 Okay, it's Monday. It's think tech. It's the middle way. We're doing the middle way this morning at 10 a.m. And we're doing with Russell Russell you and Nathan Madsen Russell. Can you please introduce Nathan. Yes, thank you, Jay. Good morning everyone. Good afternoon to Nathan Nathan is is an anthropologist, and he's a lawyer. And he has a very interesting background, because he has an anthropologist background which he'll share some of his thoughts today in this program about his thoughts from an anthropologist viewpoint towards racism against Asian American Pacific Islanders and other marginalized groups within that community. Welcome to the show Nathan nice to have you here. Thank you very, very timely show isn't it. Yes, it is. Yeah, unfortunately we have, you know, a plethora of news stories over the past year, but really anti Asian racism is a long standing problem in the United States, both against Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans. Well, you know, this country is a melting pot. So he's been a melting pot. It says one layer of melting on top of another layer. That's our brilliance, but it's also our weakness because after 200 years we really haven't, we haven't learned how to melt. Well, we stumped on the guy who arrived and the easier he is to identify the more we dump on him. You know, I was telling you before the show I believe that you need a strong hand to set that straight. You need a strong hand to say no, you can't do that. And if you do that you're going to be punished. The example is handling a wayward child. And, you know, so the attacks on, you know, in Asians in our country have gone on since Asians first came here. Remember the railroads, remember who built the railroads, remember all the exclusion acts. Remember the internment camps in World War two, and on and on. And then once in a while, it pops up like this. This is a particularly nasty because it's happened in the in the shadow of the anti-Semitic moves in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And in the shadow of Black Lives Matter and the deaths there at the hands of the police and otherwise, and reminders of lynching in Congress. So, you know, it's it's larger than just an Asian discrimination discrimination against Asians. It's a it's a it's a figment of American society, American history. And let me add that I think it's a figment of Trump. Trump has unleashed this as he has unleashed discrimination, prejudice racism against other groups in the country, but he certainly worked hard at this. So, Russell, you know what what do you think the mechanism is by which you know this this flawed American society is is activated, exacerbated by one person who comes in as president on the bully pulpit. He makes comments repeats us comments and unleashes people who are willing to go out and do violence against minority. I would say that's a really a complicated question, it would require several sessions to discuss this but I think one of the things the mechanism that we need to work quickly is, for example, we talk about the anti crimes type of legislation. Unfortunately, I believe that all of these are really governed by state law. We have, you know the federal government to a certain extent has very limited exercise of powers there. But what I think really is important Jay is that it comes down to two things at least immediately my mind is that we need the leaders of this nation and the business communities to start engaging people who are not the certain group but other groups, you know groups of color groups of different orientation into society, because we're not part of society. Now I applaud President Joe Biden for his saying, I see you I hear you. This is an American, this has to stop. Well, these are great things to say but there's nobody in it. If you can't have any federal legislation, and also the thing that really concerns me Jay is that when you say, this is an American. This has been American for hundreds of years, you know what you mentioned in history, the railways where the Chinese Americans were brought in, you know, didn't receive any credit for it. There was even legislation that banned them from bringing Chinese women so they could have families here. All of this is historical it goes back goes back to when the Constitution was written you know all manner created equal yet we still enslaved from 1787 to until the Civil War. That was an issue for over 100 years you know, and we're still having that issue. It's historical it's continues but we need leadership that's strong, and we need a Congress that will can pass laws and do things. Not to take so much time but there was just recent legislation that was being sent in Congress, the little bit and required no money, no funding, and it was really a proclamation that stop Asian anti Asian race discrimination. It's just a wording, but that was killed by the by the Congress, the Republicans voted it down. So it comes with the leaders, they have to send a clear message to the people, just as President Trump sent the message to his constituency to create a license for his consistency to commit racism discrimination. You know, Nathan it strikes me there's so many questions I want to ask you as an anthropologist and a lawyer great combination in our time. But you know it seems to me that when you get Congress voting those resolutions down. And expressing, you know, openly expressing racist views, a president expressing racist views or black brown Asian and Jewish is horrendous it's worse than it was me pose that thesis that premises to you. It's worse than it was you agree. You know, I think it's really difficult to say, and you know I'm being brought here as somebody who is queer and Jewish and has experienced my own forms of discrimination but certainly not experiencing sort of the lived experiences of racism that many Asian American and Asian Pacific Islander or Pacific Islander Americans feel. Obviously part of my research. Whether or not it's worse, I don't think is necessarily a productive question I think it's important to think about what can we do to move forward and I think one of the things that hamstrings. One of the people who have a good heart and are trying to sort of address these issues of racism is that the messaging is oftentimes we're all the same, and so we should be treated equally we should be treated fairly. And, you know, in practice, that's just not true. We're not all the same. And when we are celebrated for our differences. We can truly move forward in a different way but when we make the argument that we're all the same than equality and equity is predicated on sameness. And so when somebody is visibly different looking when somebody has a different background when someone celebrates being American in a very different way that causes a problem because it's easy for someone in the majority to say, that person is not the same. So why should I treat them equitably. And I think if we focus more on, we're all different, but we're all humans, and we deserve to be treated equally and equitably that is doing a better job of not erasing the differences between us. But to say that, you know, we have difference, but that doesn't mean that we should be treated poorly. You know, it strikes me that you're talking about educating people, changing the way they think about things. And you know, that may not do the job. I think we can agree that Trump can do a negative job as he has in no time at all he can exacerbate flaws as I said in our society, but fixing those flaws and reversing what Trump has done requires more draconian measures doesn't it. I mean, Russell talked about how this is all a matter of state jurisdiction, but it could be federal. There could be a federal law. There could be a federal law about racism and discouraging racism. And there could be punishment. And if we had a working Congress and I want to be clear, I don't think we do have a working Congress. I think that Congress would say we don't we don't tolerate this. If we find that you've engaged in racist crimes. You're going to have a stiffer much stiffer penalty. And here's the definition of a racist crime. You're going to go to jail. And you will stop doing that. And I think, I think, like your reaction as an anthropologist and a lawyer. That's the way you stop this conversation education makes multiple generations and before it's achieved it's forgotten. Well, I'll push back a little bit on you and you know I think that that answer is something that a lawyer or a politician would say yes, we need to change the laws we need to have someone who is strong in politics that says racism will not be tolerated. And that certainly helps advance that conversation, but it is never just about laws and this is where the anthropologist side of me comes in. It is both society and the legal system, because we have laws against racism with against sex based discrimination against all of these kinds of things through the Civil Rights Act right in employment and housing and all of these kinds of things. The laws there, it says you can do this. It still happens all of the time. And so it has to be a coordinated effort between both the legal system, the political system, as well as change within our culture within our society. If you neglect one and go solely with the other, you're not going to actually be producing change within the society you're going to be having a legal system that many people feel is layered on top of them and is oppressive to them, because it fails to adequately address how they understand their reality around them. Russell, you know, you're a lawyer, and you're also Chinese, and you're seeing, you know, both sides of the Chinese equation, both in China for many years and in the US, you felt a touch of racism. You've seen it, you've seen institutional racism by the United States government. How do you feel about this? What can be done? Is it possible to change the way people think about this by asking them to voluntarily or be educated so that they voluntarily make a more progressive view, or is more necessary? Well, gee, that's a really good question. First of all, I'm happy to see one positive thing out of this. It's the Asian Americans are speaking out. They're coming out for so long. It's a cultural nuance that many are saying, well, I've learned to keep quiet, keep your head down, just work hard, get good scores, and show them through the conduct. But I realize in this country as they get older, that you got to speak out. If you don't speak out, your voice is not going to be heard. Second of all, I think it has also made many Asian Americans realize that, wait a minute, now I see the connection with Black Lives Matter, now I see the connection with the pushback that the anti-Jewish, you know, things are done in this country. I see the pushback. We're all marginalized groups and we're kept outside this one big circle, you know, like the Trump world, that we can't get in positions to make changes. That's a first thing. Second, the entertainment world. That's a countless forgetting culture to start thinking. I was really surprised watching the controversy of the movie called Minari. It was one of the best movies out of Sundance. It was premiered there and out of, I think it was a Golden Globes or something, that it wasn't the best movie because why? They put them in the best foreign language category film. But wait a minute, the director was American. The Money Key for America was filmed in America. It's a story of every American family here that comes here. The story immigrants to America and their struggles. It's not a story about something in Korea. It's in America, the American experience, but again, you see how the groups are marginalized. You're not putting the category of a mainstream America, and that's the problem. But the recent outpouring from media people, entertainment world saying, no, no, we got to make it right. That's a good start, but we need to do more. I want to go back to anthropology for a minute, Nathan. I want to try to understand from, you know, I see anthropology as a very theoretical thing because it's hard to find hard evidence about it, and you have to connect dots, you know, from all over the world, and you have to study so many things. It's very theoretical in my view, and it's historical in my view, but maybe it can't explain, you know, the mechanics of racism. And I give you two possibilities there, or two vectors. One is, you know, there's a difference between different tribes, if you will, different races. And we, as a species, have always had trouble. We've always been tribal. A lot of people describe, you know, the country now, thanks to Putin and his friend, thanks to Trump and his friend Putin. We've been engaged in a device of this that brings us back to tribalism, which is the term I'm sure that anthropology, you know, understands. The other thing is jealousy. Russell, you know, referred to the fact that that the Asian people have done well. Their average family income is higher than the norm. They go to school more than the norm. They're achievers. Of course, a lot of immigrants are achievers. And it could be that you, you know, you can say about Asians is because they're immigrants, they're achievers, but the fact is that the others who hate them are jealous. They're jealous of the schooling, they're jealous of the family, you know, the family integrity, they're jealous of their careers and so many things about the Asians. And it's that jealousy on top of the tribalists that creates this racism we're seeing. How much of what I said, I'm not an anthropologist, Nathan, not at all. But how much of I said rings true for anthropology? Well, so, I mean, first and foremost, you know, anthropology is a very wide discipline. What you may be talking about is more archaeological, which is very much historical, but, you know, most anthropologists, like myself, are study the contemporary world, and we are embedded in society. So it's not just a theoretical science, it is very much a grounded analysis of practice of people's daily lives of their lived experiences. And one of the things that we really hesitate to do with an anthropology is to sort of draw out these human universals so that, you know, all racism comes from tribalism or that it comes from issues of jealousy. It's oftentimes much more nuanced and much more complicated than that. I think that what you're hitting on is something that certainly exacerbates the situation, especially in the United States, right, because the racism that we have in the United States, specifically the racism towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans is different than, say, the racism that exists in Canada or in the UK towards the same groups of people. And the racism that we experience or that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experience in the United States is going to be different than the racism that black people in the United States also feel, right. I mean, there's concerns about the safety of black men walking down the street that is slightly more of a concern now, certainly with the uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans, but certainly hasn't been for the longest time, or police violence directed towards Asian men was, you know, was a very different experience than black men have been historically. You know, whether or not jealousy plays into, into racism. I think, yeah, certainly it can. And if you look at a lot of the people who are so supportive of Trump, you know, most of them are white, and most of them are working class or our lower middle class. And part of the problem is that they're being fed these messages, right, that the dominant society, white society in the United States is responsible for a whole host of problems against people of color against queer people against Jewish people. And if they're in a relatively white dominant space and they don't have these different groups of people with them, there are more rural spaces, they may not see that. And so they hear these things that they're responsible for racism that they're responsible for all of these problems. And not only that, but they have privilege on top of that. And if they're socioeconomically depressed. It doesn't ring true with their lived experiences. The problem is, is that it's never really a question of how an individual feels, and it is a problem of the way that society is contributing to these problems. You know, I have several colleagues who have studied this more in depth. Sarah Ricardy Swartz, for example, does amazing work in West Virginia in rural areas in Appalachia and the ways in which people experience racism there. I would really recommend checking out her work. There is a lot of different amazing pieces out there that really can address that more clearly than I can. I'm going to take the lessons of anthropology and law to a solution. Because I myself, I'm not willing to tolerate this any longer. And I think there's a lot of people in the country, particularly after the events in Atlanta, but you know so many events in their lifetimes. You know, you could argue exacerbating events and getting more outrageous without any, that any pushback by the federal government. So interesting. But taking what we know from anthropology and distinguishing the kind of racism and divisiveness we have in this country. And then taking, taking it a matter of law, where we really don't want a strong leader, such as a dictator, coming on top and saying no, you can't do that. If you do that, you go to Lubionka prison, nobody will hear from you again. And that will be the lesson. And maybe that will sink in after a while, but that that's not appropriate in a democracy. But what, what about in a democracy. One of those lessons teach us about how to stop this on it is institutional. How do we stop it on an institutional basis. If you're, if you're addressing Congress right now or the president. What do you recommend, you know, it's like I said before, it has to be a two pronged at least, but multi pronged approach. You have to address law and you have to address politics and you have to get people who have power on the side of the people. What do you recommend to them, what steps, what was a primitive steps do you recommend to them to stop this right now. You know, stronger hate crime legislation I think obviously helps and I think that consulting with the people who are experiencing racism on a daily basis to get their input on what kinds of changes need to happen in the legal system. So it's great for us to have a conversation about what kinds of things need to change but you know we're two Jewish people who are not Asian American and so we can only ever see it. We can only ever hear about it secondhand but we're not going to feel it. So you have to involve the people who are actually living this every single day, ask them what they need, ask them what kinds of support what kinds of changes they need, but it also has to be in combination with changes in the law. I've never said that it had to just be education that it just had to be social change it has to be both, because you can't just change the law and expect things to change overnight. That's not how it works. And it has to be combined with this very dedicated, and I would say collaborative approach, it shouldn't just be Asian Americans who are talking about this and it shouldn't just be Asian Americans who are calling out racism against Asian Americans. Everybody should be just like Asian Americans should be calling out racism against black people against Latinx people. They should be calling out anti semitism, they should be actively involved in queer and trans spaces and fighting for more inclusivity. That's a really good point. All groups, all of us should be calling it out every time. But you said we should ask members of a particular group, but they think should be done. And you know Russell you mentioned that you know in the past Asian people have not pushed back, not publicly they've been relatively quiet about this. So maybe they're not so quiet now. Maybe they have parades and vigils and protests in New York and Atlanta and other places. But Russell, again, you're a lawyer, you're Chinese, you've been studying this and thinking about it for a long time. What steps should be taken. Now I'm asking an Asian this question. You know Jay, I think we're, we want to get a lot of progress done in a short time. First, the first is identifying the issue which I think we're doing now speaking vocal to people that are speaking up the Asian Americans on a different situation than their fathers and people who were laborers, Russian immigrants, who came to this country with nothing. Of course they had no voice. Now they have a voice. They're an entertainment industry their lawyers are doctors, their politicians. That's the first step. But I think we also have to do a long term step and that's education process. And what I'm saying to is like for example, if you study English and another foreign language, you learn about a different language, your mind becomes more accepting. It's a broader space within your mind to understand that there are other people, and I can learn a lot from it. Like Jay, living in Hawaii versus living in New York, you, you, or maybe New York and I can say but maybe let's say living in Oklahoma. You don't see other people you're not educated on a daily basis that other people other cultures are good and enriches our lives. So you need an educational, you need laws legislation mandating certain education. For example, when I grew up, you know, we're reading history books you read about the Conestoga wagons going out to the to settle the land but I didn't hear the other part of history from the Indian point of view that, you know, these were people who took their land that was their land, and they paid a dollar to the government. So we have the glorification of the white settlers moving the wagons across the prairies, but we need to be more inclusive in our textbooks our history. We can't whitewash things and say this this and this, we can't gloss over things. I think the problem in our society, we kind of gloss over give lip service. Okay, we talked about the African American, that's it. We won't celebrate these things we need to have more inclusive holidays you know, like Hanukkah I know what that is right because because I have friends in that world, but we live and share spaces right. We know the Asian holidays, you know, we know Kwanzaa we know all these different things. It's a sharing spaces where it's meaningful to all of us. So that's really important. I'm going to give you a little thing to think about Jay. I had a friend who is another professors from China, and he had this question to me, he said, Well, you know, Russell, you are Asian American you're educated your lawyer your professor. Now, if you're treated like this in America, and you're discriminated against because you have black hair, and you're Asian American. How do we think we feel in China. If we're negotiating with America. How are they looking at us because we're Asians. So they must really hate us. They will discriminate against us we don't have a fair thing. And you know, through my years Jay reviewing these contracts is international contracts between Chinese and Europe and America. There's always one clause that really makes me think why it's in there. And it says like this party and party be one is a Western American dealings Chinese on their own accord in the principle of mutual respect, friendly consultation and equality and mutual benefit, and to this contract. So they stress this thing about mutual respect, equality. You know, so they got it they understand that there is a difference in America we don't understand that that that how people are treated, especially in this case Asian Americans. I don't think we treated equally I you know, I it's another conversation I have so many stories Jay that I've gone through where people asked me, I'm the perpetual foreigner. So your English sounds very good where'd you learn English from, you know, or your English isn't not good because you must come from a background where your parents you spoke only you didn't speak English at home. You know, I can think of some very funny responses to that kind of rhetoric actually. You do a job on a guy who makes a statement like that. Okay, anyway, I want to go wider for a minute here Nathan we have that much time but again from the anthropological point of view you, you mentioned that, you know races are different between different areas in the country, racism in the country may be different than Canada and maybe south of the border, and certainly racism can be different, you know, overseas in Europe, certainly. And this morning I heard that the Uyghur issue in China referred to as the Chinese Holocaust. So I thought it was a very interesting conflation of racism, you know, in our lifetime. But you know, I'd like to know from you a how different is it we had we seem to have it everywhere. I way way made a movie called human flow and identified 65 million people who were behind behind Bob wire now and for the rest of their lives in this world, going to 70 million when you, you know, when you turn your head. This is this is a kind of racism isn't it. And, you know, we have situations where you can create racism, like in Rwanda in the Belgian Congo, where they the Belgians identified the Hutus and the Tutsis. And these categories did not exist before they created racism out of whole cloths by simply making to, you know, community groups, and then pitting them against each other they thought that was smart. It was. But what I'm saying is anthropology must help us a in understanding, you know, the common denominators of racism around the world and the common solutions. Because this is I said at the outset here is a flaw in humanity. And we need to figure out a way not only to solve it in the US, but to solve it worldwide. Well, I would say, you know, again, anthropology really avoids these kind of universals, in part because they are experienced in very different ways, right. And, you know, I don't know a lot about the Uighur experience in China. You know, I have only ever read about the Rwandan genocide, all of these kinds of things. Yes, they, they are racism and they are, you know, promoting. It's just, it's caused a lot of problems, of course, but again, if we're not looking at the specifics of a society and if we're not looking at all of the things, the holistic picture of what's happening in a bounded area. We can't solve that problem, because it is different. And if we try to approach this universal solution to fix it, we will inevitably not fix it. Right, because it has to be tailored, it has to be directed and it has to be addressing the actual issues that are on the ground. Because, again, if we're not focused, then all we're doing is trying to put a band-aid on a gaping wound. Russell, we're really almost out of time here and I want to just ask you one last question. So, you mentioned that it's a matter of state jurisdiction and the state suggests these hate crime statutes and all that. Is it, is that the ideal? What do you suggest the states do now? If they recognize state governments, some of which are controlled by the Republican Party, I'm sorry to say. Those are the states, for example, that are enacting suppression of voting statutes, which are, I'm afraid, racist and that's making things worse on the voting rights side. But what way do you think the action should be? Should it be in states? Should it be in the federal government? Should it be in the media? I'm going to say all of these things, all of the above. Where should it be now? Again, with the notion that we have identified something that is a serious problem and that something must be done about it. Where and who should take the first foot forward? I think that's a very good question, a very difficult one, Jay. Again, well, it starts with the top, stops the president and, you know, his remarks that this is an American, this has to stop. I think it starts there. I think, you know, you have to get the federal government and state comes working together and, you know, I go back to one thing that I really think it's important. It's kind of a long term thing. The media plays a very important role in the short term message. But the long term message is we have to get it in our educational system. It starts with growing up in the form of the stage. It starts at that stage where our history books are rewritten to include other groups that have contributed to America. Russell, it takes generations for that to infiltrate into the community. We can't wait that long. I think I think then the, you know, the other short term thing which which I was coming to is that I think that, especially like the Asian American group that has to work really strongly with the other groups, the black American groups, the Latino group, the marginalized groups, the LBGP group, the women's rights group, all has to collectively because if you work in your own isolated cell, your voice will be drowned out in this country. And it has to go to the media. It has to make that media now with technology to get it out and to get it in, you know, starting places in Hollywood, you know, where everybody watches movies, you have to get it out. You have to demand that there's more equality in roles and start to get people out from the different spaces in the movie. Who's you? Who's you? Well, when I say you, I mean it's getting, getting. You, who? No, not you. I mean, maybe it's Nathan. Maybe it's Nathan. That's the problem. Who? Who has to do it? You know, Nathan back when in the anti-Semitic world, there was a fellow in New York who established an organization of Jewish people, men mostly, who went around and if you engaged in anti-Semitism, it would beat you up on the street. He didn't get his name, but, you know, he was very famous and didn't last very long, but it was an example of one way that the individual would deal with this. He would meet violence with violence. You know, and that's a risk now, I think, with the way the country has been divided with what Trump has done to us, hitting side against side and Putin hitting side against side. And then the risk in the years going forward, if we don't do something about this, of having, you know, may lays in the street over racism. So I know we can't change that today and you guys have made that clear to me, but my question to you, Nathan, my closing question to you is individually, personally, how do I cope with this? How do I change my own conduct? Sure. So I think one of the things that is really critical is to be open to listening to other people's experiences and to take those interactions that either you see other people describe to you or maybe you even participate in. And if someone says, you know, hey, that's racism, or I need you to call that out. I need you to step forward. I think that's really important because, you know, as Russell has been alluding to, it is not just the person who is the is experiencing racism, or anti-Semitism or, you know, homophobia, whatever, to be responsible for their own safety for changing everybody's perception of them to making a better world. It's all of our collective responsibilities. And so taking that seriously and to address issues of racism when you see them, because this is part of the education process. It's not just about learning about it in school, although I don't want to discredit that. I think that's really critical and some states are really pushing towards having better education systems that deal with that. But we often learn from our friends, from our families, from whomever around us. And if someone says to you, hey, that's racism, or when this happens to me, this is how it makes me feel to stick up, sorry, to stick up for them, to stand up, to stay, you know, enough is enough. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good suggestion. Well, Russell, Nathan, we're out of time. I'm so sorry. This is an important discussion. I'm sure these things will happen again. I'm sure these points, these issues and possibilities will be raised again. And maybe we can talk about them again when that happens. Thank you so much, Russell. Thank you so much, Nathan. Hello. Thank you.