The Michigan Daily -- Thursday, September 8, 1988 - Page 3 GOALS p 1 11 Why haven't you seen my face at yours? But we believe these stereotype m. p 11 p a BY DELRO HARRIS AND CURT LIM A few months ago, at the Ann Arbor Denny's on Washtenaw, three Asian students, having dinner, were racially harassed by two couples sitting in the booth behind them. The men harassing the Asians were making noises, attempting to mock Oriental sounds the same way children make sing-song noises Issues imitating Chinese or Jap- anese. This story is different because the men were Black. They were harassing the Asians despite the fact that the three students all spoke English, and that all of them together, Asian and Black, were minorities. You don't always hear about the conflict between Asians and Blacks. You al- most never hear about the conflict minorities have with each other. It would be a lie to say that Asians haven't done the same or similar to Blacks. Asians call Blacks nigger just as much as Blacks call them chink or jap. It happens more than we like to think. It would also be ridiculous to assume that the same doesn't happen between Hispanics and Native Americans. Of course it does. It happens between us all. Why we must es. We believe THAT KIND OF prejudice is the most senseless of all. Notice the term "prejudice." Racism doesn't quite fit here. Racism is too strong a word; it implies something much broader, much more oppressive. It's difficult to imagine any minority group oppressing another; we simply don't have the numbers or the power, economically or otherwise. Racism is the act of one race asserting its domination or superiority over another. Prejudice is the stupidity of actually believing that illusion: that somehow WE are better than THEM. As minorities, we're very capable of believing that illusion. We keep that prejudice alive to the point where we work against, rather than with, each other. So why can't we work together? That may sound like a naive question, but it is a ques- tion necessary to ask. We can work together, but don't because we don't know each other or each other's respective histories. Many of us have been cut off from our own histories. Sure we know about slavery and the railroads and the concentration camps and the reserva- tions, and maybe we know a little about the civil rights movement. But do we know how all that has affected us? Do we know what has been happening to us - all of us - in the last 20 years? Or today, now? Chances are, we don't. And there's a reason for that. WE LIVE IN a predominantly white culture. This is not an indictment of whites; we, as a combined minority, constitute a little less than 20 percent of the American popula- tion. We can't escape the influences of that culture. We see whites on television, in the news, read about them in our books and mag- azines. When we see minorities in the media, we do not always see a fair or accurate repre- sentation of who we are. We grow up believ- ing ourselves to be deficient because we do not meet the white standard. Our hair is wrong, our skin is too dark, our eyes are ugly and distorted. We see stereotypes of ourselves and accept them even though we know them to be wrong. As Hispanics, for instance, we do not all come from poor families and are not all illegal aliens. As Blacks, we are not all pushers and are not all violent. As Native Americans, we do not walk around with fea- thers in our hair. As Asians, we are not all mathematical geniuses who desire to be white. them about ourselves and believe them about each other. This is where our misconceptions become weapons against us. If we are wise enough to see a clearer picture of ourselves we are lucky; we have our family and friends to help us. We don't always have other minorities beside us, however, to help us see a clearer picture of them. We place trust in these misconceptions, and we start to think: why should I help the Blacks? They've got to help themselves. Why should I help the Asians? They have no prob- lems. What do Hispanics want? Let them pull themselves'up by their own bootstraps. We can't give America back to the Indians. They have to fend for themselves. Sometimes we go even further: we think that if we can con- vince ourselves the other group is inferior then that will make us feel superior. The op- pressed sometimes take on the characteristics of the oppressor. In our attempts to join the status quo we indirectly support the oppres- sion of others. And that illusion defeats us. It will always keep us apart. We can't use stere- otypes to combat each other; that's useless. We have to combine with one another to combat the stereotypes. See Cooperate, Page 5 Crying freedom Some 100 marchers take to the streets of Ann Arbor to raise their voices against South African apartheid and American racism at the 3rd annual Unity Day Freedom March. The April 4 march, sponsored by the United Coalition Against Racism and the Free South Africa Coordinating Committee, was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. UCAR center to combat racism BY LILLIEN WALLER "I don't claim to have any corner on the answer, but I believe that the struggle is eternal. Somebody else carries on." These words, taken from a quote by Ella Baker in Ellen Cantarow's 1980 publication Moving the Mountain: Women Working for So- cial Change, speak to one of the goals of the Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Ed- ucation, a project initiated by the United Coalition Against Racism. THE CENTER, which will officially open this fall at the Uni- versity, seeks to promote anti-racist research and education and to en- courage an environment in which young political activists and radical scholars can think in order to act, struggle lay in the hands of the young, so their active involvement in the anti-racist struggle is pivotal. BEFORE HER death in 1986, Baker had been an activist for more than 50 years, working first with the National Association of the Ad- vancement of Colored People in the '30s and '40s, and then with the Southern Christian Leadership Con- ference (SCLC) and In Friendship in the late '50s. It was her emphasis on grassroots organizing and group- centered leadership that eventually sparked the pivotal, Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of the '60s. Nelson Mandela, who has come to be a world-wide symbol of anti- racist struggle, is one of the impris- oned leaders of the anti-apartheid or- complish? "We really want to avoid calling the center a 'think tank' because we think that such a label is intellectu- ally elitist and really doesn't speak to what we hope to accomplish with the center," said Tracye Matthews, a UCAR steering committee member. "Rather, we hope that the center will be accessible to those outside of the academy and that its work will be presented in such a way that ev- eryone can understand and benefit from it." Indeed, one of the primary goals of the center is to bring younger, less experienced activists together with more experienced radical schol- ars in order to discuss and analyze issues pertinent to the anti-racist struggle. In addition, the develop- and debate of these issues without being alienating, without the usual lack of connection between theory and life experience, and with an em- phasis on the importance of young student participation and the leader- ship of people of color in an anti- racist struggle." Deriving inspiration from centers like the Highlander Folk School and the London-based Institute of Race Relations, the Baker-Mandela Center will have four specific functions that will help it to achieve its goals. The center will have a Speakers Bureau that will hold workshops, speak with classes and community groups, and speak on request on various as- pects of racism and social activism. In addition, the center will main- tain a massive resource center of al- lications that will discuss in depth and in a scholarly manner the issues that the project was designed to explore - issues that are tradi- tionally marginalized by mainstream scholarship. These publications, which will include- everything from position papers on "Incorporating a Non-sex- ist Agenda into an Anti-racist Movement" to recorded oral histories of former and current activists, will be made available as "tools" for anti- racist activism. Probably one of the most im- portant functions of the Baker-Man- dela Center, however, will be its program in leadership training. Ella Baker was once quoted as saying, "I just don't see anything to be sub- stituted for having people understand