'Negro' Race Choice On Census Form Sparks Outrage - wcbstv.com

Question #9 Causes Uproar, Asks For Citizens To Pick 'Black,' 'African American' Or 'Negro' From Same Box

A fiery blast from the past is conjuring controversy in the new millennium. The word "negro" is now featured on an official U.S. document and now many are questioning if the Census Bureau is being insensitive.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

It's a word that many African Americans associate with segregation, so imagine how shocked many were to see it on the 2010 U.S. census form.

"The fact that it's 2010 and they're still putting 'negro,' I am a little offended," said Secaucus resident Dawud Ingram.

Question #9 on the this year's census asks about your race. One of the boxes you can choose is "black," "African American," or "negro," all placed next to the same box. Ingram said it's not a word he uses to identify neither himself nor anybody else.

"African Americans haven't been going by the term 'negro' for decades now. It's really confusing," he said.

But census officials disagree, saying they found some older African Americans identify themselves that way and they're trying to be inclusive. In a statement, they said: "Results from the census in 2000 showed that a number of respondents provided a write-in response of 'negro' when answering the question on race."

In fact, Congress approved the form more than a year ago. Newark resident Jabbar Ali can't believe it.

"I thought it was something we left behind a long time ago – the word 'negro,'" said Ali.

Chanou Wilshire said the census form doesn't give her an option since it's got "African American," "black," and "negro" next to the same box.

"It's highly offensive," she told CBS 2.

But not everyone is offended.

"How you define yourself I guess is subjective. But for me, that on a form doesn't offend me at all," said Brooklyn resident Tiffany Campbell.

Others don't understand why the question of race has to come up on any form.

"I'm an American. What's wrong with just being an American?" asked Newark resident Derri Gowns.

Census bureau officials said they're preparing for the 2020 form, asking folks now in a questionnaire whether the word 'negro' should be removed.

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Museum Review - Museum of Chinese in America Reopens, Designed by Maya Lin - NYTimes.com

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By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

“Iron Chink” proclaims the raised words on a cast-iron sign, once mounted on a fish-processing machine. In the early 1900s in Seattle the machine had been invented to replace Chinese laborers, who presumably were constructed of weaker mettle.

Now, of course, its casual slur inspires some shock. It is a companion piece to another object, a cap-gun toy from the 1880s, when the “Chinese Question” (as objections to Chinese immigration was called) turned violent: pull the trigger, and a suited gentleman kicks a braided Chinese man in the rear, setting off the miniature explosion.

As you walk through the Museum of Chinese in America, which is reopening in Chinatown on Tuesday in a warm and inviting new space designed by Maya Lin, you can’t see these objects and not be aware of the kinds of challenges these immigrants once faced. Such artifacts also reflect the expanded ambitions of the museum itself: it began as a community institution almost 30 years ago, dedicated to preserving and commemorating the history of Chinatown, but with this $8.1 million transformation it now has a 14,000-square-foot space and national ambitions.

Its goal is to explore the experience of Chinese immigration and the evolution of Chinese communities in the United States, to account for a people’s struggles and triumphs and honor their artistic achievements. One of its galleries is now showing works of four Chinese-American artists.

With these ambitions the institution is joining an ever-lengthening roster of American museums of identity. All of them — whether they deal with Latino-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Nordic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans or African-Americans — are celebrations of hyphenated existence.

And the strange thing is how similar the arcs of their stories are: they recount how after a long period of suffering, prejudice and hatred, a group has carved a distinctive place in the history of the United States, its once scorned identity now a source of strength. Many of these museums also serve as anchors for the community and as educational centers, recounting political morality tales and honoring a shared history. That is certainly the case here as well.

Ms. Lin designed the institution’s main exhibition space to surround a bare-bricked, sky-lighted central area between the two connected buildings that constitute the museum. The central atrium, with a staircase leading down to a floor of offices and classrooms, invokes both a traditional Chinese courtyard and a rough-edged shared urban habitat that recalls yards or alleys over which neighbors shared stories, sometimes leaning out of windows.

The main gallery rooms even have windows looking out over the bricked space, only here each window also functions as a screen on which videos and photographs are projected as autobiographical histories are recounted. The galleries (with exhibition design by Matter Architectural Practice and mgmt. design) are intimate and make it seem as if you were passing through the rooms of a modest home. They lead chronologically from the 19th-century history of China’s encounters with the West to lives of contemporary Chinese-Americans told on a wall of video screens.

This core exhibition, “With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America,” was created by the historian John Kuo Wei Tchen, a co-founder of the museum, along with Cynthia Ai-fen Lee. It depends less on artifacts like the cap gun or the display of irons used by once-familiar Chinese laundry establishments than on the arc of the narrative.

One side of some galleries tells of struggle and hardship, showing images of the riots that led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, for example, in which unskilled Chinese immigrants were barred. Also on display are the crib sheets an aspiring immigrant once studied to convince officials at Angel Island (the San Francisco counterpart to Ellis Island) that he was more than a “paper son” whose false documents affirmed a connection to someone already in America.

The most fascinating galleries are compressed displays of how the image of Chinese-Americans was shaped into stereotypes in early 20th-century culture, ranging from Fu Manchu’s villainy to chop suey’s homogenized exoticism. The position of Chinese-Americans became still more complicated when China was an ally during World War II, a Communist enemy in the 1950s and a warily watched trading partner and political rival in the 1980s and ’90s.

The other side of the main galleries contains illuminated panels with brief biographies of individuals who transcended all these obstacles. There is Dr. Faith Sai So Leong (born 1880), for example, who became the first female Chinese dentist in America; Du Lee (born 1879), who organized the Chinese American Citizens Alliance in 1915 “to combat anti-Chinese sentiments”; and Yan Phou Lee (born 1861), who became the first Chinese student elected to Phi Beta Kappa and gave the commencement address when he graduated from Yale in 1887. And, of course, more contemporary Chinese-Americans are here as well, including Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the architect I. M. Pei and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

But despite the museum’s considerable achievement it also harbors a tension that reveals some of the problems with the identity archetype. Like some other identity museums celebrating ethnic groups and communities, this one can too easily slip into the “we,” making it seem as if it were an internal account rather than a public statement. Each gallery includes a poem by Mr. Tchen and a narrative highlighting identity issues.

“Years of floods and droughts push our sons and fathers to leave ancient homes,” we are told of the 19th-century emigrations. “We find work and opportunity, but we also find many enslaved and dispossessed,” we read. “Writers like Jack London call us ‘heathens’ and say we can never become real Americans,” another display says.

And as a kind of haunting theme there is the question: “So are ‘we’ to be included in their sacred ‘We the People’? Or not?”

This approach tends to accent the hardened formula of the identity narrative (and overshadows the museum’s ability to explore more fully the nature of Chinese culture and immigration). Typically, in this account, triumph is reserved for the very end, with the 1960s as a turning point: the civil-rights movement is hailed for weakening the hold of prejudice and loosening the fetters of xenophobia. It is as if identity itself becomes the source of salvation. It may have begun as the instigation for oppression but it ends as a force for liberation. One gallery here contains posters and publications from that era that emphasizes these themes.

There is no question that the ’60s political movements had an effect on the status of all minorities; the identity narrative itself was shaped in that era. But aspects of this exhibition, particularly autobiographical statements that can be read, listened to or watched, reveal that model’s limits.

While the actual texts of some of these accounts are constructed from historical information by contemporary Chinese-American writers, including David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen and Ha Jin, the nuances they introduce are important. A 19th-century laborer, Ah Quin, speaks of working in Alaska as a cook for miners, sending home $30 every few months. Another 19th-century figure, Wong Chin Foo, makes it clear just how old certain political movements are: “When the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 with even more restrictions on the Chinese here, I helped form ‘The Chinese Equal Rights League.’ Through our efforts, we managed to persuade some congressmen to consider our proposals to grant us the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.”

And later in the exhibition there are brief written accounts by more recent immigrants, like Sam Wong, whose wandering first took him to Vietnam and Cambodia before “the U.S. welcomed me.”

In these voices, and others, we can hear the mixture of prospects and obstacles that Chinese immigrants encountered. This must have been true even in the worst of times: Chinese laborers sought to come here even after it was clear that nothing like paradise was in store. Many must have recognized degrees of restriction and opportunity and risked their lives to minimize one and maximize the other.

This is an aspect of the history that was once emphasized in older stories of American immigration, demonstrating how opportunities trumped hardships and possibility triumphed over prejudice. There is no point in returning to that model’s glossy idealism, which too easily elided over injustices and failings.

But the first-person stories here suggest that the dominant identity model has its own form of exaggeration, heightening trauma and minimizing promise. The hope is that over time this will be amended (and not just in this museum) with a fuller understanding of both sides of a hyphenated identity.

The Museum of Chinese in America opens to the public Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.; 215 Centre Street, near Grand Street, Chinatown; (212) 619-4785 or mocanyc.org.

Feud Between Greece, Macedonia Continues Over Claim to Alexander the Great

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Alexander the Great died more than 2,300 years ago. But his cult of personality is just starting to grip this tiny Balkan country.

To the annoyance of next-door Greece, which has long claimed the conqueror as its own, Macedonia has anointed Alexander its national hero. The government has renamed the international airport here in his honor, as well as the main highway to Greece. Soon to come: a 72-foot-tall marble colossus of Alexander astride his favorite warhorse, Bucephalus, which will dominate the skyline of the capital, Skopje.

The mania over Alexander is the latest chapter in a long-running feud between Macedonia and Greece that some officials fear has the potential to destabilize a region still trying to recover from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The dispute centers on a basic question: Does Macedonia, a country born out of the rubble of the former Yugoslavia, have the right to call itself what it wants? For 18 years, the conflict has defied attempts by the United States, the United Nations and European powers to find a solution.

The Greek government refuses to recognize its neighbor's constitutional name, the Republic of Macedonia, which it sees as a thinly veiled bid to lay claim to three of its northern districts, a region known as Greek Macedonia. After Macedonia declared independence in 1991, Greece prevented it from joining the United Nations and imposed an economic blockade that nearly strangled the fledgling country.

Greece also vetoed Macedonia's bid to join NATO last year and is blocking its admission to the European Union until it changes its name to the Republic of Skopje, the Slavic Republic of Macedonia or something similar.

Macedonian officials said they cannot understand why Greece sees their country's name as a threat or thinks they have a secret plan to annex northern Greece.

"It's laughable," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, noting that the Macedonian military consists of 8,000 troops and a fleet of eight helicopters. "In America, you have a good phrase to describe a confusing situation. You say, 'It's all Greek to me.' Sometimes we say it's all Greek to us as well."

Greeks complain that the Republic of Macedonia is challenging their national identity and stealing their history. Alexander, the ruler of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, was born in the city of Pella, located in present-day Greece. The Athens government says there is no question that he was Greek. The Republic of Macedonia, it says, consists of Slavs and other outsiders who invaded the region a millennium after Alexander died.

"This practice is bothering Greece a lot," said Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Yannis Valinakis. "It demonstrates Skopje's lack of goodwill and respect."

Under a truce brokered in 1995 by former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, Macedonia was allowed to join the United Nations on the Greek condition that it refer to itself in multinational institutions as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. It was also required to change its flag and rewrite its constitution to include a promise never to violate Greek territory or interfere in Greece's internal affairs.

Macedonians hate the FYROM label, which is a reminder of communist times. Although the government has persuaded more than 120 countries, including the United States, to recognize it as the Republic of Macedonia, it is still forced to go by FYROM at the United Nations.

Officials in Skopje said that they were willing to swallow FYROM again as the price of admission to NATO last year but that Greece refused. Matthew Nimetz, the U.N.'s special envoy for the dispute, said recently he was optimistic a compromise could be reached but gave no details.

Leaders in Macedonia, a poor, landlocked country about the size of New Hampshire, warned they may have trouble holding the nation together if Greece does not relent soon. Internal unrest, they said, could easily spread to other fragile nations in the Balkans, such as neighboring Kosovo, where 1,500 U.S. troops serve as part of a peacekeeping force.

"The problem is threatening the fabric of our society," Gjorge Ivanov, the president of Macedonia, said in an interview. "The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region."

In the Balkans, it doesn't take much for conflicts to spin out of control. Macedonia almost descended into civil war in 2001 because of fighting between ethnic Albanians, who are Muslim and constitute a quarter of the population, and ethnic Macedonians, who are Orthodox Christian.

Since then, the two groups have shared power under a peace agreement based on the assumption that Macedonia would join NATO. Both sides see the military alliance as a guarantee of internal stability. "It would give us medicine for our hot heads," said Menduh Tachi, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians.

But Tachi said the pact could be derailed if the dispute over the country's name persists much longer. "I don't even want to think of what would happen if we can't resolve it and join NATO," he said. "It would be a Frankenstein scenario."

Macedonians say the name of the country is crucial to developing their still wobbly national identity. Ethnic Albanians say they would revolt if the Slavic Republic of Macedonia was the new name because they are not Slavs. Almost nobody wants another Greek-preferred version, the Republic of Skopje, which ignores everyone outside the capital.

Historically, territory inhabited by ethnic Macedonians has belonged to other nations: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Those countries have been reluctant to recognize ethnic Macedonians as a separate people, to recognize their Slavic language as a distinct tongue or even to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church.

Todor Petrov, president of the World Macedonian Congress, a group founded by Macedonian exiles in 1899, said the country should stop kowtowing to Greece and just call itself the Republic of Macedonia, regardless of how badly it wants to join NATO or the European Union.

In an interview, he accused Greece of "practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Macedonian nation" for the past 100 years. "They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said.

It is not just Macedonia's national identity that is at stake. The Greek government does not recognize ethnic minorities within its own borders, including Macedonian-speaking residents of northern Greece.

Pavle Voskopoulos, a Greek citizen who leads the Rainbow Party, a group of ethnic Macedonians in northern Greece, said the country subscribes to a myth of a "pure" Greek people who are directly descended from Alexander and others from his era. "This is all about modern Greek identity," he said. "If there is a Macedonia as an independent state, this is a great threat against Greek policy and Greek ideology."

Lacking the clout to force Greece to budge, Macedonia has intensified its glorification of Alexander and other ancient heroes, a campaign that critics in Skopje deride as "antiquization."

The country has renamed its national stadium for King Philip II, Alexander's father, and organized dozens of archaeological digs. Officials also like to needle Greeks that the philosopher Aristotle, who tutored the teenage Alexander, was from the kingdom of Macedonia, not Athens.

Pasko Kuzman, the government's director of cultural heritage, is a driving force behind Macedonia's surge of interest in the past. With flowing white hair, three heavy-duty watches strapped to his thick wrists and a National Geographic fanny pack, he has been described as a cross between Indiana Jones and Santa Claus.

In an interview in his office, sitting next to a wall-size copy of a 13th-century icon of Alexander, Kuzman insisted that Greece had stolen the conqueror's legacy from Macedonia, not the other way around.

"The Greeks are sorry that they are called Greece and not Macedonia," he said. "What else can I tell you?"