READING THE PAIN - JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND
This slightly expanded piece, with a proper title, is based on my 14 June 2020 comment
posted to The Washington Post, 12 June 2020
OpEd. by Tre Johnson
"When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs.
​I'm caught in a time loop where my white friends and acquaintances perform the same pieties over and over again." 

---

Vertical Divider

I am 72, a citizen of Thailand. In all my life I have never been identified by the color of my skin. I am only known by my name and my works. In Thailand skin color does not matter. The thought of myself having some kind of color on my natural skin never entered my mind. Thai people are just like that - not skin-color conscious. But the minute I enter the United States I am automatically branded a yellow-skin 'Oriental'. This is all wrong! No human being has yellow skin. No-one has real white skin either. And I am not an oriental. I am just a Thai, meaning a citizen of a country called Thailand. As for 'oriental', to me, it is just the name of a good hotel in Bangkok loved by Joseph Conrad during his Lord Jim's colonial days sojourn in 'the Orient'.

I have been observing racism in America since I was 18 attending a senior year at Park Hill High School, Parkville, Missouri. Maybe because of my look, I was given the role of one of the Japanese Okinawan villagers in the school play "The Teahouse of the August Moon".  But really, I never sensed any kind of racial prejudice at Park Hill High, or anywhere in Missouri, for that matter. Life of a foreign (Oriental) student in an American high school in 1966-67 was all fun, just plain fun!

Fifty years on, I now see a different America under the Trump era where white supremacy start coming out of the closet and racial tension is more like a cold civil war. Superficial changes have been introduced over the pre-Trump years to ease racial discrimination. The word 'Negro' had become an 'N word' and was replaced by the word 'black' and then 'colored' and then 'African American". The word 'Oriental' was outlawed by the Act of Congress banning its use in all official communication. So 'Oriental' is now the 'O Word' in America. 'Asian American', whatever and whoever that means, has become the 'New Yellow'.

I do not have a book club to join in Thailand but I read books from my own private collections to help myself better understand whatever puzzles me in the news.

For the current racial crisis in America, my first read is "The American Republic Since 1887", a 2007 Glencoe textbook my son once used in Walla Walla High School. This helps me understand the sense of history in the mind of youth in America today.

Laura Coates of CNN, while reporting from Minnesota, recommended Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" which I will read after I finish Hugh Brogan's "The Penguin History of the USA" (2001). I have read Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" a few times and plan to re-read de Tocqueville's idea on American prison reform in 1800s again. Of course, I enjoy Toni Morrison's "Love" almost every other Valentines until now that I am a little too old for romance.

I read the journal of Foreign Affairs' "America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy" By Annette Gordon-Reed January/February 2018. This Harvard law and history professor clearly explains why emancipation of slavey could not abolish white supremacy along with it. The great American experiment in democracy with freedom and equality at its heart declares that “all men are created equal,” with “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". The "Declaration of Independence" of 1776 was written by Thomas Jefferson, himself a slave owner.   ⤴︎

Vertical Divider

The original 13 colonies that agreed to joint the United States, to one degree or another, allowed slavery to continue. The American constitution, signed in 1787, ratified in 1788, and came into force in 1789, counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for the purpose of apportioning members of the House of Representatives.  

The first decades of the Republic was built by slave owners by the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson. The civil war from 1861 to 1865 was all about slavery which fortunately ended in the defeat of the Confederates in the South. Slavery in America had been legally abolished by the 13th Amendment in 1865 but white supremacy was not exactly 'gone with the wind'. It is the whites who led, won, and lost the war against and for slavery. It is probably a nationalistic reason that propels the thought of tearing down statutes of the southern confederate generals and rid their names off some present-day military establishments, e.g., Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Hood, and Fort Lee.
​
But what about the slave owner General George Washington Monument on the Capitol Mall?
And what about his face along with that of another patriotic slave owner Thomas Jefferson on Mt.Rushmore? They are just inches away from the face of the great slave emancipator Abraham Lincoln!

The physical Civil War may have ended 155 years ago. But in the hearts and minds of Americans today it seems the War still rages on and with increasing intensity.

Professor Annette Gordon-Reed notes: "Abraham Lincoln understood that the central question for the United States after the Civil War was whether blacks could be fully incorporated into American society."

It appears now in 2020, after 244 years of independence, the American Experiment in democracy has failed to live up to the high praise of Alexis de Tocqueville. It disappointed the world where America had long been looked up to as the benchmark in democracy. Maybe the pursuit of happiness can be found somewhere else.

Even though I do not quite understand racism in America enough to help solve the two-centuries-old social conflicts, but I take comfort in reading, trying to understand, and sharing the pain.  I am sure one day a solution can be found. 

Life is so short and there are many more books on American affairs to read if I ever will understand the real America.

Somkiat Onwimon
17 June 2020

Reference:
America’s Original Sin: Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy, by Annette Gordon-Reed, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, January/February 2018
​
IN MY OPINION

---