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Opportunities, Incentives, and Privilege

| arun

On the last Asian Meter update, Adam asked about the dynamics that underlie the small number of bylines that TheBigThree set aside to Asian writers. 

So, why do you think that is? Is it just blatant racism, or are there other factors? How many Asian writers have submitted material/applied for positions at The Big Three? How do they source their writers and material?

I responded separately that I believe this pattern to be a case of institutional racism, rather than “blatant” racism (such as an informal policy or a consciously implemented prejudice). This question is explored in more detail on an old post at Dharma Folk.

The second part of the question speaks to the submission process—we know the output, but what about the input? This question has been asked several times before and is worth revisiting. Below I’ve provided a similar comment that Ashin Sopaka left a long while ago.

While I do not in any way invalidate your experience of racism in Buddhism (I myself have seen negative comments like “ethnic Buddhists”), I can’t help but wonder how many Asian American (AA) Buddhists are stepping up to the plate, applying for jobs or submitting articles to the referenced publications, asking to be involved in panel discussions, etc. If this is happening and AAs are being actively excluded, then indeed, this is racism at its ugliest. Or, are AAs sitting back and waiting to be invited/involved? Or are AAs refusing the invitations due to language barriers, or whatever other reasons?

The logic here is straightforward. Perhaps this inequality is of the marginalized groups’ own making—there are fewer Asian writers because fewer Asians submit articles. This point was addressed directly by another blogger.

Ashin[hpoya], I can answer that one for you. These publications don’t think to ask Asian-Americans, so Asian-Americans are rarely if ever extended an offer to refuse in the first place. It’s not that Asian-Americans aren’t stepping up, it’s that there is a network of white convert Buddhists entrenched in the publishing field and they reach out to print articles by and about other people like themselves, without stepping out of their bubbles or making serious attempts to include other voices.

Some of this has to do with race issues in publishing. The staff at these magazines is virtually all white and always has been. That is not unusual in the publishing world, but it is regrettable at publications that seek to represent a religion that is overwhelmingly non-white (and even English-speaking Buddhists are less than 50% white). It isn’t racism in terms of actively disparaging non-whites. It is white privilege, the privilege to be focused only on one’s own community, to believe one’s own community is representative of the whole, and to not ever have to think about how one’s whiteness allows smooth entrance into the world of publishing and speaking for Buddhism in a way that people with far more history with Buddhism (but far more melanin as well) are as a group unable to access (the occasional individual exception doesn’t invalidate the general rule here).

Mr. Boyce’s article and his shock at how it was received are typical of this pattern. A person of presumably no malicious intent, he was simply blind to how his decisions wound others–blind because his skin color and social privilege allow him to not have to think about such issues until someone blows up at him after the fact. This is not racism as outright hatred, but institutionalized racism that affects the whole society and is especially entrenched in the media (i.e. the industry of representation and normative information control), Buddhist magazines included.

This response cuts right into the interwoven threads of opportunity, incentives and that pernicious elephant on the dining room table: white privilege. While hinging on white privilege, what’s key is how this privilege increases both opportunities and incentives for white writers at the expense of People of Color.

The Asian Meter merely puts some casual observations to the test with systematic inquiry. How many Asians actually write for The Big Three? Adam’s question goes further and points in the direction of what’s going on behind the scenes here. What are all the players doing? The answer to his question is more complex, and it’s exactly the sort of question we need to be asking in order to effectively address racial imbalances in our publications.

For example, in creating the Asian Meter database, one of the key factors I noticed has to do with the composition of a magazine’s regular contributors. If you are a white writer, you’re more likely to be tapped to write again in Tricycle than if you happen to be Asian. (I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now, but I’ll happily dig up the numbers for another post.) One solution might be for Tricycle to do more outreach both to recruit new Asian writers and also to retain old ones. But I’m getting ahead of myself here—it’s only by looking deep into the issue that we have the empirical basis to act on such a suggestion.

I haven’t provided a very thorough response, but Adam’s question has no simple answer. Just think of when we ask the same type of question in other fields. Why do so few women become surgeons? Why do so few African American students sign up for business plan competitions? It is no less controversial to ask why so few Asians write in the major American Buddhist publications. But it’s my belief that questions like Adam’s are among the few ways we can make any progress towards a truer diversity.

Ebert: Last Airbender is “Wrong”

| arun

A friend forwarded me an opinion by critic Roger Ebert, which brought me some good comfort this morning. He responds to a question about the “whitewashing” of the upcoming film The Last Airbender.

Q. Regarding the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan vehicle “The Last Airbender,” what do you think about the whitewashing of the production so that all of the original Asian cultural landmarks, architecture, philosophy, and costume design are being retained while they cast white kids to play the main characters?
Arlene C. Harris
A. Wrong. The original series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” was highly regarded and popular for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Its fans take it for granted that its heroes are Asian. Why would Paramount and Shyamalan go out of their way to offend these fans? There are many young Asian actors capable of playing the parts.

I posted about this controversy several months ago, and I particularly appreciate Gene Yang’s perspective.

But intentionally or not, they are adding another chapter to Hollywood’s long, sordid history of Yellowface. By giving white actors roles that are so obviously Asian – and by stating from the get-go their preference for Caucasians – they tell Asian-Americans that who we are and how we look make us inherently inadequate for American audiences, even in a movie that celebrates our culture.

Check out this video too. Ugh.

Asian Meter 2009

| arun

How much things change in a year! A year ago this blog did not even exist. I was still wrapped up in the excitement of unleashing my inner Angry Asian Buddhist onto the blogosphere. Who knew the party would go on so long?

On the other hand, there are many things that barely change at all. For example, look at how few bylines continue to be set aside for Asians in the The Big Three publications. (And by Big, I’m talking about distribution.) Below I present the aggregate results for 2009.

The Asian Meter developed out of a play on the Buddhist community’s fascination with the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The Pew’s Buddhist numbers were questionable largely because of flawed assumptions about the Asian American community—like how many of us are out there. And without any attempt to validate the numbers, Buddhist publications chose to take them at face value.

I decided to run the numbers on the periodicals themselves. There’s no special magic behind the Asian Meter. The metric is a simple quotient of Asians. Originally I looked at the proportion of writers of Asian heritage in a given publication. These days, I focus on the proportion of bylines allocated to writers of Asian heritage. There are different benefits and drawbacks to this shift in methodology, but I don’t care to talk about it—that’s what the comments section is for! My precious few readers probably prefer the graph.

Tricycle remains the laggard, with nearly half as many Asians in its pages as the pack leader, Shambhala Sun. I’ve taken the liberty of combing back through several years of issues, only to find that Tricyclists stick to the habit of, on average, setting aside just one out of every ten bylines to an Asian brother—and sometimes an Asian sister.

To get an idea of what I see when I look at the authors in Tricycle, an area graph tells a better story. Consider that we probably make up at least half of the Buddhist community. We speak English! We are Americans! Let us in!

Here’s to positive changes in 2010! Sabbe satta abyapajjha hontu!

Why Bow?

| arun

Richard Harrold at My Buddha is Pink recalls an explanation from a monk of why Buddhists bow. I like it.

He explained that the bowing down before a Buddha statue was not an act of obeisance as if the Buddha was a deity, but rather an act of respect. He used the example of a parent’s or grandparent’s grave. If you had respect for them while they were alive, you often continue to show that respect by assuring that their grave is kept nice. On special days you may put flowers on the grave. If the headstone becomes dirty, you clean it. And you spend silent moments occasionally in reverie at the grave, remembering what your parents or grandparents taught you. If you do not live near the grave, then perhaps there is a special photograph of them you keep, or a photo album. That is what we do, he said, when we pay respect to the Buddha image or a Buddha shrine; we are showing our gratitude for the Buddha leaving for us the Dhamma. When we chant, we are not praying because there is nothing out there to hear our prayers. We chant because it reminds us of the Dhamma and focuses our minds.

This explanation certainly appears useful for putting bowing in a perspective that is easy for non-bowers to understand.

All the Same

| arun

In lieu of the snarky post, here are just some thoughts on some previously posted comments. When I write about the marginalization of Asians in Western Buddhist institutions and dialogue, a common retort is that Buddhism has nothing to do with race—it is about the path to the end of suffering. We all suffer regardless of our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and many other factors. The promise of Buddhism is likewise applicable to all of us, regardless of our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and many other factors. In this sense, we are all the same in our potential to attain complete liberation. I couldn’t agree more.

This “all the same” line is, however, a non-response to the issue of the marginalization of Asians (among others) in Western Buddhist institutions. At both the institutional level and at the level of discourse, we aren’t treated the same. I’ve posted repeatedly on the paucity of Asian Americans as writers for Shambhala Sun, Tricycle and Buddhadharma. There is also the disgusting white Western savior rhetoric, where the West will come to save Buddhism from those backward Asians. There is the equally disturbing “separate-but-equal” refrain that all the various Asian communities are fine, but that Western Buddhists should create and nurture their own separate group—eerily similar to the argument for Orania.

We need to eat away at the systems of oppression and privilege that underlie the white dominance over Western Buddhism’s non-white majority. I focus on Asians, and Asian Americans in particular, not just because I’m Asian American, but also because the asymmetry is fairly blatant. Many similar issues apply for other non-white Buddhists as well. The effort to make a more egalitarian community will involve moreoutreach to include its less privileged members. This struggle will also involve renouncing privileges we take for granted. Doing nothing, yet saying we are all the same, merely amounts to the perpetuation of this system behind what is either a lie or woeful ignorance.

Engaged Buddhist Christmas

| arun

Here’s a thought for an engaged Buddhist Christmas. Many people who convert to Buddhism may feel that they need to do something special for the holiday season. Say, wringing out all the Christian aspects of Christmas and then sprinkling some Buddhist pixie dust over what’s left. My family secretly aspires to celebrate Christmas the way the Jews do. There are several popularized ways that Jews celebrate Christmas in North America, but we frequently talk about the Chinese food and movie version—we’ve just never actually gotten around to it. My favorite way to celebrate Christmas is to volunteer at a meal center. (Credit for this family tradition goes to my mom.) It may be too late for most readers to sign up to volunteer—but this time of the year is perfect for Buddhists, especially Buddhists in the West, to celebrate the season through service to others. It’s a good way to spend your time even when it’s not a holiday. Just a thought.

Buddhism and Lifestyle Activism

| arun

Check out the post over at Enlightenment Ward, where NellaLou asks these questions:

  • Is Lifestyle Activism an expression of privilege?
  • Is Buddhism becoming a Lifestyle Accessory for the privileged Lifestyle Activist?

I haven’t yet read it in full, but these are questions worth thinking over.

Oh California!

| arun

One of the reasons I moved to Southern California was for the large Buddhist community. While very different from the community I was raised in, we have both greater numbers and diversity than just about any region in North America. But I also moved here for days like this, where I can gaze upon the snow-capped mountains from the warm and sunny comfort of the beach in late December. Best to enjoy it while I can. I hear it’s going to drop to the 60s next week!

Attention to the Little Things

| arun

Ven. Shravasti Dhammika points to a new book, Buddhist Animal Wisdom Stories, an illustrated retelling of 44 Jataka stories. Detail-oriented and a stickler for cultural accuracy, he is keen to note that “[a]lthough it would not detract from the value of this book if it were otherwise, McGinnis has done his research carefully and only depicted animals native to India.”

As a disclaimer, I don’t own this book, nor have I read it. I just feel it’s important to publicize these sorts of resources. Last year, Tricyclepublished a young writer’s short list of favorite Buddhist children’s books. I have found many more elsewhere using the usual tools.

There has been considerable recent discussion in the American Buddhist community about what the next generation will look like. Meditation centers, magazines, retreats and teachers must grow and adapt to relatively younger ranks of practitioners. But the essential future of the American Buddhist community is with those who are currently its youngest members. They are the ones who most deserve our attention.