What did Roosevelt say about opportunity?

Oh yeah, something about

"We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Which, I guess, could be read as saying that everyone, even the poor, the non-white, the female, the stupid, the crippled, the belivers in different religions, and the members of the political party that is out of fashion all ought to have a fair shot at life.

Of course, money tends to skew things, but it's a nice enough sentiment, and it sounds especially good when you slap it on something like education. Who could be against a fair chance for children? Even for those truly, butt-ugly children. Naturally, there've been causes for improvement in the execution of this fairness idea, but generally, it's a pretty straightforward concept.

I bring this up because the principal of the school where I work has been chatting with me about his school and schools in Japan in general. As a foreigner, I can offer him the perspective of an outsider as well an aspect of the confessional. Since he speaks to me in fairly rapid English the other teachers can't understand what he's saying. And even if I did want to tell someone else what he said, no one would really listen to me or take me seriously. I'm not Japanese, you know.

To get back to the point, he explained that there is nothing like gifted and talented or AP classes available in Japanese public schools. During the post-war reconstruction of Japan, the education system was totally re-organized with 1940's America as a rough model. While this did mean giving up the Imperial German style of education adopted during the Meiji restoration, complete with unthinking monarch-obediance and a military-preperatory emphasis, it did allow for a greater sense of opportunity. Under the new system, education was supposed to be available to all children, regardless of ability or gender.

But as the revolutions of the 40's ossified into the policies of today, there has been a similar hardening of ideas. According to my principal, most parents today insist on an equal treatment for all students. Even in cases of wildly different ability. A dyslexic child will be kept in the same class as his peers, just as a math prodigy will be kept in the same class, regardless of ability. There is no variation in curriculum within an age level. There are no advanced placement classes, no accelerated courses, no college level courses for those nerdy kids in the high school who were always wrecking the curve. Nothing. Most school districts do have one or two schools per age range that offer a class for developmentally disabled children, and occasionally an entire school for a specific disability, like blindness or deafness. But in general, the kids are kept together by age. Period.

It seems puzzling to me that a child with extraordinary talents would not be allowed to move as quickly as their mind would allow, but the idea of wasted potential never even enters the debate. Maybe it's just an expression of the "sticking out nail gets hammered down" idea, but that really strikes me as wrong. Especially given the tendency to spoil children in Japan. As long as a person is considered a child, they tend to be indulged far more that seems usual from an American point of view. And it strikes me as sort of, well, callous to keep a kid in a class that's below what they're capable of. Having been stuck in manditory lessons myself, I can tell you it's no picnic.

But maybe I'm just viewing this as a synecdoche of one of my biggest problems with both Japanese and American society. People are expected to applaud and appreciate and even worship people who are set up as special for some reason or another. But if a person should actually demonstrate some measure of superiority it's considered in poor taste. Why else would so many people in Japan, more than are statistically possible to fit into a "median group," claim that they were middle class? Why else would people in the US who make several hundred thousand dollars a year say they were "just, y'know, kind of upper-middle class?" Why would it be considered offensive to act superior if you are, in fact, better than someone at something?

Of course, I'm trying to cover a bit too much here. The point is: kids here have to stick together, whether the class is too easy or too hard. And the educators don't like it, but there's not much anyone thinks can be done about it...

I thought this was going to be a different topic...

...but sometimes you have to take what the world gives you. In this case, a minor story about the re-issue in Japan of a book that was banned mainly due to US pressure: "Little Black Sambo," a story that is presumably about a boy in India outwitting a pair of tigers. But it's most famous for it's presumably racist illustrations of a golliwog negro, complete with large red lips and bulging white eyes. In the US the book hadn't been domestically published for quite some time, but new editions are easily available from online distributors.

But the point I'm curious about is the question of intent. Most of the defenders of the book seem to fall into two categories. The first group says that it's not really racist because the original author and illustrator had no racist intent. The second is that it's a beloved piece of nostalgia, and Sambo outwits all his opponents and wins in the end, and anyway the story's setting in India makes Sambo Asian and not Black to boot.

But trying to decide if racism can be eliminated from a situation by deciding on intent is tricky. Kazuo Mori, an educational psychologist at Shinshu University in Nagano, re-illustrated the story, but

with the central character drawn as a black Labrador puppy. The test groups [in Japan] found both illustrated versions equally amusing.
Ergo, no racism, Mori concluded.
He then fine-tuned the drawings of the puppy, found himself a publisher, and in 1997 released a "nonracist" version of the tale, titled "Chikiburo Sampo."

It's worth noting that the name, Chibikuro, literally translates as "Little Black," but with a ring of affection. Not unlike "L'il Abner" or "Little Lulu." And "Sampo", which can also be transliterated as "sanpo," means walk or stroll. Thus, the new name comes to mean something like "Walking the Black Lab Puppy" in Japanese. And even this wound up being argued over.

I guess the only thing i can add is that most of these disputes seem to boil down to perception, both of things and of the intent of others. I'd like to sum this up, but it's too broad and too sprawling. Should the history of America and Europe have anything to do with the book sales in Japan? Can the anyone take something that's so loaded with meaning for one group and use it somewhere else with no problems at all? Is it even fair to expect understanding of why something might be inflamatory from a group that has no real history with any of the root issues? And is it possible that all this thinking and guessing and examination is just making things worse?

Fuck, I'm starting to understand Rodney's feeling when he uttered those famous words, But I keep wanting to change it a bit.

"Why can't we get along here?"

Why?

Racism. Mine, that is... (continued)

I suppose that some clarification is in order. It wasn't my intent to cast doubt on the sincerity or depth of my friendships. But the problem with race is that, as an issue, it is so loaded, almost any sentence is likely to raise all sorts of unintended and unforeseen reactions in the people who read it.

For the record: I don't actually have mental categories of "bad whites" and "good whites" to file people in, and I don't generally have a compulsion to start with race as a classification when I'm trying to describe someone. The people I grew up with, I'm talking about those unfortunate few who knew me way back when, they exist on their own, beyond the traps of race that we all had to learn together.

But you have to understand that in America, the sociological default image of a person is someone white with a Christian-background. That's what is assumed about the characters in any screenplay, unless specifically mentioned otherwise. That's who the target consumer is, unless specifically mentioned otherwise. That's who the laws are intended to protect, unless specifically mentioned otherwise.

Oh, sure, other groups can fit into those categories. There was no reason that the lead in 'I, Robot' couldn't have been a Portuguese guy, with the possible exception of Will Smith's marketability. There's no reason that Hispanic women or Laotian men can't shop at J. Crew, with the possible exception of not wanting to look like dorks. And there's nothing to stop anyone, regardless of race, from seeking redress in a court of law, with the possible exception of not having enough money for a court battle. But if you look at the laws, the people who write them, and the people who most often receive unequal treatment under those laws, some things start to seem, well, most easily described?and explained in terms of race.

My goal, however, isn't get into the finer distinctions within the law. My point is that history, culture, religion and habit still affect, tinge and distort the way people get treated. Being out of a predominately white social setting has made me realize a lot of things about my own preconceptions. And saying them out loud sounds as ludicrous to me as hearing these things in reverse from other people sounded. But it's the clearest way I can think of to articulate what it's like to be reminded every single day that you're not really who was meant in the official idea of society.

After I really got to know some people, after we really got to be friends, I found I honestly was able to forget that they were white. I could think of them as just Stephanie, Justin and Mark, and not "Stephanie the white girl," "Justin the white guy" and "that white Mark."

Oddly enough, when I really try to think about my attitudes concerning white people, I find they're mostly directed at Americans. I'm sure there are plenty of stereotypically white people in Europe and Canada, to say nothing of New Zealand, Australia and that island populated by descendants of the mutineers from The Bounty, any of whom may behave just like Americans in terms of race. But I don?t find myself prejudging them in the same ways that I do Americans.

Maybe it has to do with the relatively small amount of time I've spent in the company of people from different places. The few folks I've met have, by and large, been open-minded, fair, and rather intelligent. I don't have enough experience with racist Swedes, for example, to have formed a predisposition concerning Sweden. And you could probably say that, in general, people who choose to live abroad tend to be more open-minded. Or at least, more open to new experiences.

Maybe it's because I expect more of my countrymen. I don't feel the same sense of offence from a Korean person asking me why there are dark brown people in my country, or from an Iranian person asking me where in the world my family comes from. Maybe it's because I don't feel there's any reason to expect them to understand the separation between race, nationality and identity that pervades American life.

I do expect some degree of that sort of understanding from white people from the Commonwealth Nations, though. One of the legacies of the British Empire, apart from the sacrament of Gin and Tonic and the communion of football, was a lot of forced interaction between Anglo-Saxons and damn near everyone else from outside of Europe. Exploitative or not, as those people had to live around each other, some sort of mutual awareness should have arisen.

In Japan, well, there are a couple of different flavors of racism, sexism, and nationalist discrimination that show up in different levels, concentrations and expressions just about everywhere. But I can sort of understand why it still exists here. Some days it�s easier to deal with than others, but in general, it seems to be ignorance instead of maliciousness. That said, however, I have a hell of a lot of trouble tolerating ignorance in people who ought to know better or who have had opportunities to learn better. Willful ignorance is just about the only thing I find unforgivable.

Of course, some people, regardless of race, creed or gender, are just assholes.

Maybe that�s enough of that for now, huh? Next time: more senseless griping about something trivial. Or an observation about pop culture that I can�t adequately explain.

Paranoia and racism.

On Sunday my girlfriend and I went to see a play put on at the Canadian Embassy in central Tokyo. It was a very clever one-act about a self-centered ass of a nephew who has come to visit his aunt in her final days and wait for her to die. It'd been a while since I'd seen a play, and it was a pretty good one. Even if I didn't like the music they chose for the scene transitions.

But since it was an English play that was staged in the Canadian embassy, the audience, which wasn't that big, only around 40 or 50 people, was overwhelmingly non-Japanese. And with the exceptions of a neatly-groomed middle-aged Japanese guy, a Bohemian-stylish Japanese woman and me, they were all white.

It took a few minutes to work out what was so unsettling about the audience. It was like stepping into one of those trick rooms where all the furniture is painted with a pattern that makes it look too large and the wallpaper lines make the room look like it shrinks towards one end. My mind wasn't processing some bit of input data properly and it was skewing all the results. Then it hit me. All those round, watery, blue eyes. That weird, irregularly pigmented pinkish skin. The noses: ships prows and cathedral arches and great cavernous icebergs, paused in the act of calving off of glacial faces. There was so much meaty, pale bulk in that room. The heavy set people seemed saggy and soft. Living versions of those craft-store dolls made of cleverly stitched pantyhose stuffed with cotton. But even the few slim people seemed somehow unnatural-looking and out of proportion.

Have you read the original Planet of the Apes? I recently finished a good translation of it, and the protagonist suffered a similar predicament after living in ape society. His former surroundings, his former peers no longer seem normal to him. He becomes acclimatized to the apes, and is unable to relax in human company.

But I can't say I ever felt like a human among apes here. Then again, there were precious few times I felt like a human among humans in America. Race always threw an irregularity into things. And there in that theater, where I should have been able to suspend disbelief and feel like I was actually observing a man hoping his elderly aunt would kick off, I kept flashing back to the fact that I was surrounded and outnumbered by white people. Homogeneous, fleshy, white people with Midwestern American and Canadian accents.

White western-hemisphere people, you don't all look alike to me. But in groups, you make it nearly impossible to relax in your presence. The vast majority of you, by default and without realizing why, treat me differently than you treat each other from the moment you lay eyes on me. It's not that different from Japan, but they've got centuries of isolation and a limited level of interaction with other races outside of the context of war.

But growing up in America, where we were supposed to be rubbing shoulders with everyone regardless of race, creed or color, has left me with this kink in my vision that I can't turn off. Some, hell, most of my best friends are white Americans. But I can't get past this issue yet, and it was surprising to have it pulled up here in Japan.