Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 00:18:39 -0500
Subject: White visible minorties and the Black Peril: The case of ConcordiaUniversity Professor Monika K. Gagnon and M. Nourbese Philip


"White visible minorties and the Black Peril: The case of Concordia
University Professor Monika K. Gagnon and M. Nourbese Philip."

by M. Nourbese Philip

"I no white! I no white!" screams the Korean shopkeeper in the last few 
minutes of Spike Lee^Òs Do the Right Thing: Having set fire to an 
Italian restaurant, the mob has now turned its attention to the Korean 
grocery store where the shopkeeper, his wife and child in the 
background, holds the crowd at bay by brandishing his broom. He fears 
the destruction of his business, if not his life, and he begins by 
distancing himself from the dominant white culture, hence the "I no 
white!" But this is not good enough for the crowd which continues to 
advance: "I Black too! I Black too!" he screams. The African Americans 
laugh at his attempt to claim a Black identity^Öan instant conversion at 
gunpoint on the road to the Damascus of the American dream, all to the 
accompaniment of the raw hip hop rhythms of Public Enemy.

This scene condensed, as only film can, the racial tensions between 
Asian immigrants, in this case Koreans, and African Americans; it 
brought to mind the eloquent arguments of James Baldwin, made during 
the civil rights struggle which still resonate today, that the most 
recent arrival in the United States can look down on the African 
American and, with impunity, call him or her "nigger." While Koreans 
are only another example of this phenomenon, their interactions with 
African Americans signpost the long and racially polarized relationship 
between Africans and Asians.

In colonial societies the latter were always positioned above Africans 
and were actively encouraged to believe that they were superior to the 
former. On a visit to Trinidad in the late 1860s the English writer 
Charles Kingsley observed: "(T)he two races do not, and it is to be 
feared will never amalgamate...the Coolie looks on (Negroes) as 
savages. (1) For their part, Canadian Presbyterian missionaries working 
in Trinidad in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were only 
interested in working with South Asians, not Africans, believing the 
latter not capable of being civilised: "The missions are mainly 
concerned with the East Indian coolie, who are susceptible of the 
teachings of morality. The negroes are of a much lower type, and do not 
have the genius for anything more intellectual or spiritual than 
drawing their breath. (2) Virtually without exception, wherever Asians 
and Africans have co-existed^ÖFiji, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname, 
South Africa, East Africa, to name a few^Öthere have been racial 
tensions and the script remains the same: the Asians is thrifty, 
hardworking and modest where the African is lazy, spendthrift, and 
depraved. While the same tensions have not surfaced here in Canada, the 
script that portrays Asians as the preferred minority and Africans as 
ignorant, loud-mouthed trouble makers^Öand criminal ones, at 
that^Öpersists. While Asians have historically been, and continue to be, 
subjected to racism and discrimination, hierarchies do exist within 
white supremacist cultures and compared with the "barbaric" African 
they are eminently preferable. Further, Asians have not been entirely 
reluctant^Öindeed, it could be said that they are at times complicit^Öto 
nurture the divide between these groups. What follows is an 
overdetermined example of this complicity on the part of the Asian.

Several years ago I was asked to participate in an anthology of 
critical writing by feminists: specifically, I was asked to write an 
article on "Black women^Òs writing." In correspondence with the editors 
I challenged the notion of the category, questioned the white 
middle-class nature of feminism and enquired whether the other writing 
in the anthology would be described as "white women^Òs writing." The 
essay that I did eventually contribute, "Damned if I Do and Damned if I 
Don^Òt," which includes "Journal Entries Against Reaction", explored 
these and other issues such as the notion of white as the norm and 
Black as simply an add-on. I also incorporated the correspondence 
between myself and the editors of the anthology. In "Journal 
Entries..." I explored the importance for me as a writer of African 
heritage to resist, as much as one could, writing from the position of 
reaction. "Damned..." appears in my 1990 collection of essays, 
Frontiers: Essays and Writing on Racism and Culture. (3)

At the launch of the work I participated in a panel discussion where I 
read from my essay and discussed the issues I had raised in it. Seven 
women, all contributors, took part in the panel discussion^Ömyself and 
six white women^Öor so it appeared to me. After the panel discussion, 
however, one of the other panellists approached me to tell me that one 
of the women on the panel was of mixed race and that she was angry 
because I did not acknowledge that she wasn^Òt white. I understand this 
woman, a visual artist, to be of Asian and European background. At no 
point during her slide presentation of her work, prior to my 
presentation, did she identify herself as mixed race; nor was there was 
anything in her work that could have led anyone to believe that she was 
anything else but European. This woman was Monika Kin Gagnon.

Some time after the panel discussion Monika Kin Gagnon wrote an article 
for the catalogue of the Vancouver exhibition Yellow Peril (1990) 
titled "Belonging in Exclusion." Under the subtitle "J^Òaccuse" she 
describes the panel discussion mentioned above. Monika Kin Gagnon does 
not call me by name but identifies me as the "black writer" who 
"subjected" her and other writers to "public attacks." Monika Kin 
Gagnon describes my critique and arguments as a "tirade": "The black 
writer^Òs accusations relied on the now automatic elicitation of white 
liberal guilt." My style was an "aggressive strategy" and I 
"aggressively referred to...`white^Ò writers..." My voice was 
"accusatory" and she feared I might "rant" at her. There is a fine line 
separating this type of language from the stereotypical descriptions of 
Africans as inherently aggressive, criminally inclined, quick to anger 
and generally fearsome. Posit this against her description of her own 
voice as "meek."

One of the most disturbing aspects of the struggle for human and civil 
rights by Africans is that other disadvantaged groups have often 
benefited from the gains of those struggles at the expense of Africans 
themselves. For instance, the group that benefited most from the 
struggle for civil rights in the USA in the 60's, was not African 
Americans but white women. The irony is that this struggle for human 
and civil rights on the part of Africans, resulting in benefits to 
others, has not resulted in greater respect for the former among other 
disadvantaged groups^Örather these groups often share the views which 
the dominant white society has of Africans. V.S. Naipaul and his 
now-bilingual Canadian nephew, Neil Bissoondath, and Dinesh d^ÒSouza are 
potent examples of South Asians who have been at pains to prove the 
inferiority of Africans. There is no parallel among African writers 
and/or intellectuals who have attacked Asians in quite the same way. (4)

In taking upon herself the role of defender of white women on the 
panel: "How could she," she writes of me, " presume a homogenous 
experience for every allegedly "white" woman in that room," Monika Kin 
Gagnon fulfills the stereotype of the Asian of aligning themselves with 
the dominant white society in opposition to those "aggressive," 
"ranting" Blacks. The last time I checked white women were very capable 
of establishing their own particularities and specificities themselves. 
My not being suitably impressed by the fact that the anthology was a 
"pioneering collection of essays" (my emphasis) also appeared to bother 
her. I was not only "aggressive" but also ungrateful.

The intellectual, moral and factual dishonesty in "J^Òaccuse" is 
egregious. Apart from deliberate distortion of the tone of my 
presentation, there are misrepresentations of what was actually said. 
Fortunately the record of my essay "Damned..." exists. That Monika Kin 
Gagnon has issues as a mixed race woman is very clear; that she 
compounded this issue by failing to identify herself is also patent. 
But to accuse me of failing to acknowledge her "race" is ludicrous. 
Once again it appears that I was to be damned if I did and damned if I 
didn^Òt. By my focussing on my issues as a Black woman and my concerns 
with how I was positioned in the anthology I became, according to this 
Monika Kin Gagnon, guilty of "chromatism." By not noticing that she was 
part Asian, I was also guilty. Of what I am not quite sure. 
Non-chromatism, perhaps? It would have been extremely presumptuous of 
me to attempt to place her, or anyone else for that matter, in a racial 
category she may not have wished to be placed in. Monika Kin Gagnon 
writes that she had been "repeatedly told (she) as the spitting image 
of...Yoko Ono," but, she insists, she doesn^Òt "look anything like her." 
Was she perhaps upset that I didn^Òt think she looked like Yoko Ono? She 
writes: "I feared...the writer might rant at me for not foregrounding 
my racial difference enough as she had in her own work..." What Monika 
Kin Gagnon did or didn^Òt do regarding her own racial difference was 
never an issue in my essay, and it is intellectually and morally 
dishonest for her to blame me for her failure to identify herself 
either in her work, or in her presentation to the audience. In 
quintessential po-mo style she wants to have her cake and eat it too: I 
was guilty of simultaneously indulging in chromatism while being colour 
blind.

She plaintively asks: "Why was I so invisible to her, she who was 
purportedly so specialized in identifying, experiencing and policing 
racism?" The offensive suggestion that I am "specialized 
in...experiencing...racism" trivializes what is an almost daily 
occurence for African people like myself. But the answer to Monika Kin 
Gagnon^Òs question, despite its rhetorical nature, is a simple one: she 
was invisible to me because she herself chose to be invisible as a 
racialised or raced person. She does not understand that she was only 
invisible because she did not want to be visible, and she appears to 
want to be both visible and invisible. Monika Kin Gagnon fails to 
accept that the possibility of being invisible in certain contexts 
speaks to a certain privilege that she was only too happy to avail 
herself of until I identified myself and critiqued a white supremacy 
approach on the part of the editors.

One of the most pernicious aspects of this piece is Monika Kin Gagnon^Òs 
refusal to name me. By referring to me as the generic "black writer" 
while describing my speech and actions as loud and aggressive she makes 
me simultaneously visible and invisible^Öa situation she appeared to 
want for herself. Her erasure of my identity as a writer, except for my 
being "black" while providing enough information to identify me is all 
of a piece with the practice in the larger society of reducing all 
African people down to the common, and stereotypical, denominator of 
"they all look alike," not to mention sound alike and act alike. It is 
all of a piece with the historical practice of stripping African people 
of all that made them individual^Öin particular their names which linked 
them to family, community, culture and land.

I come, finally, to the most fundamental flaw in "Belonging in 
Exclusion" intended as an introduction to the exhibit Yellow Peril. 
Gagnon begins the article with her attack on me^Ö"J^Òaccuse!" she titles 
it. She then chronicles the racism experienced by the Chinese and 
Japanese within Canada under the headings: "Chinese Canadian History: 
Reconsidered" and "Japanese Canadian History: Redressed." She ends with 
"Forging Cross-Cultural Spaces," a vague discussion that offers nothing 
meaningful on how to forge "cross-cultural spaces." Here she refers 
once again to being "`invisible^Ò in a public forum because one^Òs 
origins are vague..." By beginning her article with her attack on me^Öan 
attack that is extremely personal and emotional, especially when 
contrasted with the turgid regurgitation of historical facts in the 
following two sections, she is clearly attempting to establish her 
experience with me as paradigmatic of the Asian experience in Canada. 
However, as she herself points out in the following sections, 
responsibility for the exclusion and oppression of Asians in Canada 
lies with the Canadian government, its laws and policies and with 
European settler society in general. Not African people. To treat her 
experience with me as symptomatic and emblematic of the Asian 
experience in Canada is intellectually dishonest. To even suggest that 
her interaction with me, a Black woman, however she cared to represent 
it, is on a par with the long and often brutal history of racism 
against Asian people in Canada is morally reprehensible.

"Me and you same!" the Korean proprietor in Do the Right Thing yells to 
the crowd of African Americans after establishing his Blackness. He 
holds out his hand: "Me and you same!" The crowd moves away, his shop 
is safe for another day. "Me and you same!" Would he be as eager to 
claim this sameness if his daughter or son were to bring home an 
African partner? But that question must be left to another day, another 
exploration. Monika Kin Gagnon^Òs "J^Òaccuse", however, is a cogent 
example of the continuing inaccuracy of the Korean man^Òs plea that "Me 
and you same." "J^Òaccuse" is very much in keeping with the historical 
patterns and tendencies that privilege Asians at the expense of 
Africans.

*

M.NourbeSe Philip
email: nourbese-AT-nourbese.com
website: www.nourbese.com


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