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June 21, 2012
If there were a Wall on the Washington Mall for all victims of hate, all of our names would be on it. There are many who have lost their lives outright, killed by hate, victims of brutal violence. We cannot forget them; to forget them would be to lose our souls, to slip into an amnesia of consciousness, the madness of ignorance, the desecration of the highest hopes of our humanity. But if there were a Wall, all of our names would be on it. None of us escape the grasp of hatred. Hatred is an infernal possibility of the human mind. Many of us need not reflect long to recognize how the hatred of others has harmed us. More reflection is required to see how our own hatred harms others, and yes, ourselves. We are all victims of hate, external and internal – as if those were separate.
June 23rd, 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the killing of Vincent Chin. Chin got into an argument with whites at his Bachelor party in Highland Park, Michigan on June 19th, 1982. After he left the club, two white men, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, tracked down Chin and after allegedly spouting racial epithets and blaming Chin for the loss of their jobs in the auto industry (“it’s because of m---ers like you that we’re out of work!”) they beat him unconscious with a baseball bat. Chin died after being in a coma for four days. The two men were given extremely lenient sentences, leading to an outcry. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, said “What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives. Something is wrong with this country.” The death of Chin became a rallying cry for Asian Americans, and is often cited as the beginning of the pan-Asian American movement in this country.
This weekend, there will be a national “Google Hangout” to commemorate the death of Chin, and discuss more recent attacks (such as the death of Private Danny Chen) and the ongoing effects of 9/11 on the Asian American community. For more details, see http://www.apaforprogress.org/vc30.
That this 30th anniversary will be marked by a nationwide conversation is a kind of victory. This is progress, but built on the blood of the fallen. I wish we didn’t have to have these kinds of events at all; I wish Vincent had been able to get married and experience the fullness of life. In remembering his loss, we have to recognize our good fortune and commit ourselves to the end of hate.
Last weekend saw the death of Rodney King. Just shy of his 26th birthday in 1991, he was viciously attacked by four LAPD Officers after a traffic stop. This attack, unlike Vincent Chin’s, unlike Trayvon Martin’s, unlike nearly all of the attacks like it – was captured on video and led to worldwide outrage, and a trial. We all know the result – the four officers were acquitted by an all-white jury sparking the 1992 LA riots, which some call “the uprising”, that led to 55 deaths. King, still recovering from his injuries, voiced what might end up being the most memorable question of the 20th Century: “Can we all just get along?”
Despite the difficulties of King’s life, he yearned for “getting along”, and had a taste of it as a child, in his multiracial church. But it wasn’t enough to rid him of his demons – alcohol, drugs, and criminal acts. He was not a perfect man, but he lived in a far-from-perfect world. We have an African American President, but African Americans as a population suffer from disproportionate poverty, disease, incarceration, and other forms of suffering. It is resounding evidence of the ongoing failure of our democracy, and an example of how hatred, ignorance, and devaluation work their way into the institutions of our land. If the issues of minorities and the poor weren’t given short shrift, limited airtime and time in the halls of government – how different could this country be? I feel a loss of hope in our collective dream, when it seems we have to fight so hard to be seen and heard.
And yet this is the same country where I can sit at a table and phonebank for the President’s campaign with young people whose families escaped fascist dictatorship in Peru and communism in China. This is a country that still inspires with its ideals and promise. We still struggle to “form a more perfect union”, to fulfill the phrase on our National Seal, “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one. But as that young Peruvian American woman said of Latinos in this country, “we’re tired of being seen as the enemy – we’re not.”
That’s the consequence of hatred, fear and misunderstanding – call it ignorance. We oppress others with our thoughts and actions out of fear of what we think those others represent. We make them our enemies. We think we are protecting ourselves, but we are only limiting ourselves and dimming our own light. That is what happened to the men who attacked Vincent Chin and Rodney King, that is what happened to George Zimmerman.
Many of us have anger for those who commit these acts of violence, anger at the consciousness that perpetuates racism, homophobia, sexism and other forms of hate. Many of us also have anger at a government that seems more moved by money than it is by hope, blinding it to the needs of the vast majority of its people. Is this not also a form of hatred and ignorance – a devaluing of the whole in favor of a wealthy few?
If there were a Wall on the Mall for the victims of hate, all of our names would be on it. The names of the fallen are forever engraved; but this is a wall where we can take down our own names.
We can place them on the ever-growing Wall of Hope.
This is a bonus article in a multi-part series on difficult people and situations. About half will be available online, and all are available as an e-book here. The e-book includes the entire series, along with three special essays (not available online) on “Healing the World” (blending environmentalism, Buddhism and Star Trek with the path of coping with difficult people and situations), Coping with Anger, and Presidential Politics as a difficult situation. It's got humor and heart - one reviewer says "It's a lot of wisdom for 99 cents!" Difficult People 101: The DP Challenge.
Addendum: Hate is a form of bias, of stereotyping and labeling. Stay tuned to The Pacific Heart for more on these topics, or delve into more details on other blogs at Psychology Today.
© 2012 Ravi Chandra, M.D. All rights reserved.
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