Kenji Hosokawa's column "Interracial Relationships," January 19] has disturbed me in many ways. First of all, he falsely claims that race has been a problem in American society after "the demise of the 'evil empire.'" For when the first white northern European imperialists set foot on Plymouth Rock in the 17th century, racial diversity was imposed on North America and the natives living there.
Then he proposes that in post-cold war America, "race may be the emerging definition of our identities." I suppose Hosokawa has neglected the fact that African-Americans were restricted by racism to the inhuman status of slaves for 100 years after the creation of our nation and then were only given the status of second-class citizens with the advent of apartheid from their emancipation for another 100 years -- c. 1863 - 1960s. Race has been the only defining character for African-Americans in the eyes of white America for at least 200 years. They were not "seeking another set of values with which to identify themselves," for that would imply that they had a choice to decide what their identity would be.
In other countries in our hemisphere, there has also been a great deal of ethnic and racial diversity throughout their histories, yet when they liberated themselves from Spain, they also liberated their slaves. Unlike post-Civil War America, they did not segregate their society along racial lines, but in many cases they even elected presidents of various races, ethnicities and genders. I am certainly not saying that our neighbors are free from problems with race relations, but these nations do illustrate that racial and ethnic diversity is not in itself a problem for society.
Race and ethnicity are components of each individual and ought naturally to influence the "definition of our identities." It is not race, but racism, which threatens the future of our country. A possible reason, but not excuse, for racism in the United States can certainly be found in the history of British imperialism and the transfer of that racist imperial culture to its colonies.
After all, the similarities between the British empire's conflict with Ghandi and the segregated United States' conflict with Martin Luther King, Jr. are surely more than coincidental. It will be difficult but certainly not impossible to at least attain the degree of racial harmony found in nearly every other community in the Western Hemisphere, despite our historical disadvantages.
Hosokawa ends his column by saying "as we treat race as a form of identity, I wonder if Tocqueville would speak with the same optimism today." Well, Tocqueville lived in a France which liberated its slaves during the French Revolution; he saw the emergence of an apartheid-free Haiti and several other revolutions in the Americas holding similar beliefs in the rights of man, which were by nature irreconcilable with racism. Perhaps he believed that, despite our nation's history of racism, natural law would have to prevail; perhaps he believed that, despite slavery and apartheid due to British colonization, the inherent belief of all Americans in the equality of human beings would solve the problems of racism over time.
Regarding racism, I think that today Tocqueville would realize that we have come a long way the past couple of hundred years and that he would say "with the same optimism" that we will continue our progress against racism.
