WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CALLING OUT RACISM EXPOSES EVERYONE’S RACISM?

A few weeks ago at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance, a Chinese American composition teacher, Bright Sheng, was teaching an undergraduate composition seminar.  In the class, he presented a video of the 1965 National Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s Othello in which Laurence Olivier appears as the title character wearing blackface makeup. Sheng played the video without preamble: no content warning, no introduction. Students were upset and subsequently protested the showing of the movie by writing the Chair of the composition department.  The chair suggested that they engage in a dialogue with their professor. Unsatisfied with his response, the students joined forces with some of Professor Sheng’s colleagues and wrote a letter of protest to the school’s upper administration. Realizing that he had upset students, Sheng wrote a letter of apology, which further angered the authors of the letter, as Sheng attempted to defend himself by citing a history of promoting artists of color throughout his career.  

As of this writing and to my knowledge, none of the students and faculty members who have spoken publicly about this incident are people of color. Nonetheless, there is a long and complex history to the relationship between the Black American and Asian American communities. Tensions have flared between the groups repeatedly throughout American history as white supremacy has marginalized both groups. The extreme violence that decimated Koreatown during the 1992 LA riots in the wake of both the murder of 15 year-old Latasha Harlins by shopkeeper Soon Ja Du and the police torture of Rodney King is one painful example of how toxic and destructive the animosity between the two communities can be. And yet, there is also a very long and less examined history of the Asian American and African American communities standing in solidarity with each other. When Malcolm X was shot, Japanese American civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama ran towards him and held his head on her lap as he died. Kochiyama was one of many prominent Asian American civil rights activists who were integral to the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s.

Earlier this year in San Francisco, an 84 year-old Asian American man was violently pushed down to the ground while on his morning walk. Days later, he would die from his injuries. The perpetrator was a Black man. Some have come to believe that the majority of anti-Asian attacks in the past two years have been perpetrated by Black people. This is untrue. According to researchers at the University of Michigan, 90% of anti-Asian incidents in 2020 were perpetrated by white people. As cited in the above-linked episode of NPR’s Code Switch, those researchers found that only 5% of incidents involved Black perpetrators.

Despite these facts, as awareness has grown nationwide about the increase in anti-Asian violence over the past 2 years, many continue to focus on incidents perpetrated by Black Americans, framing the issue as a Black / Asian one, when it is in fact an issue of white supremacy. Many have even gone so far as to try to minimize the issue of white supremacy in incidents like the mass-shooting in Atlanta earlier this year in which 6 Asian American women were murdered by a white man. Some commentators in the national media focused solely on this white domestic terrorist’s misogyny, as if his rampage wasn’t both racist and misogynist at the same time.  Many seem eager to erase anti-Asian racism wherever they can.  

At the University of Michigan, the protest letter from some students and faculty members in Sheng’s department was signed anonymously (all signatories’ names have been redacted from public view – citing a desire for protection from retaliation), but some have publicly spoken out about this incident, calling out Professor Sheng and demanding he be removed from teaching the seminar course (his removal from the class has subsequently taken place). Notably, all of the faculty who have spoken out on this incident are white. 

Sheng’s white critics have decried his choice to present the film without any context-setting or content warning as “pedagogical racism & pedagogical abuse” on their Twitter accounts.  In a written statement to the University’s student-run newspaper, they described Sheng’s irresponsible and poorly thought-out manner of presenting the film as “a racist act, regardless of the professor’s intentions.”

Sheng’s colleagues are not wrong to criticize his actions, which understandably upset many of his students. However, their failure to check their own whiteness before publicly leveling these harsh assessments of his behavior highlights the gaps in their own knowledge about race in America. 

Bright Sheng is a Chinese American who came to the United States after growing up in China during the years of Mao Tse-tung’s oppressive Cultural Revolution. For white colleagues to call him out for his racism without acknowledgment of his “otherness” and his own history of adversity is xenophobic in and of itself. The failure to acknowledge Sheng’s non-white, immigrant identity, taking it for granted as his faculty colleagues seem to have done, plays into the false myth that the Asian “model minority” are akin to whites in America.  

Were Sheng a white American who had spent his entire life in this country, the dynamics of the situation would be extraordinarily different and much more cut-and-dry. But Sheng is not a white American, nor will he ever be, and insensitivity between groups of color carry a different weight than white supremacy at work in an academic institution. Sheng will always have to suffer questions like “But where do you really come from?” and his music will always be viewed by many through a lens of “East meeting West.” Why, in the wake of the showing of this blackface production of Othello, does it seem that no one thought to ask Sheng his thoughts on the many yellow-face productions of Madama Butterfly or Turandot he has surely been subjected to his entire adult life, or his feelings about Mickey Rooney’s performance as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? These are questions that none of Sheng’s white faculty colleagues could be asked had they made the same racist missteps Sheng did in this class.

When we call out racist behavior in someone from a marginalized group, we must always be careful that our focus remains fixed on white supremacy. The danger is that if the criticism is not constructive, the door is wide open for white supremacists to maximize this opportunity to sow further division between communities of color and fortify their supremacy. There is a track record of white supremacists using Asian Americans to tear down systemic efforts at creating equity within academia, like Edward Blum’s use of Asian American students in his attempt to tear down affirmative action admission policies. Already, Professor Sheng’s story has been picked up by the national right-wing media, making his case another tool in the Right’s arsenal as they attack critical race theory and “cancel culture.” The discourse has been obfuscated, and the potential for real anti-racist progress is getting lost in the fray.

Bright Sheng has a lot of reflection and learning to do. He has revealed a lack of understanding about the history of race in America. To me, his insensitivity does not betray ill-intent. Rather, it demonstrates ignorance and the need to learn that being “not racist” is not enough – one must strive to be anti-racist. That said, Professor Sheng’s colleagues have a lot to learn, as well. Their actions, too, betray a deep lack of understanding about the history of race in America: that it is not just a white / black story and that insidious tactics of white supremacy are complex and dangerous. Had they taken a moment to think and learn before jumping into the fray, perhaps they would not have played into the white supremacist playbook so easily. Perhaps they would have framed their criticisms in a more constructive and thoughtful way, one in which there was room to acknowledge the ways that white supremacy itself is responsible for the situation in which a Chinese American professor shows a video containing a blackface performance to his undergraduate seminar without any thought to context.