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Conference to probe Black-Asian relations around the world
By David J. Craig
A scene from Spike Lee's 1989 movie Do the Right Thing captures poignantly
a widespread notion about relations between blacks and Asians in America's
inner cities: three unambitious black men sip beer on a Brooklyn sidewalk,
complaining to each other about what they consider the opportunism of
a Korean family who owns a nearby convenience store.
Despite the perceived tensions between people of African and Asian descent
in this country, the groups actually share a long and rich history of
influencing one another's cultures, often in positive ways. That history
is the focus of an upcoming international conference sponsored by BU's
African-American Studies Program. Taking place April 12 through 14, Blacks
and Asians: Encounters Through Time and Space will feature academics from
China, Japan, South Africa, Australia, England, and the United States
and will explore interactions between the two groups in this country and
around the world.
"We'll be looking at all types of connections, including those that
occur through commerce, and cultural connections through music and literature,"
says Ronald Richardson, a CAS associate professor of history and director
of the GRS African-American Studies Program. "Scholars will be discussing
the black presence in China and Japan, and the experiences of Asians in
Africa. These issues are important because scholars have scarcely looked
at the basic knowledge of these interactions and because it gets us out
of the American habit of restricting race relations to black and white.
The fact is that America is an increasingly multicultural society experiencing
a major influx of new immigrants, many of whom come from Asia."
The conference, which Richardson says is the first major international
gathering on black-Asian relations, will feature some of the most prominent
scholars writing on the subject. Participants in daytime panel discussions
will include John Dower, an MIT professor of Japanese history, and Reginald
Karney, author of the 1998 book African American Views of the Japanese:
Solidarity or Sedition? as well as Myung Kim, a CAS visiting professor
of African-American studies, Allison Blakely, a CAS professor of African-American
studies, Genzo Yamamoto, a CAS assistant professor of history, Merry White,
a CAS anthropology professor, Anita Patterson, a CAS English professor,
John Stone, a CAS sociology professor and chairman of the department,
Lehong Weng, a Ph.D. candidate in the GRS American and New England Studies
Program, Christine Loken-Kim, administrator of the African-American Studies
Program, and Richardson.
Civil rights leader Robert Moses will deliver the conference's keynote
address, My Reflections on the Mississippi Voter Registration Movement,
1961-1965, at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, at the BU Photonics Center
Auditorium. Moses was a driving force in organizing the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party, which challenged the state's party machine at the 1964
Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, N.J. The Cambridge, Mass., resident
currently commutes to Jackson, Miss., to teach high school mathematics,
and directs the Algebra Project, a national program he founded that prepares
students in rural and inner-city communities to take college-prep mathematics.
Richardson says that Moses, a former student of Taoist religion and philosophy
at Harvard, will speak about "the impact of Asian ideas on the development
of nonviolent practices of American Civil Rights leaders, particularly
in reference to the Mississippi voter registration movement."
As part of the conference, African-American documentary filmmaker Regge
Life will present a retrospective of his work at 7:30 p.m. on Friday,
April 12, at the Photonics Center Auditorium. Life has produced and directed
films about the positive experiences of African-Americans who have lived
in Japan and about how children of mixed-race couples develop their identity.
Both Moses' and Life's presentations are free and open to the public.
"A thrust of our program, and a focus of the conference, is considering
how all cultures are hybrid and have been influenced by their interactions
with different cultures, sometimes through interactions at a distance,"
says Richardson, who hopes to help publish two books based on papers presented
at the conference and to have annual conferences on intercultural exchange.
"For instance, Japanese people who have never been to the United
States are influenced by African-Americans through the Civil Rights movement
and through jazz and rap music. Also, African-Americans in this country
were strongly influenced by Japanese nationalism in the 1920s because
Japan was able to modernize and industrialize while avoiding European
colonialism and imperialism. African-Americans saw them as
a shining example of what people of color could achieve."
5
April 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations