scientist who lives next door them who is so clearly stephen hawking as he would be without his disability. so clearly the same person, but anyway, then they have these adventures. this is sort of science fiction, but there are huge sections of the book that are kind of removed from the book, a different color sections. those of the sections that other real science. ..

in the brief history of time, there is no beginning to the universe. there was no need for a creator. and he is set some atheistic statements to the media about believing in an afterlife is a fairytale. one reduction is the idea of ourselves as computers. i think somebody said yeah but you know you can take the whole intellectual content of a computer and put it on memory and is that like reincarnation? [laughter] but i did get his religious beliefs one i gave a talk in cambridge and i said that stephen hawking, before i encountered him at all i thought if i leave the old statement

that there are no atheists in a foxhole comment he he is definitely in a foxhole, but i said that and i made him think. there are no atheists in foxholes. he said, i'll bet there aren't. [laughter] let's see, what else? he tends to make statements to the press. one thing that i would personally hate to see as part of his legacy would be to turn a whole lot of intelligent young people into unthinking atheists. i think the decisions of believe and unbelief deserve a lot of consideration, deserve a lot of experimentation and shouldn't be made just because some

charismatic figure like stephen hawking's makes a statement to the media. i think that would need an unfortunate legacy. anybody else? maybe that is that. from encore booknotes in 2002 law professor, journalist and author frank wu discusses his book "yellow." professor wood provides an overview of the official and unofficial policy that shape history in the identity of the u.s.. he also addresses asian american stereotypes like the model minority and a list rates how

the yukon and others have damage relations between the communities. this is about one hour. c-span: frank wu, what is b "yellow" all about?oo >> guest: that's a good question. so it's -- well, it's a book of questions, not answers. i'm a law professor, so i'm muca better at asking questions than i am at answering them.his i wrote this book to try to b provoke people to think for themselves, not to persuade them to think as i do. i do. i wrote to it try to start dialogue with race and diversity and civil rights, and a dialogue that's different. i'm trying to move us beyond black and white in two different ways. first in a very literal way. sometimes we talk about race as if everyone is either black or white and that's it. and when you talk about race that way you leave out well, not just asian americans, hispanics, millions of people of mixed race background. it's as if they don't suggest. i'm suggesting it doesn't matter who you are, what your politics are, what sort of

policies you think we should have, if you can't see yellow and brown and red and all the different shades, well, you leave out a huge portion of the population in california on college campuses in the future of our nation because it's changing rapidly. but i'm also trying to move us beyond black and white in a figurative sense. sometimes we talk about race as if you've got villains on one hand, hard core bigots and victims on the other hand. now we still do have villains, the k.k.k. is out there. you see skinhead groups using web sites to try to bring the young to their hateful cause. so there are still villains out there, but sometimes it's not just villains and victims. sometimes we all have a responsibility even if -- well, my family wasn't here when there were slaves. my family wasn't even here when there was jim crowe. i grew up knowing that the n word was bad. and i would certainly never use it. but i recognize that i have a greater responsibility, that

it's not just about am i someone who has malice in my heart toward people of other racial backgrounds, but rather there are these tensions and problems that we have to address cooperatively and constructively, recognizing sometimes we're all to blame. sometimes none of us is to blame. you just have these situations where the people to be blamed, while they're long dead and gone, nonetheless we still have this mess. so that's what it's about. >> where does the title "yellow" come from? >> i wanted to have a provocative title. it's a great dust jacket. i owe a lot to basic books. the title should have been "gray." it's about how complex all these issues are. but "yellow" comes from the idea of taking something that was pejorative, you know, in name that was attached, a label, part of a stereotype, part of these images of the exotic oriental, something with not-so-nice connotations and

saying i can be proud of this. i'm going to take yellow and claim it for myself. i'm going to say hey, sure, i'm yellow and proud of it and i'm going to put it on the cover of my book. >> but where does that come from in history? >> it comes from the idea that every person could be fit into this neat racial classification scheme. you know, now most biologists recognize race is well, sort of a fiction. it's the kind of thing we make up. there aren't clean, neat lines. a whole lot of people out there who are characterized as black in fact are more white than black. and there are a lot of people who are white who have some black ancestry. these lines blur and most of us share more genes than we know. and the differences are tiny. and the differences within racial groups are every bit as big as between racial groups. but there was a time, 75 years ago, you'd find the most respected scientists at ivy

league schools had these elaborate tables. there were these academic debates, serious ones over are there 19 groups or 73 groups? , you know, and where do we put south asians? where do we put this group or that group? are they on top or on the bottom? there were hierarchies and yellow was just one of those categories. among go lloyd was another one of those groups that they created. and that's gone by the way side in part because nazis had tables like that. they'd look at the shape of your inform head or the slope of your nose and fit you in. we may be past these formal tables, but we still socially and culturally construct them. so even if race is fictional, it has a social reality. it effects people's lives. >> as you know, somebody who reads this book would be a little bit intimidated to ask you questions like, where are you from?

>> well, i would hope not. where are you from is something we all ask everyone. >> where are you really from? >> well, that's the question that causes some problem. let me explain why. and i try to make it clear, this is a book where i'm trying to explain things. i'm not going to complain about things. i'm trying to explain what's wrong with where are you really from? you know, when strangers meet, it could be at a dinner party or you're a freshman in college or you start a new job. everyone says, where are you from? you want to place people in context. i say i was born in cleveland, ohio, grew up in detroit, michigan. used to live in san francisco, moved to washington, d.c. sometimes i'll tell people every place i've lived in the past 10 years. they shake their heads and say no, that's not what i mean. where are you really from? and that one word speaks volumes. why? we don't go around asking everyone that. i've asked the people who ask me this question right back, where are you really from?

and they say what do you mean? i just told you i'm from iowa. i'm an american. that's exactly the point. they're just assured of their own identity, even as they assume well, i'm a tourist, right? i must be a visiting student. i'm a guest. i'm eventually leaving. and so this where are you really from says i'm not a real american. i'm not really who i say i am. now, when i explain this, i'm always very careful to say there's nothing wrong -- there are people who recently arrived here from asia, not born in the u.s., as i am, who want to be proud of that, who want to say i'm from china. there's nothing wrong with that. what's wrong is when we do this selectively and against someone's will, when we pigeonhole them that way and it shows we're not colorblind. we ask people who are asian, a little foreign-looking, a little funny-looking. and it's not just this question. it leads to more. sometimes people say, well, how do you like it in our country?

this is true. less and less often, but i'm still asked that. people say to me, what province of china is cleveland. they say oh, when are you going home? or i'll give a speech and someone -- what's interesting about this. it's not mean people. sometimes it's very nice people. someone very nice will come up to me, this happens maybe only once a year these days. used to happen all the time. they'll say i just want to tell you something. you speak english really well. i always want to say gee, thanks, so do you. because they don't expect that. they don't expect when someone who looks the way i do, opens my mouth that out will come, articulate, fully formed english sentences without an accent. there's nothing wrong with an accent. my parents have them. but they've attached a stereotype to me, a script. they expect me to talk a certain way and behave a certain way. and sometimes it gets ugly. i will bet you, because this is true almost every time i'm on any tv show, if you want to say

anything meaningful, eventually you say something controversial. and people will say i disagree. i welcome that. i welcome people saying, i disagree, let me tell you my view. sometimes people don't disagree with what i have to say. they don't like who i am. i will wager you that i will get an e-mail or phone call or a letter that says something along the follow lines, if you don't like it here, well, you can just go back to where you came from. and what does that say? it says i can't really be an equal american. i can never be critical of the united states if it's government or its culture or its policies. i think this is a great nation. it's different. this is a nation where we say we believe anyone can come here and become an equal and become a full participant in this great dialogue. and i want to be a participant in that dialogue. i want to make us live up to our ideals. it's because i'm proud to be here, proud to be an american that i want to do this. >> you were born in cleveland.

>> that's right. >> how did your parents get there? >> well, my parents were students. they came from china. they grew up in taiwan. >> they came from mainland china? >> that's right. they were born there. when mao took over, they fled. then they came here. they were very lucky. they came in the 1950's. they got scholarships. my dad, in fact, went to college in iowa and went to graduate school in cleveland, and that's where my mother was in school. so they met. asian americans are all over the place. you can find asian americans in well, fargo or in the deep south. it's amazing how diverse these stories are. >> you say that there are 10 million asian americans. >> roughly. >> explain first, what would you classify as an asian american? >> that's an interesting, tough question. it's a harder question than it seems. i wouldn't classify anyone, you know, i would allow people to declare for themselves.

an asian american is well, it's a strange concept. there aren't asian americans in asia. for one thing, the people in asia, they're there. they're not here. and for another thing, there isn't a pan-asian identity except for a sort of bad one, when one nation wants to conquer another nation. so the people who are asian americans, well, they're people whose grandfathers or great grandfathers would have been at war with one another. but here we recognize we have a common cause. sometimes people say why do you have to be asian american? aren't you breaking up into little groups? it's a coalition identity, it brings together people from about two different national origins, pakistani, indian, cambodian, thy, korean, japanese, all different languages, faiths, walks of life, class backgrounds, different stories as to how they got to the united states. and what they've recognized is

that asian american can be empowering, that even though our inform fathers hated one another, when i grew up on the play grounds in school, i used to get picked on. kids pick on other kids for all sorts of reasons. sometimes it's racial. and i think when it's racial it's different. and i used to get called chink and jap and gook and kids would pull back their eyes and they'd have that chant, chinese, jab knees, dirty niece, what are these. they'd call me jap and gook every bit as often as -- someone would say hey, you jap. i'd say, excuse me, i'm a chink. i was told, you all look alike anyway. even though growing up i didn't know very much about koreans or

thies or pakistanis, i realized in the united states we have this shared identity and a set of experiences even though we're incredibly diverse, different politics and different cultures, there's a common thread. it's that when are you going home, where are you really from threat of being a perpetual foreigner. >> you say, and correct me if i'm wrong, that the census shows 2.4 million chinese americans, about 1.9 million filipino ferns, 1.1 koreans in the country. >> right. >> what's happened to that figure? >> it's changing daily. >> why? >> well, because people are coming here. people are intermarrying. there are all sorts of changes. i'm sometimes shocked. i go back to places where i grew up, and i suddenly see all

these asian restaurants, all these asian stores, all these asian people where i was used to being the only person in the room ever when i walked into the classroom or anywhere who looked like me. or maybe there was one other person, but that was it. now you've got 2%, 3%. doesn't sound like much, but from half a percent to % or 3%, it's a huge jump. on some college campuses you're going to find 30%, 40% of the freshmen class is of asian descent. it presents us with a tremendous challenge. they present us with the challenge of how are we going to adjust to this? you can't just keep people out. you can't eject the people who are already here. so what do you do -- and it's not just in stereotypical places. there have always been asians around in, say, san francisco. the bay area has always been a

third or more asian ever since california was a state. you've got people in wisconsin. you've got people in atlanta. you've got people in north carolina of asian descent whose parents got a job at a hospital so the family moves in. pretty soon you've got a community. >> you're the first asian american to teach at howard law school. >> that's right. >> is that right? >> that's right. >> you're married to a japanese american. >> that's right. and she is also someone who teaches law. one of these two law professor households. she teaches someplace else. >> here in town? >> that's right. i'm tremendously priviliged to teach at howard. i wanted to do bridge-building work, and it's changed my life. i grew up in a predominantly white setting. the high school i went to was about 4,000 students.

>> detroit? >> right. >> in detroit city? >> no, no, outlying suburbs. about 45 minutes from downtown. >> what's the name of it? >> it's called canton. it was the plymouth, salem, canton high school. two high schools on a shared campus. about 4,000 students. there were maybe oh half dozen or so people who looked like me. maybe one or two hispanics and as i recall one lone african-american. now i may be wrong, but if it wasn't one it couldn't have been more than two. that's about as white as you can get. now i'm in an environment where not just my students but my pierce, my boss' boss, and my boss' boss' boss' boss is african-american. i've learned as much as i've taught. this has really changed my life. and although "yellow" includes asian americans, it's not just about asian americans and not just for asian americans. my publisher wants to sell books. it's meant to talk about race more generally.

many of the examples are about african-americans because i realized i face prejudice, i face stereotypes. sometimes that's not recognized. sometimes i'm annoyed. and sometimes in its own instances asian americans can face serious hate crimes. but by and large what i face doesn't compare with what african-americans face. if i'm going to be serious about this work, civil rights work, i have to stand up and speak out not just when it's someone who happens to look like me but when it's others, african-americans' causes. if i only stood it when it was the wen ho lee case, that would be self-interest. i have to stand up when it's a different face on the same problem. >> what is the difference in what you see when you're standing in front of a classroom full of african-americans in that environment compared to what it's like in an all white

environment? as they react to you? >> sure, yeah. it's different in that well, the students are incredibly diverse. you know, probably before i taught at howard i had the same misconception that many people who aren't black is which is to think as african-americans as a certain mass. they come from different origins, different class backgrounds. i've got first people who are the first people in their immediate family to go to college. i've got other folks who they're the fourth generation of people to go to howard. they come from greater privilege than i ever saw growing up. and then there are people who are african-american. there are people who are black but not african-american. either they recent lay rifed here and they don't think of themselves as african-american. maybe they're canadian and black. so there's this tremendous set of differences and different

politics and different views. and it's wonderful to see that. what's different though, about being at howard is this is a safe space. it's safe for african-americans in the following sense. if you took one of my students, really talented student and put them in a predominantly white setting and they raised their hand and the teacher didn't call on them, that student would always wonder, and i think rightly so, why is that professor not calling on me? is it because of race or is it because they didn't see me? is it because they're busy? they want to cover the next set of readings? at howard it's different. if someone is dissed that way they know it's not because of race. it's for some other reason or maybe i'm just generally rude. and they know that there's a common set of experiences that no one's going to look at them and think you are intellectually inferior, you're stupid, you don't belong. or you got in and took someone else's space who is more deserving. and there's also even though some of my students do come

from fairly well-to-do backgrounds, there's a common set of experiences that people have because of racial prejudice, not because they're the same, but because the force is acting on them are similar. let me explain what i mean. almost all of my male students, if they personal haven't been stopped by the cops and frisks, their brother or cousin was. that resonates in a way that it wouldn't in a predominantly white setting. so that race is not symmetric cal. you can't flip things around to say would it be different if you turned everyone from all black to all white. because institutions like howard exist because there was a time when it was a crime to teach someone who was black how to read and white. so you can't look and say it's a mirror image. >> you're on the board of gallaudet college? >> yes. >> what is it? >> it's the only university in the world that's predominantly

for the deaf and hard of hearing. it's here in washington, d.c. i'm starting to learn sign language. a.s.l. i'm a very slow learner. and i'm pleased to be there because it's introduced me to a whole new culture. it's made me realize that the deaf can do anything i can do. in fact, they can do many things better than i can do. the only thing they can't do is hear. but other than that, it's mainly stereotypes and misconceptions that hold them back. and i'm pleased to be there as someone who's hearing because my goal is to work on these causes as a matter of principle, recognizing that it's not just charity work. i'm learning tremendously from this about deaf culture, about sign language. it's making me think about issues in a completely different way. it's really just opened my eyes, and i think that's what

we all have to do a little more of. put ourselves in those places where we're the one and only, where people don't expect us to be. but this is a way that race and these issues that it's not a mirror image. let me explain what i mean. imagine two similar people, equally talented. let's say they're new lawyers. they don't have to be lawyers, they could be bankers, they could be people climbing the corporate ladder in any setting, they could be new teachers. imagine one white, one black. let's say they're both talented, both bright, both want to succeed. what happens to the person who's white? they become increasingly insulated among others who are like them, look like them, have the same experiences of race, tend to come from the same backgrounds. even though law firms are making laudable efforts. by and large most major elite, downtown law firms have maybe one african-american partner or

maybe two, and there's still plenty where there's not a single african-american who's ever been a partner or a senior partner. so as this white attorney climbs the ranks, they're less and less likely to interact with african-americans as equals. maybe there will be a janitor or someone cleaning their office. but the likelihood when they go to a meeting with their client, their corporate client who can afford their $250 billing rate that room is going to include african-americans, slim to none. they go to the country club, almost no chance there's going to be an african-american member there and so on and so forth. so for this person who's white, they don't have to think about race. sometimes my white friends say to me, nice, sincere people, why don't you get over it? why are you upset? why did you write a book? they say i don't really think about race very often at all. they're right. they don't have to. unless they're lost downtown and they get a little nervous. they see people standing on the

street corner who don't look like them, better lock my doors. they don't have to think about race. they can disregard african-american culture. they don't have to eat grits or greens. they don't have to learn anything about blacks. contrast that to the african-american. the irony here is the more successful that african-american young lawyer s. the more they have to integrate themselves into white culture. they have walk like whites, they have to shake hands like whites. they have to learn the right fork to pick up when they're invited to their boss' house. they have to mimic whites in every way and leave behind african-americans. they're going to be isolated, more and more likely to be the only one who looks like them. so there's this asymmetry. asian americans fit halfway in this scheme. they live in white neighbors or go to schools that are predominantly white, so we can say we understand what that

life is like. we can say we understand what it's like to be a person of color, to have people judge you when you show up on the basis of nothing other than your physical appearance. so there's some asymmetry. and what i'm always trying to do is put myself in new places to get new experiences. i don't suggest there's one solution or one answer, but if i had any advice for people it would be put yourself in that new place. if you're white, go some place, not just to look around, but to join. go to a black church and join and say, i will come to this church. i will break bread with people who don't look like me, whose cultural backgrounds are different and i will become part of that community. and all it takes is a few experiences like that. if you're the only white person in the room and you're not the one in charge, but you're just one other person in the room. and you're not talking about race. you're doing something else. you're in the classroom, all black and you're the only white

person, you'll get a little glimpse. it's not the same as walking in someone else's shoes. being on the gallaudet board, doing things like that, that's all part of my personal journey of understanding what it's like to be someone else, what it's like to transcend my own identity. >> from detroit high school, where did you go to school? >> i went to college at johns hopkins in baltimore. and then i went to -- >> what did you study? >> i studied writing. my parents thought i was doomed, you know? they wanted me to be a doctor or a scientist. they're very much asian parents. when i got into law school, my mother said you'll probably make a lot of money, but you still won't be a doctor. i talk a little bit about some of the bad advice my parents gave me when i was growing up. >> bad in what sense? >> well, bad in the sense that it didn't prepare me for the

diverse world we live in. i'd go home and i'd say well, i was being picked on at school, and it was racial. the teachers didn't do anything. and i'd tell my parents this. and you know what they'd say? they'd admonish me. they'd say, you should try harder, fit in more, don't make a fuss. and i was pretty angry at them for a long time, and i'm ashamed to admit this now but i was always growing up sort of embarrassed of my parents. i was embarrassed of them because well, they had accents. they didn't laugh at the right time when they watched tv sitcoms. and they were just sort of awkward. even as a kid if they needed to write a letter to the phone company, maybe there was a dispute, they'd have me write it because they knew my english was better, even when i was 9 or 10. and i new that my friends' parents wouldn't be my parents' friends. what i didn't realize is that my parents weren't blaming me.

they were blaming themselves. because what i didn't know because i was naive as a kid, i thought adults don't use these words. they don't go around doing these things. i didn't realized my parents faced this every day at work and it's even more severe because they have to put up with it. they've got a family to raise and feed. so my parents, when they encountered this, you know what they did? they blamed themselves. they thought it was because they had accents, because they laughed at the wrong times when watching tv sitcoms because they didn't quite get things. they thought it was entirely their fault. so now that i'm older, i appreciate them. my parents did something i could never do. they put down new roots, they learned a new language, they learned a new culture. they succeeded, they raised me and my brothers well enough. i could never do that. i'd have to move to australia and actually that wouldn't even be enough. i'd have to move to france and

do fantastically well to match the triumph of my parents. but they had all sorts of advice for me. such as fit in, you know? don't be controversial. i sometimes, if i'm on tv doing something like this, i'll send the tape to my mother. she'll call me up. after she tells me that i need a better haircut, she'll say stop being so controversial. i don't have the heart to tell her i've made a career out of being controversial. her advice is very much the advice of asians, and it's very much the advice of any newcomer because they're concerned with things other than civil rights and protesting. and that strategy worked for them. what i'm trying to suggest though sometimes we asian americans -- i spend a good amount of my time taking asian americans to task. there are asian americans who think that they're bet than whites and blacks who behind closed doors say awful things about blacks that sound no

different than someone who's white who's in the k.k.k. it's really appalling. but aside from that, asian americans sometimes don't even stand up and speak out for themselves. there's no asian american jesse jackson or al sharpton. you might not like the strategies or styles of those two leaders, but you can bet anyone in the united states, someone does something that's bad, that shows bias or prejudice toward african-americans, one of those two or someone else who's local will be boycotting, marching, will be on tv, will be given the opportunity to be on tv, will raise a fuss until something is done about that. asian americans, what is our response? we just kind of smile and laugh nervously and blame ourselves and consent to it. and part of my message is look, if we just smile at people who are abusing us, they're going to think it's ok and just continue to do it. you know? wake up, stand up for yourself. >> where are your parents now?

>> my parents did something that surprised me. i had no idea this would happen. it sort of fits a stereotype, i suppose. my parents moved to taiwan about a year and a half ago. my father worked for his entire life at ford, and he had a great opportunity to do some consulting in taiwan. and he's the proverbial, you know, big fish in a small pond. so they went back to check it out. and it's funny because my mother realized that she doesn't really fit into taiwan because it's been 40 years since she's lived there. in 40 years in a developing nation like that, it's amazing. the taiwan she left as a girl is not like the one that she's gone back to. she's very much an american now. not as much as i am, but she's louder, brasher, doesn't, you know, know quite how to defer and do the things that they would do there. and all of her friends are here

in the united states. this is where her life s they're undecided are they going to stay or not. but, you know, i am always a little nervous about telling strangers that because i'm worried it's just going to confirm this image, asians, they come here for a little while and they go back. it's this idea that we ultimately go back to where we came from and that's where we belong. you know what's interesting is that has been true for all of u.s. history. if you actually study the numbers. white immigrants, 80%, 90% of white immigrants from certain villages went back. it was perfectly common to spend 40 years here and then go back to ireland to the same village that you left as a kid in the 1910's or 1920's. >> do you happen to know of the 10 million asian americans how many of those folks were born here in this country? >> yes. a minority. >> minority? >> yeah. most asian americans today, about 2/3 of asian americans

were born overseas, are foreign born. sometimes people say to me well, you know that's why it's ok that we think you're a foreigner because well, it's more true than not. and part of my book is about stereotypes that have that germ of truth to them. a lot of stereotypes have that germ of truth to them, a lot of them are reasonable. if we're really going to be colorblind, we have to overcome not just the crazy stereotypes, the idea that jews are born with horns or tails, things that are just absurd, but even the stereotypes that are sometimes rational. sometimes people will say to me isn't it reasonable if you see someone who's black and male, it's late at night, isn't it common sense to cross the street because we know, we know more african-americans have criminal records than whites. the likelihood that your average african-american male in washington, d.c. has been

behind bars is tremendously high. the problem with this is it's all too easy to rationalize. it's all too easy for us to say, especially when the rationalization, when what seems reasonable coincides neatly with a stereotype for us to say it's reasonable, you get this self-fulfilling prophecy. what i always ask is imagine what it would be like if everyone's going to think you're a thug, if everyone avoids you because you think they're going to snatch your purse, i say this half jokingly, but i mean this, it makes sense. if i were an african-american, i would be a thug. if i'm going to suffer the disadvantages, not every day but often enough that people stigmatize me and look at me and security guards follow me and i get pulled over by cops and frisked and these things happen, i may as well get the benefits of being a thug. see, if we choose to just do what seems rational or

reasonable in the short-term, the subjects of stereotyping, well, we can't com plane do if they do what seems to be reasonable. it's a downward spiral. we need to break out of that. the way to do that is to say even when stereotypes appear superficially plausible, we have to say no this them. and the reason the asian american stereotype is easier to talk about is it's not as inflammatory. it's easier for whites and blacks to talk. that's really the same thing as african-americans and crime. if you're going to talk about numbers logically it's all the same. >> what would you say made you the angriest -- maybe that's not the best way to ask you. your parents september kept saying cool it. but what was it in your upbringing that you think got you to this point? >> yeah. it's interesting. i actually almost never get angry about any of this stuff.

i wrote a book instead. my way of coping when people say these things. >> but where did you get your interest? >> people will say things like oh, you asians, you got nothing to complain about. you're all doing so well. you asians, you're all so polite. i immediately want to do something very rude to that person. i got this interest because i can't help but be interested, care about these issues. i don't walk down the street thinking here i go, an asian american walking down the st. other people think about race for me. here's an example of something. as it happens, i ride a motorcycle. i'm very happy to do that. in fact, i'd rather spend my time riding my motorcycle and polishing it and thinking about motorcycles than thinking about race. 10 years ago when i bought my first bike i took a safety training class. i went to the class. the teacher was a real nice guy, fantastic rider. he could do things with such ease, you know, we're in the

parking lot, he'd show us how to turn these really tight corners, weave in and out of cones. and he was trying to help all of us, real nice guy. he saw that i was riding a honda. came over to me and he says, that's a nice jap bike. and for the entire two-day course, he's talking to me about them jap bikes, they're getting much better. used to not be very good. but now there are some nice jap bikes out there. i was thinking about buying a jap bike. jap this, jap that. and i didn't know what to say, you know? he's talking to me, he probably doesn't realize jap street a racial -- is a racial slur. it's not that it's offensive, it's hurtful, it's demeaning. >> why? >> why? because it's the taunt that i heard as a kid. it maybe isn't as bad as the n word, but it's a word like that. it's explosive. i'm not ordinary, i'm not normal, i don't belong. that's not what he meant, but

he may not realize identify links up to all this. mind you, this is a nice guy. i appreciated what he was doing. he's trying to help me learn how to not kill myself. the class was about 20 people. this other guy when's asian american, i didn't know him. i just signed up for this class and another guy who's asian american, probably not too much older than me, maybe he was five, 10 years older than me. we had no contract with each other, didn't sit with each other, not because we were trying to avoid each other. a bunch of strangers in this class. the instructor assumed we were buddies. that's this funny thing that happens. it doesn't happen every day, but it happens maybe once every couple months. i'll be standing in line at the dry cleaner's or to buy a movie ticket. i do a lot of traveling, i'll be at the airport, i'll be standing five feet away from some random asian-looking people, it doesn't matter what

they are, could be old, young, my turn will come to buy my ticket or check in and half the time, half the time the clerk will assume i'm the father, the brother, the son, i'm related to these random asian people. sometimes they're just sort of back there somewhere. so it made me realize i think of myself as an american. i think of myself as me, but other people automatically link me, they associate me with others who are asian. so i think about these issues because i don't have a choice, because our society is obsessed with them. i can be just interested in motorcycles, and i have to deal with well, what do i say when someone says jap bike? recently i was thinking about buying a new bike. there are these web sites now that you can go to with chat rooms, you talk about things. i went to one and said what kind of bike should i get? in the back of my mind, because i don't want to be thinking about race, i thought i wonder if anyone's going to say

anything about jap bikes. and i got about 20 answers, nice people helping me out. here are the pros and cons of this model. sure enough within a day someone started talking about jap bikes. and, you know, it makes me think what am i supposed to do about this? and i suggest in the book, there are different strategies. you don't want to be angry all the time. i'm not angry all the time. sometimes you tell a joke. sometimes you ask people -- i'm sorry, what was that you said, and they come to their senses. sometimes it's appropriate to get a little angry. well, i posted something on this web site. i was very careful and i said i'm not saying anyone's a racist, you all have been incredibly helpful. we're all strangers, i do want to point out something. jap is a racial slur. and you might want to think about it. i was -- i tried to approach it in the nicest terms i could because i was afraid of backlash. well, i immediately got two dozen answers, and boy were

they nasty. it was people, some people made fun of my name. some people said well, i don't see what's wrong with calling it a jap bike. you know, we call other bikes, you know, by names. we say brit bike for triumphs. of course, that's not a racial slur the way jap is. and 90% of the answers were incredibly hostile. eventually the moderator of this board pulled my -- censored it, just wiped it off. and what this shows is it's probably hard to talk about these issues because after all, who's the one who brought up race? half of these posts said, what's wrong with you? we just want to talk about motorcycles. why do you have to be talking about race? well, who was it who used the term jap bike? all i'm doing is observing something and trying to do it as gently as i can. and even that doesn't quite do it. so i think about these issues partly because there's a certain irony here.

i am about as american as you can be. you know, i don't speak chinese. i'm really bad with chopsticks. i held up my end of the deal when i went to school as a 5-year-old 30 years ago, teacher said to me, the kids said to me, if they didn't say it they made it clear that if i assimilated they'd accept me. but if i didn't assimilate they wouldn't. if i continued to eat funny-looking foods, if my english wasn't good, their view was it was right for them to pick on me because i was different. but if i became like them, they'd accept me. i learned how to shoot marbles, i collected baseball cards. i know nothing about chinese culture. i went to college and i was told have you to study the west. i know shakespeare. i can recite the opening 45 lines of "richard iii" from memory. and i have no accent. i can pick up the telephone. i could pass as a smith. i could tell you my name's frank smith and until i showed

up and you would look at me and say smith, how did you get to be a smith, i could if i were invisible be a frank smith. so the irony here is the more i fit in the more i realize there's a dichotomy. i'm not bitter about it but i realize others, they reneglected on the deal. the deal was i'd fit in, you accept me and sometimes i'm still treated as i'm fresh off the boat. people say to me oh, you know, they say that's such a shame you've lost your culture. i want to say who do you think took my culture away from me? i can understand if my parents are upset that i can't speak chinese but who are you to admonish me for not speaking chinese? i don't see you learning how to speak french or german. and it's as if on the one hand people expect me to assimilate and be no different, never complain but on the other hand sometimes be exotically ethnic when they expect me to and

they're disappointed. sometimes i have people come up to me, very nice people, again what's interesting here is sometimes it's people who, they want to be considerate but race is just on their minds, they'll come up to me and they'll bow. they'll sort of give me this inept bow. i'm not going to bow back. i know how to shake hands. i don't know the ritual of bowing, you know? my parents probably don't even know the proper -- there's a depth, how deep you bow, how many times you bow. we don't know that. there's no reason people should react to me differently. that's what this book is about, trying to create a situation where we each define ourselves. >> at the end of the book, you talk about a place called deep spring college. why did you write about it? where is it? and what impact did it have on you? >> it was a terrific place. i was just out there for a week. i'll be teaching there again this year, and i hope to teach there for as long as they'll keep having me back. it's a fantastic experiment.

the great thing about the united states is we're always trying different things. sometimes it doesn't work, but sometimes there are bold, novel ideas, and they work. this is a college at the edge of death valley. it's 26 student. it's two years, full scholarship and it's on a working cattle ranch. students who go there are kids who turned down harvard, stanford, they've got top grades and test scores. they go for two years and transfer back out, like the places they were thinking of. what's unique about this, in the morning they take classes. these are classes amazing, as freshmen they're taking classes that seniors at other schools would be taking. top-inch seminars. and all afternoon they run the ranch. it's completely student run. students select who the new students will be. they hire the faculty. they make all the choices, you know, they got 300 head of cattle.

they herd them. they learn all these skills. and the idea is to make the complete person. there's no alcohol, no tv, no leaving campus. so it is a unique place. and what i realize -- the reason i talk about pime, you think what does that have to do with "yellow," i realized here is a community, it's a community that people have made. it didn't just spring up over night. it took someone with a vision. it took people committed to making this community work. it's a democrat community. it's a diverse community. people are equals there. but it's frustrating. it takes a lot of toil and constant effort. it doesn't maintain itself. it doesn't just run itself. that's what the united states is like. it's a community that takes constant effort. these issues of diversity, they're like our nation itself. they take constant effort. and that's what i'm suggesting.

it's a process, not an outcome, where if we participate as equals and all come together, recognizing there's no magic bullet. there's no solution. we don't get to a racial nirvana overnight, even if we all pledge to be people of good will and not judge people on the basis of their race, sometimes we just can't help it. we get racial consequences, racial patterns and practices. and so i talk about deep springs because it shows how hard it is to build and sustain a community yet that it's possible to build and sustain truly unique communities. >> how long has it been there, by the way? >> it was founded in 1917. >> who founded it? >> a guy named l.l. nunn. he was the first person to bring power lines to niagra falls. >> how did you find yourself there? >> i had always known about it. it's one of these quirky colleges that i guess you hear about. they send out their catalog to, i think, the high school juniors who score in the top, i

don't know, 1% or 2% of the psat so i'd heard of them 20 years ago when that was me and always in the back of my head i thought i should go check it out. i'm always trying to check out these unique places. and what's unique about deep springs is everyone there is an individual. and everyone is unique. but at the same time in a funny way they're all shaped by this experience so they have a common bond. and that's what's true of people who are members of racial minority groups as well, individuals and unique. yet they share a common bond because of the set of experiences necessity have. >> of the 26 students, what was the makeup of the student body? >> that's interesting. they've been trying to become more mixed, more mixed in racial terms. when i was there i think it was 22 were white and four were asian or asian american. so they've got a ways to go. >> no african-americans? >> yeah, no african-americans, for complicated reasons. i can see why because first of all they're going after a very

unique group of students. these are students who are performing fantastically well, and they're the ones who are well, a little crazy. they're the ones who will go out to the desert for two years and commit to helping run a cattle ranch, you know? not many people of any racial background want to do this and so it's very hard to get someone who's african-american and male who got into harvard. there's a lot of pressure if you're the first in your family to go to college. harvard's offering you a scholarship. hey, i'm going to go to the desert for two years instead. even when you're working on these issues in good faith you can't always just fix them. you can't wish them. so let me give you a very quick example. of these racial patterns because i always try to make this concrete when i talk about race. i don't want people to think i'm just some egghead, ivory tower type.

here in washington, d.c. in the nation's capital, people who know we're majority minority. most of d.c. is african-american, more than 70%. everyone knows there's some neighbors that aren't just predominantly white, they're almost exclusively north white. upper northwest. there's no sign there that says blacks stay out. there are no laws that say only white people can buy real estate here. in fact, there are laws that prohibit that sort of racial bias. i'll make you a bet if you surveyed 1,000 people in ward three or four of d.c., chevy chase, the most exclusive neighborhoods, big, well-manicured lawns, fancy houses, luxury cars, if you knocked on the doors and said to each of the people, and there are whole blocks where i assure you from the census data you know you're not going to see a single person of color. maybe you'll see one asian

american. but you could go 20, 30, 40 houses and it's going to be all white otherwise. you survey a thousand of those homeowners, maybe one of them will say something racial. if you say why do you live her? they'll say good neighborhood, good shopping, my real tore suggested it. they'll tell you all sorts of things. not one of them is going to say i live here because black folks don't live next door. i'd like to believe these people and trust them that every one of them made it -- of course, they made conscious decisions. they didn't just drop in from the sky into their houses. they spent half million dollars or a million dollars to buy this house. i'm willing to take them at their word that race was not for a moment on their minds. well, this is the paradox that we have, right? all these individuals make desillingses, each one of them individually innocent except for maybe one extremist.

yet you have an unmistakeable racial pattern. it's unmistakeable. it's as strongly racial as if you put up a sign. well, what do we do about that? and that's what i'm trying to address. what do we do about these problems? we do have the serious ones, the egregious cases. i don't doubt that. but what do we do about these ones where it's nice people, they're well-meaning people, they're just these intractible problems. a legacy of our history that are part of the stereotyping we all absorb as part of ow culture. that's the tough question. >> what about the reverse of it. you could have gone over to another neighborhood where it's all black? >> you'll find some neighborhoods like that. the black neighborhoods, those houses are worth $50,000 or $100,000 less than in the white neighbors, even if you match up all the same features. one side of rock creek park, the park that divides d.c. has

higher housing values than the other side. any real tore will tell you if you buy on one side, your house isn't going to rise in value quite as quickly. i think sometimes people say well, don't african-americans want to segregate themselves, aren't they all trying to, you know, form their own clubs? well, some of that's true. that's true of asian americans. it's true of many groups. and if we want to really have a racially diverse, integrated society, we have to fight our own tendencies to do that. but partly there is a difference. an african-american who wants to have a neighborhood that's predominantly african-american is trying to create something where for once they're not the only person in the room who looks that way. i think african-americans should have a choice, should have those places where yes, they're part of the mix but also have those institutions where for once whites are in the minority. there are very few places that whites have to go to where they'll find when they look around that most people look

different than they do. that's a good experience for all of us to have if we're really going to be colorblind. everyone has to have that experience. sometimes people look at this -- all these changes, pat buchanan just wrote a book decrying all these changes. soon our nation will make a transition never before made by any society anywhere on the face of the globe. within our life times we will cease to have a single identifiable racial majority. that's scary to some folks. i don't want it to be. i want it to be reassuring. i want to explain to people look, don't worry about your grandchildren competing against my grandchildren because your grandchildren are going to be my grandchildren. there's going to be intermarriage. and we have a shared future here but if whites are anxious about being a minority, it shows there's some advantages to being white. there's a hierarchy, they'd have to give something up. and second it shows we're not yet really colorblind.

because if we were whites could never look around and say i'm a minority. we'd all just fade away. we may aspire to that, but we don't have that reality. >> your brothers nelson and carson, what do they do? >> they're writers. they're twins. nelson ed its an english language newspaper in taiwan. and carson ed its a magazine on -- well, how to learn this language. >> in taiwan? >> yeah, they both moved to taiwan. nelson married a girl who's from taiwan. and carson, well, because they're twins, twins have a special bond, you know, he moved over there, too. and so that leaves me to my shock the only member of my immediate family residing in the united states. i'm amazed that my brothers did this because my brothers were born in detroit.

you know, they lived their entire lives here. for them to make this transition, it's not one that i envy. i would not make that transition. >> you went to university of michigan law school. >> that's right. >> any other schooling in there before you got to howard where you teach? >> well, i taught for a year as a fellow at stanford. i practiced law in san francisco for a few years. >> next year, where are you going to be teaching? >> i'm going to go back to the law school that i went to visit for a year, as a faculty member. looking forward to that. it will be very different. >> chairman of the d.c. human rights commission? >> that's right. that's something else that i do because i believe in these causes, and i want to make sure that i'm involved. so i'm not just writing and talking. >> you want to run for office someday? >> if you'd vote for me, i'll think about it. >> but what's the -- is that something that's in the back of your head? >> well, people ask me that every now and then, and i'm