace, workplace--even at church.

Caesar Peters, an African American actor, unwittingly insulted an Asian American teenager who had come to his Hollywood church to volunteer by describing her as Oriental.

“I am not a rug,” she told him.

He had no idea that Oriental had become a derogatory term. Since the encounter, Peters has been careful to use “Asian” exclusively.

When these affronts are left uncorrected and unexplained, they can fester. The most damaging example involved the misperceptions that gradually led to violence between African American shoppers and Korean American storekeepers in South-Central Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The presence of immigrant merchants in a community of largely poor American citizens created a tension of its own. This was exacerbated by Korean American shopkeepers’ reluctance to make eye contact with their customers and engage in small talk.

Black shoppers tended to regard this as disrespectful. Putting change on the counter, rather than in the customer’s hand, added fuel to the fire. The message black customers got was that Korean merchants were looking down on them.

The anger grew sharpest in 1991 when a Korean grocer scuffled with a black teenager who the grocer believed was stealing. The merchant shot the girl to death.

Veteran community watchers still believe that the accumulated ill will caused the targeting of Korean-owned businesses for destruction during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

For first-generation Korean immigrants, who had come from a Confucian culture in which silence is golden, an impassive expression is synonymous with dignity and idle talk is frowned upon, the riots were a cultural baptism by fire.

Korean Merchants Have Adjusted Since Riots

Gradually, Korean merchants have forced themselves to behave more expansively with their primarily black and Latino customers.

“We have all tried very, very hard since the riots,” said Bong-Su Lee, owner of Dairy Food Market in South-Central L.A. and vice president of the 3,500-member Korean American Grocers Assn.’s state chapter. “We needed to go an extra mile to reach out.”

Cultural training governs behavior as elemental as saying “yes” and “no.” Consider the case of two Los Angeles youngsters of a racially mixed marriage. Early on, their Japanese American father tried to instill in his progeny the Japanese ethos of enryo--holding back--by advising the children to always decline offers of food when visiting other people’s houses.

One afternoon, after visiting their white maternal grandmother, the boys dashed to the refrigerator, complaining that they were starving.

“We told Grandma we weren’t hungry, like you said,” the boys explained. The father had anticipated a different cultural pattern.

His children had learned the hard way, as have many Asians as part of their American passage: If you want a second serving of your hostess’ lasagna, say “yes” instead of declining and expecting that “no” will be interpreted as “yes, please.”

Our upbringing also governs when to look someone in the eye, smile, shake hands, hug or maintain silence--responses all open to interpretation.

When you look Olivia Roux in the eye, “that tells me you are listening. Sometimes your facial expression will tell me that you understand what I am saying. I am reading your body language.”

It delights Roux, office manager of a primarily black church in Inglewood, when you laugh easily while talking to her. “I conceive you as a friendly person,” she said.

By contrast, it bothers her when you let your eyes wander, looking around and down. That tells her you’re not paying attention to what she’s saying.

But to Angela Lee, a Korean immigrant mother, steeped in Confucian tradition, direct eye contact and uncensored facial expressions can be distracting.

She experienced this feeling when she went to see her son’s teacher at a Beverly Hills school.

“Her face told me it was an effort to listen to my halting English,” Lee said. “Her frowning face told me, ‘Please hurry.’ At times, she looked at me as if she wanted to complete sentences for me.”

Had the teacher averted her eyes or looked down--responses more common among Asians in that predicament--her furrowed forehead would not have seemed so pronounced.

But her body language offended Lee to the point of humiliation. In Lee’s book, the teacher failed miserably--that was no way to treat a guest, especially her student’s parent.

Smiling has long been the subject of misinterpretation and misunderstanding for students coming to the United States to study from the Confucian societies of East Asia.

In countries influenced by Confucius, the Chinese philosopher and teacher born 551 years before Christ, the sage’s system of ethics and rules for proper behavior are pervasive. (Korea was so enamored with Confucianism’s dictates on everything from education to social hierarchy that it adopted them as a state religion for six centuries until the peninsula was annexed by Japan in 1910.)

In the Confucian context, silence, not talking, is a virtue. Men and women keep their distance. Emotion is not displayed. A smile is reserved for one’s family and close friends.

“We warn them that when Americans smile, that doesn’t mean that they are falling in love with you,” said Ann Lau, a Torrance artist and native of Hong Kong who was educated in this country. Many a former foreign student has a tale about approaching the girl who smiled, only to learn that she already had a boyfriend.

During his 35 years as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Los Angeles, the Rev. John H. Townsend saw the once-white congregation become one of the most ethnically diverse in the city: 35% white, 26% Latino, 25% Asian and 14% black.

As Townsend presided over the changes inside the historic Mid-Wilshire house of worship from 1962 to 1997, he conscientiously embraced new sensibilities.

He learned to do a “modest tilt” of his head to greet Asian newcomers who preferred bowing, which signifies respect and humility, to shaking hands.

He welcomed Latino members, to whom embracing comes naturally, with a hug.

And he memorized handy expressions in different languages that reflected the composition of his congregation to let the new members know he was trying.

The breakthrough for this “reserved Anglo” came when he went to Los Angeles International Airport to pick up a 17-year-old Brazilian student whom the church had sponsored, sight unseen.

“The first thing he did was give me a big bear hug,” Townsend recalled. “Later, I learned to greet him that way, because that was so natural to him. Then it became natural for me.”

It took much longer for Townsend’s associate pastor, Jung-Nam Lee, a Korean American. His first hugging experience came on his graduation day from the American Baptist Seminary in West Covina 25 years ago. As aspiring ministers stood in a reception line to be congratulated, the wife of a classmate approached him, smiled and said: “Give me a big hug.”

Lee froze. The thought of hugging his classmate’s wife was too much for his Confucian sensibilities.

Today, hugging is no longer a problem, but Lee says that even 31 years and three American-born sons later, he still can’t get used to the Western custom of social kissing.

From the dominant American culture’s point of view, silence generally means agreement.

But to people who come from indirect cultures, which is much of Asia, silence can mean many things. Sometimes it means no. Or it can mean, “I don’t have anything to add,” as cross-cultural consultant David Wan put it. Or: “Don’t pursue the subject.” Or: “I am thinking.”

Silence can also signify unexpressed disagreement, because East Asians prefer not to say “no” in conversation, leaving it to be communicated by the context.

Most Asians are loath to say “no” to a person’s face, with the Japanese at the top of this heap. To the Japanese, maintaining harmony is the most important ingredient in human interaction. Saying no disturbs that.

“We go around and around in a vague way to imply ‘no’ but without ever saying it, because the term generates ill feeling,” said Walter Watanabe, a Nagoya, Japan-born business consultant who has lived many years in Los Angeles.

Asian languages offer a clue to this.

In Japanese and Korean, there are no definite or indefinite articles. In both languages the subject “I” is often unsaid, but understood. Both tongues are heavy on adjectives and adverbs. “Perhaps” and “maybe” are among the favorite words.

“When we talk, we talk in vague terms,” said Tong S. Suhr, a Los Angeles attorney and a student of Korean and Chinese classics. “When we talk, we never say one, two, three and four. We say just three or four. If you are specific and precise, we suspect that you are difficult. If you are too detailed, you irritate [my Korean sensibilities]. You seem petty to me.”

“Americans exist in a very explicit culture,” said Diana Rowland, a San Diego-based “cross-cultural” trainer and author of “Japanese Business Etiquette.” “We expect people to say things explicitly. Americans will say, ‘Well, I wasn’t told; nobody ever told me.’ ”

But in Japan, where there is a proverb, “Hear one, understand 10,” people can be assuming that “by saying one thing, the listener is picking up 10 other things by implication, by who said [what] and when, where and how,” Rowland said.

“Listening is such a simple word, but a lot of people fail,” said consultant Wan. American efficiency doesn’t afford one the time to build relationships, he said.

Asians, Europeans More Relationship Driven

“Americans are more bottom-line driven. Asians and Europeans are more relationship driven,” he said. “They want to cultivate relationships and work things out over a time.”

A Japanese listening to you very carefully may close his eyes in concentration--a disconcerting behavior to most Americans, who equate eye contact with attentiveness.

Curtiss Takada Rooks, who is half African American and half Japanese, understands.

Growing up in Manhattan, Kan., he juggled sometimes conflicting expectations at home. “With Dad, I looked him in the eye when he spoke, but with Mom, I didn’t,” he said.

Rooks, who teaches American culture and Asian American studies at San Jose State University, says his colleagues are sometimes puzzled that some of their Asian students appear to be “hiding their eyes” from them, “look shifty” and “not forthcoming” when they come to see them.

Rooks advises professors to interpret such behavior as an effort to be respectful of their position. He revels in the conflicting patterns of both of his cultures.

“When I am in the black community, I really love that sensibility of loudness,” he said. “When we laugh, we laugh from the gut. We play big. We table talk big. At the same time, in the Asian American settings, I particularly enjoy not having to speak--a sense of being understood without having to say something.”

Rooks said he knew California would be his home soon after he moved here in the early 1980s, when he and his Japanese American date went to a club in Gardena.

“I walked in the door and they were playing Motown and funk. Here’s all these Japanese American folks dancing to black music, and I thought to myself, ‘I am home.’ ”