In an earlier post entitled “The Downside of Diversity,” I wrote about a recent study that concluded that all other things being equal, cities that have higher levels of racial/ethnic diversity also have lower rates of civic participation, trust among residents, and other measures of “social capital.”

I argued that perhaps one of the reasons for this surprising finding is that external stressors such as the Iraq War, economic uncertainty, environmental degradation, diminished individual liberties, humanitarian crises around the world, to name just a few, set up a political climate and social framework that have made Americans more fearful, uncertain, pessimistic, defensive, and/or distrustful of many things, not just increasing racial/ethnic diversity.

As further example of that, I refer to an article in Time Magazine that marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on New Orleans, by describing how, in the context of trying to rebuild the city, racial tensions between Black and White residents unfortunately are at an all-time high:

City council meetings have devolved into shouting matches. Local crime stories on the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s web site, which allows readers to post comments, are inevitably followed by a string of missives reeking of barely disguised racial hostility, calling for citizens to arm themselves against the “thugs” responsible for the city’s sky-high murder rate.

And a string of guilty pleas from corrupt city officials . . . has elicited charges that white prosecutors are motivated by race; even the somewhat staid Louisiana Weekly, an 80-year-old newspaper targeted to African-American readers, recently ran an op-ed piece claiming the U.S. Attorney’s Office was abetting a white power grab. . . .

Hill points out that in times of crisis . . . ethnic groups tend to circle the wagons. “When people’s basic psychological needs, and physical needs — security, food and sustenance, health care — are not being met . . . there’s a tendency to fall back on ethnic group identity,” he says. “[B]both whites and African-Americans have fallen back on their ethnic group identity to fulfill their basic needs.". . .

But the underlying cause of racial tension . . . lies in a string of broken promises that predate Hurricane Katrina, says Ronald Chisom, executive director of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a collective of community organizations based in New Orleans. “This disaster has just compounded what we’ve dealt with for years,” Chisom says.

Before the storm, poor schools, inadequate health care, low wages, high unemployment and substandard housing were the norm for a vast number of New Orleanians, especially poor blacks; since Katrina, Chisom says, those problems have intensified.

This article is a perfect illustration of how external political, economic, and demographic issues are often at the heart of racial/ethnic tensions in a particular city. In other words, it is not necessarily the level of racial/ethnic diversity that is the problem per se.

Rather, as this article highlights, it is the frustrations people feel due to systematic political neglect and economic insecurity that often drive racial/ethnic tensions. In other words, this is the political climate and social framework that, I believe, eventually makes people turn against racial diversity as the most convenient scapegoat for their frustrations.

In that sense, New Orleans is just a microcosm of the American society and the multidimensional nature of American race relations.

You may have heard that President Bush recently tried to use the legacy of the Viet Nam to his advantage by saying that if the U.S. would have stayed in the Viet Nam War longer then it perhaps could have even won or at least prevented the rise of communist regimes such as the Khmer Rouge. Clearly this is his attempt to counter his critics who are increasingly comparing the U.S.’s involvement in Iraq to that in Viet Nam. Not surprisingly, his critics here in the U.S. and in Viet Nam have jumped on this analogy as another sign that Bush is completely out of touch with reality:

People in Vietnam . . . said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict. “Doesn’t he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?” said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. “Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn’t prolonged except Bush.” . . .

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, former chairwoman of the National Assembly’s committee on foreign affairs, said Mr. Bush was unwise to stir up sensitive memories of the Vietnam War. “The price we, the Vietnamese people on both sides, paid during the war was due to the fact that the Americans went into Vietnam in the first place,” Ninh said.

Mr. Bush’s comments drew criticism from politicians and historians who claimed he did not understand the lessons of the Vietnam War or was using the wrong historical lessons to sell our military’s continued presence in Iraq. . . .

“The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early,” said Steven Simon, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to (Khmer Rouge leader) Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay, the worse it gets.”

I don’t even know where to begin here. First of all, it’s rather ironic that Bush is lecturing us on the Viet Nam War since he purposely did everything he could to avoid serving his country and joining the military at the time. Second, I will leave it up to his critics who can much more eloquently explain the logical fallacies of his argument that the U.S. should have stayed longer, other than to say that this is the same logic he’s been using to keep doing the same old, same old stuff in Iraq.

Ultimately, I think the larger question is, would I, my family, and the entire Vietnamese American community have been better off if the U.S. would have stayed out of Viet Nam altogether? My answer is, to be perfectly honest, if there would have been no U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam War, I don’t think I would be here living in the U.S.

In fact, I am confident that in absolute and relative terms, my life would be worse off today if the U.S. never got involved (I might even say I may have never even been born since my parents met each other when they were both working for the U.S. military in Saigon).

As I have said repeatedly, I am eternally thankful for the U.S. in giving me and about a million other Vietnamese Americans the chance to start a new life here where we have basic individual freedoms that billions of people around the world do not have.

My quarrel is not with American society -- it’s with politicians like Bush who try to rewrite history to fit their political agenda.

In many ways, Native American Indians are the worst off socioeconomically, of all the major racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. There are different opinions about why that is the case, but nonetheless, the history of systematic mistreatment of the Native American Indian population is well-documented. In this context, I was a little surprised to learn that in fact, Native American Indians have the highest rate of enlistment in the military of all racial groups, but with different reasons than one might expect:

One reason for the high participation rates, to be sure, are the career and economic benefits. “The military is seen as an opportunity,” says Mark St. Pierre, an historian. His book, Of Uncommon Birth: Dakota sons in Vietnam, follows native Americans who fought in Southeast Asia. . . . “People on this reservation realize they will get VA benefits,” he says, “that they might go to college.” . . .

Yet the cultural motivations for military service run deep among native Americans, too – and set them apart from many other minority groups. A sense of tribal duty is often a primary motivator. . . . It’s evident that patriotism runs deep here on the Navajo reservation. Many houses fly American flags, and the national anthem is sung at most community events. But native Americans often interpret these symbols differently from the rest of society. . . .

[W]hen Mary Cohoe looks at the flag, she doesn’t think about Congress, the president, or democratic ideals. To her, Old Glory is a symbol of the US military and the physical sacrifices she and her people have made for their land. . . . “It’s our dirt,” she says. “That’s where we came from. The flag is the loyalty that we have, as Navajo, to Mother Earth.” . . .

As Ms. Cohoe and other veterans explain, the military is one way for native Americans to gain power in a country that they believe continues to ignore and mistreat them. “We are using the system to protect our culture – to survive,” she says.

In the same way that the Japanese American soldiers who fought in the 442nd RCT in World War II put aside their trauma of seeing almost their entire community imprisoned without just cause, so too must I give major props to Native American Indians who put their lives on the line to protect the fundamental rights and privileges that were systematically denied to them for centuries by our government.

In addition, the motivations of Native American Indian soldiers of fighting to not only serve our country but also to preserve their ancestral culture and historical identity of their tribe is another powerful example of a recurring them that I’ve posted about in this blog -- that racial/ethnic minorities are forging their own individual and collective identities that combine elements of both mainstream American society and their traditional culture

And in the process of forging this new inclusive identity, Native American Indians also help to expand and diversify the definition of what it means to be “American.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you know that China is all over the news lately. And almost all of that media and public attention has not been flattering. To add more fuel to the fire, the Washington Post has an article describing the controversy surrounding the upcoming memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. to be placed in Washington DC -- the sculptor is from China:

For China’s artists, the selection of [Yixin] Lei as the lead sculptor for the project, to be unveiled in 2009 on the Mall, is a triumphant moment. It is a recognition of how rapidly their status has progressed in the generation that has grown up since the repressive years of the Cultural Revolution.

Not everyone feels this way. Atlanta resident Lea Winfrey Young says the “outsourcing” by U.S. companies and organizations to China has gone too far this time. She and her husband, Gilbert Young, a painter, are leading a group of critics who argue that an African American -- or any American -- should have been picked for such an important project.

“Dr. King’s statue is to be shipped here in a crate that supposedly says ‘Made in China.’ That’s just obscene,” Winfrey Young says. By awarding the contract to a Chinese artist, the foundation financing the project has touched on sensitivities at the core of U.S.-Sino relations: nationalism, racism and worries about what China’s emergence as an economic and cultural world power means for America. . . .

In Lei’s home town of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, talk of the controversy in the United States draws not anger but bewilderment. Wasn’t it King’s dream to end all racism? Lei asked. “He has always dreamed that people from all over the world will not be judged by the color of their skin -- that we would all be brothers and sisters and enjoy equal opportunity. Now I have the luck to get this opportunity,” he said.

To be fair, I can see where the criticisms on the choice of sculptor come from. The Civil Rights Movement was a defining moment not only for American society and history, but particularly for the African American community. It was a proud and shining moment in which they collectively showed their strength, determination, and pride. Their most important leader of course, was Martin Luther King Jr.

Since he was the most visible public figure from such a socially significant time period and represents an almost God-like hero to the entire African American community, I can see why Blacks feel insulted that the sculptor for a monument to their leader was not “one of them.” There are parallels to the Asian American community, such as in the examples of “yellowface” where White actors are cast to portray Asian characters, the most recent example of which was Brian Dennehy playing Kublai Khan.

At the same time, Lei’s supporters are absolutely right when they say that one of Dr. King’s most enduring legacies is that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. In this case, the sculptor was chosen for the quality and impact of his creative work. It just so happened that he is Chinese.

In recent incidents about the sub-par and even dangerous quality of goods made in China, Americans certainly have a right to complain and to be wary of such Chinese “products.” But in this case, Dr. King’s memorial is not being “outsourced” overseas like it is some kind of t-shirt or toothpaste or running shoe. It is being created by a world-renown artist who happens to be Chinese.

If we recall, the some of the same criticisms were leveled at Maya Lin when she won the competition to design the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC. Many veterans were insulted and offended that the lead designer was not “one of them,” otherwise phrased as a White male, or at least someone who more accurately fit the conventional picture of an “American.”

But as it turned out, the Viet Nam War Memorial is the most popular attraction in Washington DC and Maya Lin’s simple, elegant, and poignant design has proved incredibly moving and healing to millions of Americans from all backgrounds.

I would like to ask the African American community to give Yixin Lei the same opportunity to come through with an equally impressive tribute.

When it comes to politics, cynics like to note that ultimately, all the candidates are virtually identical in terms of their fundamental beliefs. Some even like to say that in the end, Republicans and Democrats are all basically the same as well. As it turns out, according to the Political Compass and their test of political ideology across axes of left-right and authoritarian-libertarian, the results may be a little surprising:

The results show that in terms of their placement along the four quadrants of left-right and authoritarian-libertarian, almost all of the candidates, Democratic and Republican, place in the authoritarian-right category. According to these results, the only “true” liberals are Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.

Am I surprised? A little bit. Am I shocked? Not really.

p.s. In case you’re curious, my position on the political compass is below.

For years, even decades, sociologists and criminologists have produced studies that consistently note that racial differences exist when it comes to how death penalty sentences are carried out. As Newsweek magazine now confirms, as a new sociological study documents, the consensus is clear -- in capital punishment cases, Blacks are disproportionately discriminated against, both as perpetrators and as victims:

Blacks on death row convicted of killing whites are more likely to be executed than whites who kill minorities. It also concludes that Blacks who kill other minorities are less likely to be executed than blacks who kill whites. The authors of the report say their findings raise serious doubts about claims that the U.S. criminal justice system is colorblind. . . .

[The study’s authors speculate that] prosecutors often win higher office if they win well-publicized cases. When a black kills a white such killings gets more publicity and we have evidence for that.

Unfortunately, this is further evidence that justice is definitely now blind in this country. Instead, what we see is that the life of a racial minority, particularly if /she is Black, is systematically devalued compared to that of a White person, whether it pertains to criminal justice, or even life-threatening visits to the emergency room.

In simple, plain English, that is what we refer to as racism.

I have a very good friend who is White and who occasionally reads this blog. Recently he said to me that although he enjoys learning about the issues I write about, he laments that when it comes to discussing race relations, most of my posts seem to focus on its negative aspects -- discrimination, racism, etc. Well, if he’s reading this, I hope he’ll enjoy reading about one positive story on the topic of race relations -- the success of multicultural learning environments on college campuses:

Five years ago, when Purdue University’s administrators sat down to brainstorm ways to improve diversity and retain students, they came up a solution they never thought would become an award-winning retention program.

In their program, “Multicultural Learning Communities,” a diverse selection of students studying the same discipline live in the same dorm as well as take the same classes. MCL project enforce the importance of living and learning from a multiple perspectives by requiring students in the courses to live and learn together. . . .

In an environment in which minority students feel welcome and a part of, they’re more likely to stay enrolled and go on to graduate because they feel at home, said Andrew Koch, director of student access, transition and success programs. . . . Though the university encourages all first-year students to participate in the learning communities, specific recruitment efforts are made to target minority students for the multicultural program. . . .

The first-to-second year retention rate for program participants is 90.57 percent compared to 84.17 percent for non-participants. Slightly more than 87 percent of minority participants returned, compared to 78.9 percent for minorities who did not participate in the program.

This is one instance in which a targeted focus on the histories, experiences, and needs of racial/ethnic minorities -- which includes both minority students and White students -- has proven to have positive, successful outcomes for such students. In other words, in contrast to critics of affirmative action who charge that such a focus is socially divisive, the results say otherwise -- students from all racial backgrounds benefit from such programs.

I think the lesson to be learned here is, there’s no need to fear multiculturalism. Yes there are ways in which multiculturalism can be expressed in extremist and divisive ways, but they do not represent the norm or the mainstream of such multicultural programs. Instead, the vast majority of such programs tend to share the same objective as the Purdue University program -- to educate and support students of all races, not to accuse or denounce one over another.

Issues surrounding women and racial minority college faculty have been a recurring them in my blog, especially in regard to the challenges that they face in succeeding that frankly, White male professors are less likely to face. Along those same lines, Inside Higher Education reports that a new study argues that while colleges and universities often have welcoming-sounding policies in place, the actual collegial climate in a particular department may be quite different for women and minority junior faculty:

[T]he study pointed to the importance of remembering the difference between establishing sound policies (which many institutions have done) and making sure that they are effective and working for everyone (which is more difficult). “A change in policy does not necessarily mean a change in practice or climate,” [the study’s authors] said.

In many cases, colleges that have adopted policies may need “to drill down” to the department level to see why they are or aren’t working. The breakdowns on climate and collegiality are important, Trower said, because professors entering academe today are more likely to place a high value on such qualities than were previous generations of academics, who might have been more likely to accept a lousy a climate at a prestigious institution. . . .

Women see upper limits on teaching and committee assignments as a more important issue than do men. Women are more likely to value stop-the-clock policies on tenure, child care, and the availability of paid or unpaid personal leave. Junior faculty who are not white are much more likely than their white colleagues to see child care and a spousal hiring program as important.

Actually, the study’s finding that what exists in principle at the university level doesn’t always translate smoothly onto the departmental level is not new. In fact, this discrepancy occurs frequently as departments have a lot of latitude in determining how to take action on particular university-wide “goals” such as who to hire and what benefits to give to particular professors.

In my relatively limited experience as a faculty member, I recognize that there are both benefits and drawbacks to giving departments significant power to implement general university-wide goals. However, when it comes to diversifying faculty to be more inclusive and welcoming towards women and racial minorities, the White male establishment culture that exists in many departments is an incredible barrier to overcome.