The tsunami, Pearl Harbor, and FaceBook

A colleague brought to my attention a compilation of anti-Japanese comments from FaceBook posted at the blog Pharyngula.   (Ignore the source:  I am well aware that P.Z. Meyers is an anti-religious bigot, but that is irrelevant to the question at hand.)  The vituperative tone of all of these comments betrays a meanness of spirit that is very sad.   It goes beyond schadenfreude to reveal a profound hatefulness.  As my son just put it, this is sick vengefulness.

The common theme of almost all the posts is an explicit link between the tsunami and Pearl Harbor:  “Remember Pearl Harbor,”  “Karma is a bitch”, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer country.”  Pearl Harbor is, of course, iconic in the American imagination, but it seems a stretch to believe that genuine anger over the attack on Pearl Harbor (almost 70 years ago) lies behind these comments.  After all, looking at the pictures of the posters, it is fair to assume most of them are young enough that their grandparents lived through WWII.

Therefore, it seems to me that Pearl Harbor is standing in for something else–a floating signifier, as post-modernists would say.  So what is the source of the anger and hatred?   One (non)explanation is that it really is not coming from anywhere:  that these are simply callow individuals who are getting a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense, and “Pearl Harbor” is just a convenient cultural hook  to hang their anger from.  This is possible but it does not seem to be probable.  Certainly I do not remember similar comments after Haiti’s earthquake (Pat Robertson’s maunderings excepted) or after the tsunami in Indonesia.  There were some tasteless jokes, but they seem to me different in both degree and kind.

Another possible explanation is that it represents an irruption of anti-Asian bigotry.  Anti-Japanese and more generally anti-Asian racism have a long history in the United States, particularly on the West Coast, reaching its nadir in the Japanese internment camps during WWII.  But it has continued:  one need only look back to the anti-Japanese outbursts during the 1980’s.  One example I remember in particular was an anti-Japanese demonstration organized by the UAW (not a proud moment for the union) which involved the destruction of Japanese cars coupled with the invocation of Pearl Harbor:  “remember Pearl Harbor–buy American.”

This second explanation seems to better capture what I am seeing here.  Evidence for this comes from another source.  As I was mulling over this post, one of my kids introduced me to another viral video:  Asians in the Library.

Here we have the racism plainly exposed in this sophomoric rant:  the insinuations about not being “American”, the fake “Chinese” accent, the critique of family life, the conflation of the disparate cultures of the Asia into a monolithic “Asian”.    And at the end, she ties it up with a dismissive reference to the tsunami in Japan.   The author of this video is angry and in the end the subject of her anger are “Asians”.

I am not interested in debating whether the people who made these posts are “really racists” or if they “really meant to hurt anyone.”  I think that that is beside the point, because the problem exists not on the level of individuals but within our culture.  We need to examine critically  the persistence of these racist tropes in American society, and what we need to do to extirpate them.

I want to frame the question in this way because this manifestation of racism is a perfect illustration of the concept of a “structure of sin.”  Racism, as a sinful act, is the work of individuals.  But each racist act in the past contributed to building institutions and cultural norms that perpetuate and maintain this racism, and shape the actions and perceptions of the individuals now living in it.  Bob Blauner, in his thoughtful article Talking Past Each Other, argues that this is what separates whites and minorities in discussions of race.  Whites what to see racism as a personal, individual action; minorities want to expand the discussion to discuss structural racism.